Takeover

“Behind the barriers.”

“Really.” His head poked out from behind Jessica Ludlow’s, just an inch. “Invite her in.”

She snarled an obscenity at him, startling in its ferocity.

Perhaps it startled him as well, or merely amused. “Okay, okay. Relax, Theresa, I was just kidding. Your feet don’t move. Go ahead and wave-once. Then get back to my money.”

She gazed at her daughter, so far away that her face was not clear, just the shape and the hair and the voice. Was she crying? Was she angry? Which would be worse?

If she ran, she could make it.

Theresa waved, two swipes of her right arm. Rachael saw it; she stopped her frantic movements, and as her body stilled, it seemed to def late. It’s hitting her now, Theresa thought. She came there, she saw her mother, and now she was figuring out that that was all she could do. That was all anyone could do. Theresa was stuck, and no one could help her.

Unless she ran.

“Don’t take one step forward, Theresa,” she heard Lucas say. “If you do, I’ll kill half the people in this room. I’ll still have the other half.”

Then you’ d give the authorities no choice but to take you out, no matter the cost, she thought, but she knew it didn’t make any difference. Her decision had been made, and she felt almost grateful to him for helping her make it.

She kept moving packages but could not take her eyes off her daughter.

Craig put his arm around Rachael’s waist, and Theresa wished he wouldn’t. The girl might pass out in the heat. But Rachael must have calmed some, since Frank had removed his hands from the girl’s shoulders. Maybe it did her good to see me, Theresa thought. Maybe then the whole thing won’t seem so bad. If she survived.

The sergeant interrupted her thoughts. “Any of the hostages seem to be working with them?”

She thought of Jessica Ludlow. Where had she been last night, if not at home to notice her husband’s dead body on the sidewalk? Or had he been killed early that morning, after she left? Theresa hadn’t seen the least sign of familiarity with the robbers, and the young woman could not have faked her terror on Ethan’s behalf. “No.”

“Either of them seem to have any medical problems?”

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 muttered, “But I’ve got a baby.”

“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.”