Over the speaker they heard Lucas’s voice, slightly muted as he turned away from the receiver to speak to Theresa, but still clear. “Chris wants me to take the two o’clock shipment and go. This is acceptable to me, provided a SWAT team doesn’t come along with it, provided all the people here cooperate in moving the money for me-got that, team?-and provided no one and nothing comes near that Mercedes parked outside. That’s the deal we’re working on, Theresa, to bring you up to speed. The problem is, like Bobby, I don’t trust cops, and I don’t trust the great Chris Cavanaugh. I think maybe he thinks I won’t strike back when double-crossed. So I just need you to clarify what happens to people who don’t cooperate, like Cherise, because obviously they have no camera feeds in the cubicles behind the teller cages. Understand?”
Silence, but on the monitor, Patrick could see her head move in a small nod.
“So, Theresa, what happens to people who don’t cooperate?” He held out the phone.
A slight brushing sound, then Theresa’s voice. “Cherise is dead. He shot her.”
“Damn,” Cavanaugh muttered.
“Hardly a surprise,” Patrick said.
Theresa asked, “Is Paul all right?”
Patrick dropped his cigarette into Jason’s empty water bottle. He hadn’t even called to check. Cavanaugh caught his eye, and Patrick shrugged. Cavanaugh pushed the “talk” button on the phone.
“He’s at the hospital, Theresa. That’s all I can tell you,” he added before changing the subject. “Did you see Cherise?”
“I did. She’s very, very dead, believe me. It was an explosive sight.”
A second of quiet and then a whistling sound. The receiver made a clanging noise, as if it had been dropped.
Patrick stared at the monitor in disbelief. “He hit her!”
“What?” Cavanaugh stood, moving closer to the screen, though he could see perfectly well from his chair. Lucas had ripped the phone from Theresa’s hand before punching her in the face with his right fist. It had to have been hard; it knocked her completely off her feet, so that now she sprawled across Missy and Brad.
Lucas picked up the receiver, dangling by its cord against the outer wall of the reception desk. “Excuse me a minute, Chris. Theresa and I need to have a chat.”
He hung up.
Theresa had curled and rolled to all fours, trying to raise herself. With the M4 carbine in his left hand, Lucas grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her up, marching her away before she could get her feet underneath her.
“Take the shot!” Patrick shouted, looking to the assistant chief for some backup, but the man merely stared at the TV screen with a dumbfounded expression. “He’s going to shoot her just like he shot Cherise!”
Cavanaugh stared at the monitor. “Don’t panic.”
“Why the hell
“He’s not heading for the teller cages,” Cavanaugh pointed out. Indeed, Lucas headed away from the cages, toward the east wall of the lobby.
“There are classrooms there,” Patrick said. “He’s trying to get her off camera.”
“Why? If he wants to force us into a concession by killing someone, why do it out of our sight?”
“That’s how he killed Cherise. Maybe he can’t work with an audience. Take the shot. We have to take the shot.” In another few steps, they would leave the center of the lobby, the small area where the snipers could see through the clear glass.
Cavanaugh hit another button on his telephone console. “Harry, you there?”
“Roger.”
“Target A is taking a hostage away from the others, moving northeast. Anyone got a clear sight?”
“In sight, but chance of deflection too high. Target B not in range also.”
“What’s he talking about?” Patrick demanded, though he knew. A sniper could hit Lucas from across the street without a problem, but shooting through a window was another proposition altogether. The glass would alter the path of the bullet, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot. The glass in the antique Fed building might be particularly thick, and the two people were a good distance from it, so that any deflection would be amplified by the time the bullet reached them. The odds of its striking Theresa instead of Lucas were much too high.
They continued to move, two silent, dark figures on the screen.
“Oh, God.” Patrick heard his own voice and hated the sound, almost like a whimper. “He wouldn’t rape her, would he?”
Cavanaugh snatched up the phone, hit a button. “I’ll get him back to the phone. It’s all we can do.”
“That’s not all. SWAT has to go in.” He turned to the assistant chief of police. “Viancourt. Send in the assault team.”
“I can’t. FBI’s in charge of this operation.”
“You’re here, and they’re not. You can act before they can stop you.” What Patrick heard himself suggesting was insane, he knew. It did not even slow him down.
Viancourt gave the detective his full attention. “Sucking up to me won’t get you the Homicide chief ’s slot.”
Shock silenced him, the idea that he would use Theresa’s imminent murder to get in good with the assistant chief. Patrick put one hand on the man’s shoulder to make his point. Unfortunately, he wrinkled the lapel of the expensive suit by bunching it in his fist and gave the guy a little shake while he persisted in requesting the assault team. Again, deja vu-he now played the same scene with the chief that Theresa had played with Cavanaugh, and it would have the same effect. He’d be shut out of the operation.
The assistant chief knocked his hand away with more force and speed than Patrick would have anticipated. “Get your hands off me, Detective, and control yourself.”
Cavanaugh’s call went through. On-screen they saw the hostages glance toward the ringing phone, but Lucas did not pause until he reached the other side of the room. Then he spun Theresa around and slammed her up against the marble wall, holding her there with one hand at her throat.
Patrick swallowed hard. He would never be able to explain this to his aunt. “He’s about to kill a hostage. We have to act.”
Cavanaugh answered him. “They go in shooting, we’ll have an instant bloodbath. You told me yourself that Jessica Ludlow said exactly that. We can’t do it, Patrick. Not even for Theresa.”
“We’re just supposed to stand here and let him kill her?”
“He didn’t kill Paul.”
“But he killed Cherise, with a lot less provocation. Who knows what this guy will do?”
Patrick’s hands hurt, and he glanced at them. Bright red semicircles appeared where his fingernails bit into the flesh of the palms.
She was in sight, and still alive. But for how much longer?
“He’s underneath the air-conditioning duct,” Cavanaugh observed.
How
Cavanaugh disconnected his phone call to the receptionist’s desk and dialed Mulvaney’s HQ instead. Within seconds they could hear Lucas’s low tones and Theresa’s choked replies.
“What was that all about?” the robber demanded.
Theresa gasped for air. “What?”
“Cute choice of words.”
“You wanted me to tell them about Cherise.”
“What do you know about ‘explosive,’ Theresa?”
A pause. “I can’t breathe.”
Patrick couldn’t breathe either, standing in front of the TV screen.
“She’s stalling,” Cavanaugh told him.
“How do you know?”
“She’s debating with herself. Should she tell him we know about the explosives? Will it make him more likely to give himself up, or less?”
