Takeover

Because maybe she didn’t have what it took to kill a man, and this would be a bad time to find out.

They approached the end of East Ninth, where it dead-ended into the pier. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sat to their left, and the World War II submarine, the Cod, to their right. The huge stage and seating for the induction ceremony concert rose directly in front of them. The fishy smell of the lake air blew through the car from the open windows.

“How are we going to get to Brian?” Jessica asked.

“We’ll stay under the bleachers. Everyone will be looking at the explosion.”

The painted guitars outside the rock hall sped by. Jessica couldn’t have been driving more than twenty miles an hour, but falling out onto the pavement and possibly a curb at that speed could easily kill them both. Theresa would rather stay in the car, except that the car was going to blow up. Lucas intended to drive the car into the hidden caverns under the seating and set off the explosives. If the bleachers collapsed, it would take even more time before the cops could tally the bodies.

The explosives were in the backpack, and the backpack was in one of the duffels, with the money. The duffels were too heavy to be carried by one person.

“What about the money, Lucas? If you detonate the explosives, won’t you lose part of your take?”

“Just one. I can get the other one out.”

One of the bags would blow along with the car, for the same reason Jessie now threw bills out the window. Money distracted people, and no one would ever believe that he would have left it behind after all he’d done to get it. If the money wound up in the wreck of twisted metal, then Lucas must be in there as well. It would be months before the DNA got sorted out. He’d salvage enough for Jessie and him to start a wonderful new life together. She’d sell her paintings, and they’d travel the world.

If they got away.

“You’ll never make it,” Theresa told him. “It’s impossible to get out of this car and away from it fast enough. The concert area is a little concrete peninsula, with only one bottlenecked way in or out. Every cop in the city will surround you in thirty seconds, and there’s nothing to the north but water.”

“And,” he reminded her, “boats.”

One shot, she thought. As much as she wanted to be the one who took him down, the man who put Paul at death’s door, she had to be practical. She had always been practical. Her grandfather had taught her that.

She pressed the scalpel into Cavanaugh’s right hand and slipped off the protective cap. He was right-handed, wasn’t he? She tried to remember how he dialed the phone… Yes.

She moved her left hand to the back of the front seat, pretending to steady herself as Jessica barreled over a speed bump. “You don’t have a boat. You don’t even have a car.”

“Ah, but, Theresa, what’s better than having a boat?”

Cavanaugh squeezed her fingers, but she didn’t know if that meant good luck or grab the gun. “Having a friend with a boat,” Theresa said.

“Exactly.” “But you don’t have any friends either.” “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” Jessica spoke suddenly. “I don’t think I can do this.” “Yes you can.” While maintaining a firm hold on the gun,

Lucas twisted out of his jacket, then produced yet another plastic tie-wrap. “You two, put your hands up here. Just the tied ones.” “What if Ethan gets whiplash?” Jessica fussed. “He won’t. It’s just canvas, it won’t hurt us. Right there-see the section with the white stripe at the top? Aim for that.”

Jessica sped past the end of East Ninth Street, down a narrowed pavement and beyond a sign reading NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT. Spindly trees grew from circles in the pavement, but no other turf presented itself as a soft place to land.

“Give me your hands!” Lucas demanded again, lowering the barrel of the gun to point it at them.

Theresa grasped the headrest with her bound hand and leaned forward, as if she wished to discuss this in private. “Why don’t you just shoot us now? You didn’t show much enthusiasm for killing Cherise-is that because you don’t enjoy it?”

She never heard his answer. Instinctively mirroring, as most humans will, he leaned toward her ever so slightly. She grabbed the gun barrel.

Using the back of the seat as an anchor, Chris Cavanaugh pulled himself forward and struck downward with as much force as he could accumulate in the tight space. The scalpel entered Lucas’s neck, and the handle snapped off. Theresa closed her eyes against the spray of blood and felt the burning metal within her palm as Lucas pulled the trigger of his handgun. She let go. The bullets entered the roof.

Jessica screamed.

Lucas put both hands to his neck. For an instant he caught Theresa’s eye, his face reflecting pain and disappointment. Blood flowed between his fingers. He brought the gun around again. She moved her hand up to knock it away but couldn’t make herself grab the hot metal with her singed palm.

Jessica hit the brakes, instinctively reluctant to hit the black canvas wall.

Then the door came open, and Cavanaugh launched them both into the air. Theresa managed to get with the program just in time to push outward with her legs, trying to clear the doorsill so they wouldn’t be dragged alongside the moving vehicle. The car door, trying to blow shut, smacked her in the chest.

Lucas swiveled the gun, following them, but without his earlier lightning-quick ability.

Jessica continued to scream.

Theresa’s torso met the concrete, slightly on her right side and with Chris Cavanaugh completely on top of her. The air left her lungs, and she rolled, gasping. Amid the squealing of brakes, the car disappeared behind a black canvas curtain. The shot never came.

Then nothing.

33

4:01 P.M.

“Theresa?”

She opened her eyes, shut them again. The sunshine hurt too much. Damn, it was hot.

Cavanaugh persisted, patting her cheek. “Theresa. Are you okay?”

She squinted, tried to shake off the liquid dripping into her eyes. It hurt to breathe. “I’d be better if you hadn’t landed on top of me.”

He made a sound like a laugh and helped her to sit up. One side of his face bled where it had scraped the ground. He held up their bound hands; now both their wrists were bloody. “You don’t have another one of those scalpels, do you?”

Her body seemed intact, nothing broken or even bleeding profusely. But it hurt to sit, hurt to breathe, hurt to exist, especially for the right half of her torso-she must have cracked a few ribs. Her lungs worked in short gasps, expanding no more than absolutely necessary.

Sirens wailed around them in a symphony of noise. Most continued past them, skimming the bleachers, but one pulled up in front of them. Mulvaney, Jason, and Frank piled out.

The veteran detective reached her side before the other two got out of the car. “Theresa.”

“I’m all right. At least I’m still alive, I mean. Lucas-”

“They’re under the bleachers,” Cavanaugh cut in.

“We saw it. They won’t get far.”

“Certainly not Lucas,” Theresa said, with only a twinge of hysteria. She let Cavanaugh explain the plan. Mulvaney got on the radio; he instructed the assembling marine units to check all boats in the area for Lucas’s accomplice. “Where’s the money? I mean, what they didn’t distribute to the masses.”

“In the car, with the RDX,” Theresa said, grimacing as Frank cut apart the tie-wraps with a Swiss Army knife. “How’s Paul?”

Frank looked up, into her eyes, and she knew. She knew.

“Mom!”