Takeover - Lisa Black [90]
“I’d like a chance to have a kid,” Brad said, sinking to the floor.
“My little girl is used to me being there.”
“So?” Brad demanded. “You deserve to live more than me?”
Theresa, unasked, began to unwrap the plastic from the money bundles as well. She spilled the bills, held in stacks by paper bands, onto the floor. “You’re wasting your breath, I’m afraid.”
Missy struggled with the wrappings. It would have been much easier with some sort of knife. “At least your daughter got to see you.”
Theresa’s self-control slipped. “As a captive! With a gun to my head! You want to talk about trauma?”
“Shut up.” Brad dropped the loosened bundles of hundred-dollar bills into one of the two duffel bags. “Will you guys drop it with the kids business? He doesn’t care! No one else cares! Why do all you people with children think that you’re more important than everyone else just because you have kids?”
“It means something,” Missy insisted.
“Only to you!” Perhaps fear had turned to anger; Brad ripped open another plastic-wrapped pack. “Anybody can have a baby. You don’t get a medal for it.”
Lucas followed this exchange with the ghost of a grin. “Is this a sore spot, Brad?”
He’s a student of human nature, Theresa thought. Or perhaps of child rearing, given the history written in scarred flesh along his arms.
“They take days off and assume you can cover for them. Their vacation week gets approved because it’s Junior’s Little League tryouts or something. They act like I don’t have a real life because it doesn’t revolve around some little rug rat.”
Lucas had reached the end of his attention span. “People—”
Missy ripped the paper band off a packet of money with enough force to send a few stray bills wafting to the floor. “No, because you’re a self-indulgent party boy who—”
“People!”
They fell silent.
“Let me reintroduce some reality here. None of you are getting out of here until Bobby and I have this money safely stowed in our car. I don’t care who has kids and who doesn’t. It may be a noble undertaking, but it does not confer any special immunity in life. I also don’t give a crap if you’re caring for an elderly parent, or your dog has diabetes and needs its medication, or if you’ve won the lottery and intend to donate it all to charitable organizations. I don’t care. Are we clear on this?”
The phone rang.
“Nobody move,” Lucas said. “Bobby, don’t answer that. Missy, you got that one zipped up?”
She had filled it to bulging. A small stack of leftover bundles rested on the floor. “Yes.”
“Good. Jessica, go sit down where you were before. Missy and Brad, slide the bag in front of the reception desk. It’s going to be heavy, but you’re both so ticked off you can probably pull it without too much trouble. Then everyone sits down. Theresa, you, too.”
Lucas followed behind Theresa, close enough that the barrel of the gun prodded her spine with every few steps. The phone continued to ring. Lucas had the money and the car, with nothing to stop him from taking off with a few hostages in tow. Except Chris Cavanaugh, assuming he really could talk anybody into anything.
“I think you should answer that phone,” Theresa said to him.
Lucas ignored her suggestion. “You could have run for it, Theresa. You could have been out that door before I shot you. Why didn’t you go?”
“How many people would you have killed if I had?”
“Half of them.” The answer came so quickly, so lightly, that it chilled her blood. “Just like I said. But so what? You love your daughter. Aren’t you willing to sacrifice others for her well-being?”
The question made her heart pound, more so than the gun at her back. Should she have been willing? Why did Lucas ask? Trying to sort out what happened during his childhood, what the adults in his life should have done versus what they did? Or did he simply enjoy poking an open wound?
Should she have run, put Rachael above these other people, these strangers?
“Love has to be balanced,” she said as they reached the reception desk, “with being a human being. You can’t truly do one without being