Takeover - Lisa Black [89]
The cops wanted to know anything that might cause the situation to become unstable—a heart attack, asthma attack, psychotic behavior. “No.”
Suddenly his questions worried her. They could have gotten this information from Paul, surely better versed than she was in observing criminals for behavior and armaments. If they had not, that meant Paul was unconscious. Or dead.
“How is Paul?” she asked again. “The cop that got shot in here.”
He hesitated. She switched her gaze back to him from Rachael, and knew she should have done it sooner, because now he was molding his face into that blank, “I know nothing” calm that meant he didn’t want to tell her. She had done it herself when family members intercepted her outside a crime scene, wanting to know if the body underneath the overturned vehicle was their husband or son or brother.
She stopped, holding a heavy bundle of money. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know.” Now he spoke clearly, since Lucas must have heard her question. “Really, I’ve been upstairs all morning. I don’t know anything.”
“Keep going, Theresa,” Lucas said. “We’re almost full up.”
She didn’t believe the sergeant, but she wanted to, so she didn’t ask again. She couldn’t tell Jessica Ludlow that her husband was dead, because she might freak out, get hysterical, upset the fragile calm until Lucas and Bobby killed her to shut her up or panicked and began firing at everyone. And now this man wouldn’t tell her that Paul was dead, for exactly the same reason.
“Anything else you’ve observed?” the sergeant asked.
“Lucas was abused as a child.” She hadn’t intended to say that; she didn’t see how it could help them, and if Cavanaugh brought it up, Lucas would know she had passed information to the sergeant. But childhood trauma had some real relevance to her at the moment. How would Rachael deal with this? Eventually fear would turn to resentment, an anger at her parent for bringing her that close to grief.
She looked back at where her daughter stood sweltering and hoped Rachael would not become motherless in the next few minutes. “Tell my daughter—”
“What?”
Should she tell Rachael to go to the hospital, to stay with Paul, assuming he still lived? Was it fair to leave the burden of a death watch to a seventeen-year-old who hadn’t quite sorted out how she even felt about her future stepfather?
But Theresa didn’t want him to be alone.
“Get moving, Theresa.” Lucas spoke with more urgency than before.
“Tell her I love her,” Theresa said, and passed the package in her hands to Brad.
The sergeant said, “If they start shooting, get everyone under the reception desk if you can. It’s marble, it will protect you.”
“Okay.”
“Otherwise just stay down.”
“Mmm.”
“This is the last one.”
Theresa held it but looked at the crowd behind the sawhorses. This might be the last time she ever saw her daughter. It might be the last time Rachael saw her.
“Tell her I love her,” she repeated.
“Will do,” the sergeant promised, and began to back away from the door.
“Wait!” Brad shouted. “You’re leaving us here?”
She understood him. To be this close to help, to rescue…There were limits to one’s discipline, even in the cause of self-preservation.
“What did you think?” Lucas asked. “They’d ride in on white horses? Shut up and turn around. If a cop enters this room, all of you die. Is that what you want?”
Brad groaned again, a low, grating sound.
“Don’t worry,” the sergeant told all of them. He continued to walk backward, and the expression on his face told her that it pained him as much as it did them.
“Get us out of here!” Missy screamed at him.
The other officers withdrew as well. Leaving them.
“Move back, folks,” Lucas ordered. “Don’t make me shoot Jessica. Brad, help Missy unwrap those packages. Separate the one-hundred-dollar bills. That’s all we’ll be taking.”
Theresa made her feet shuffle backward as she watched her daughter until the thick wall of the Federal Reserve building blotted out the rest of the universe. Her world once again shrank to a room of cold stone and strangers.
Missy