Takeover

I hope you’re watching, Frank. She slowly shook her head in a one-inch arc.

“Hold still,” Lucas hissed.

Cavanaugh and Eric Moyers stepped off the curb and into the waves of heat rising from the pavement. Bobby pushed on the metal frame of the door closest to him.

Behind them Ethan let out a laugh, his high-pitched giggle bouncing off the walls.

Cavanaugh and Moyers reached the middle of the street. The negotiator spoke. “Bobby, we’re here. Come on out.”

I have to warn them. I’ ll have to scream, and quickly. But if I take a deep breath, Lucas will know.

If she could even get a deep breath, he held her so tightly. She began to suck in air, slowly, steadily.

Bobby pushed the door completely open.

Now. “Don’t-”

Lucas’s hand covered her mouth, pulling her head back against his shoulder. Damn, he was fast!

She wriggled, more to keep him from slicing the insides of her lips against her teeth than to reattempt her plan. She needed only a split second to shout a warning, but the more she twisted, the tighter he held her.

On the other side of the glass, Cavanaugh waited with Eric Moyers in the street while Bobby crossed the sidewalk. Both men watched him; Cavanaugh gave no indication of noticing her struggle just inside the door.

“That’s close enough, Cavanaugh,” Bobby said to him. “Hands up, and turn around in a circle. I want to see that you’re not armed.”

She watched Cavanaugh turn slowly, fingers splayed above his head. Defenseless, unless he had a handgun underneath the bulletproof vest.

Bobby stood about eight feet from them, blatantly armed to the teeth. “Okay. You can put your hands down, but don’t come any closer.”

Eric Moyers spoke. “Hi, Bobby.”

From behind him she watched Bobby cock his head. “It don’t sound like you, bro.”

“I told you I have a cold.”

“What are you doing alive?”

“Why would I be dead? Who told you that anyway?”

Bobby’s shoulders slumped. The hand holding the gun fell to his side. He began to say that it didn’t matter, but then his voice trailed off and he put his other hand to his eyes.

Cavanaugh took the moment to glance her way, but she couldn’t even shake her head in Lucas’s viselike grip. Perhaps he saw the panic in her eyes, because he opened his mouth to speak, possibly to tell Lucas to let her go, before realizing the futility of it. Talking to Lucas all day had proved futile. Cavanaugh could not help her, and she could not warn him.

“I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry, Eric. I’m sorry about Mom and all the pain I caused her. I’m sorry you had to spend most of your life looking out for me.” The level of his voice continued to move up and down, so that the two men in the street moved a few steps closer to hear him.

No! Theresa tried to shout. Go back!

“What was that?” Lucas whispered in her ear. “I didn’t quite catch it.”

Between the heat and the tension, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible for Eric Moyers to look any more uncomfortable, but he managed. “Listen, Bobby… we all make mistakes.”

“But I made more than my share. I never thought about anyone else. At the prison we had to paint a picture of our family, and I did the whole thing in red. The therapist said that’s because blood and pain is all I see when I think about us.”

Eric Moyers took another step toward his brother. “Mom never stopped loving you.”

Bobby’s voice turned harsh, and the hand on the automatic rifle tightened. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”

Cavanaugh spoke up. “It’s really hot out here in the sun, Bobby. Do you think we could talk about this inside the library? Are you ready to put the gun down and go?”’

Theresa shifted her weight to her right. She kicked at Lucas. He ground the barrel of the handgun into her kidney. “I will shoot you, Theresa. Please don’t make me.”

Bobby shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re really alive.”

“It’s me, Bobby. Come on, let’s go.” Eric Moyers took another step toward his brother, but Cavanaugh moved up and put one hand on his arm.

“Wait here, Eric. Where are the bank employees, Bobby? The ones that are coming with us?”

“They overheard our plan,” Bobby told him. “It led to quite a squabble in there. It’s amazing what people will do or say to save themselves.”

“They only want to live, Bobby, to go on with their lives. We all do. You have dreams you want to realize, don’t you? Here is where we can start. Bring out the bank employees.”

The pressure of the gun in Theresa’s back eased. The drama outside commanded Lucas’s attention.

“Come on, Bobby,” Eric Moyers urged.

“I know I gave Mom gray hair.”

“We can talk about this later,” his brother told him.

“No, I need to say it now. I know my troubles wore on her, but she could have handled that. My going to jail, she could have handled that. But when you talked her into cutting me off, not calling, not writing, not coming to visit me-she couldn’t handle that.”

“Let’s go, Bobby.”

Theresa fought to separate her jaws, leaving a gap just wide enough for one of Lucas’s fingers to slide in. She bit, catching part of her lower lip in the crush and tasting blood. Instinct made his grip loosen.

“Run!” she screamed.

Lucas muffled her again and pulled back. Eric Moyers turned to her voice in confusion. Cavanaugh somehow understood and grabbed Eric’s arm, moving backward toward the library building. Bobby left his automatic rifle at his side but pulled a handgun from the back of his waistband, underneath his loose Windbreaker. He used this to shoot his brother in the face. Then, retreating, he shot Chris Cavanaugh.

29

3:26 P.M.

At least three snipers hit Bobby Moyers. The force of each blow pushed him back across the sidewalk, where the last shot hit his skull. A splash of red exploded over the glass of the open door, and a faint mist sprayed Theresa’s face. He fell at her feet, half in and half out of the entrance to the Federal Reserve building.

Theresa screamed something-what, she never knew, since Lucas muffled her sound to just a panicked whimper. His body tightened, but he did not move. He said nothing. He doesn’t seem surprised.

Eric Moyers lay motionless on the hot pavement. Cavanaugh’s hand twitched, and she wept to see it. No hope remained for Bobby; the lower part of the back of his skull had been shredded.

He must have hit Cavanaugh in the vest, because the man now sat up and checked Eric Moyers’s condition.

Let Eric be alive, she prayed. He was trying to save us, and enough people have died today.

But Cavanaugh did not shout for an ambulance, or even radio for one. From his demeanor she knew that Eric Moyers had passed beyond help.

Lucas maneuvered her into the doorway. Rays of light struck her, heating her clothing until it burned the skin. “Cavanaugh!” he shouted.

The negotiator looked up, squinting in the sunlight, and slowly got to his feet.