by Lisa Black
Cavanaugh held the phone against his shoulder. “Get the special agent in here and her out.”
Jason trotted off to the conference room. He left Theresa to Frank.
She tried to modulate her tones, with extremely limited success. “He’s wounded in the thigh. If the bullet hit or even nicked an artery, he could bleed out in five minutes. Give Lucas anything he wants to get Paul out of there, or he’s going to die.”
“I understand that, Theresa. But there’s eight other people in that lobby I have to think of.” He pushed the “talk” button on the console. “Lucas, we need to get that wounded man out of there.”
“That would be good. He’s bleeding all over the freakin’ tile. Really ruins the look of it.”
Theresa let out a tiny sound, a whimper. Cavanaugh shot Frank a murderous glare.
“Honey,” the detective said to her, “I think he’s right. We should—”
“Tell you what.” Lucas’s voice continued, grating on the air like a sandblaster. “You give me our car, and we can leave. You can whisk EMS in here to fix this guy up, and everybody’s happy. Especially me.”
“Will you leave all the other hostages there, so just you and Bobby drive away?”
“There you go, thinking I’m stupid. No! All five—not the security guards—will come out to the car with us, as a wall between Bobby and me and your snipers. Once we’re in our car, they can rush off to your waiting arms.”
“How can I be sure you won’t take one of them with you? I’d be putting that person’s life at risk. I can’t make that deal, Lucas, not under those conditions. You have to leave the hostages in the bank.”
“Then this guy’s going to die, sooner or later. Probably sooner. He ain’t looking so good.”
“You have to give him his car, or Paul’s going to bleed to death,” Theresa said. She thought she said it slowly and clearly, but it came out jumbled and very loud.
“Get her out of here,” Cavanaugh ordered her cousin.
“Give him the car!”
He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over backward. “I can’t sacrifice a few bank employees just so your wedding will proceed as planned! It doesn’t work like that!”
On the monitor a dark stain began to show through the suit coat around Paul’s thigh, inexorably growing in size, spreading though the layers of fabric as the blood seeped from his body.
She moved closer to Cavanaugh. She was only going to touch his shoulder, that’s all, just to remind him that they were real people and not theories on which to practice his “perfect record” techniques. She didn’t intend to grasp his lapels or push against his chest with both hands. “Give him—”
“Patrick, get her out of here, or whatever happens next will be on you.”
Frank didn’t hesitate. “Just save his life,” he told Cavanaugh as he dragged Theresa from the room.
CHAPTER 16
12:21 P.M.
The street had not cooled any in the past hour. The sun hung directly overhead. Her white lab coat did its best to reflect the rays, but it did not allow any air through to her skin, and sweat soaked both her blouse and her pants.
She would not remove the lab coat, though. Even with her reddened eyes and a hurried pace, a lab coat meant she belonged there, a trained professional, an impartial observer. Besides, the keys to the Mercedes were in the pocket.
The officers lining Superior Avenue, obviously bored and hot, did not see anything amiss in her passage. They let her go past them without comment, past the yellow crime-scene tape, up to the sawhorses blocking the East Ninth intersection. They let her walk right up to Bobby Moyers’s 1994 Mercedes-Benz. Why not? She’d already been in and out of it twice that morning.
They didn’t even question her when she opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat.
Cavanaugh was right, she thought as the engine turned over. There were eight other people in there, including a little boy, and if Lucas got his vehicle back, some of those eight would disappear into it. Driving this car around the corner was akin to signing their death warrants.
Be careful, her grandfather always said.
She was not trained in hostage negotiation. She was jumping into a process in the middle, startling two men with guns who had no idea who she was and had never seen her before in their lives.
But she had spent enough time around blood to know how much was too much. And Paul was losing too much. He would not last until Lucas gave up. Cavanaugh had said it himself—situations like these could go on for days.
Think things through, her grandfather had said. Keep a savings account. Don’t quit a job until you have another one.
She put the car into gear. Two uniformed officers, wedged into a sliver of shade next to the Hampton Inn, looked at her oddly but did not move toward her.
The bank employees also did not know who she was, had never seen her before. But they might come to curse her name in their last few moments of life.
But her grandfather had also said, Make your decision. Then don’t worry about it anymore.
Hope over experience.
She put her foot on the gas and drove around the corner. Now she heard shouting behind her, the officers telling her to get out of the road. She pulled up in front of the East Sixth entrance between a fire hydrant and a sewer grate.
Now she slipped off the lab coat, left it in the car. Every surface of her body needed to be visible. Keys in hand, she got out and moved to the sidewalk. There she stopped with her arms up, keys dangling from her right index finger. “Lucas!”
It seemed like forever—she hoped that man was keeping good pressure on the wound—until the broken glass door opened. She saw Lucas flip the doorstop down before retreating back into the lobby, which appeared dark beyond the brilliant light outside. The ten feet between them felt like the Grand Canyon, but she could hear him clearly. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the woman with your car. Send out the wounded officer, and I’ll give you the keys.”
A confused pause. “Are you crazy?”
“Yes. Send out the wounded officer. If he can’t walk, send someone with him. Then I’ll give you your keys.”
“Did Cavanaugh send you?”
The sun felt as if it were singeing her hair, and the waves of heat from the pavement made her queasy. She could smell the sausage cooking in a lunch cart down the street and heard a sharp metallic ping, as if a sniper had accidentally dropped a penny, or a bullet, several stories to the sidewalk below. “No. I just want the officer to get help before he dies. You should want that, too.”
“Why don’t I just shoot you and take the keys?”
“Because I’m standing next to a sewer grate. It has nice wide gaps between the slats. You shoot me, I drop the keys, and you’re stuck here.”
“What if Bobby has an extra set on him?”
“Then I’m screwed.” She had a fifty-fifty chance, right? Sweat rolled downward, tickling her sides.
Another pause. “I thought Cavanaugh said—”
“Cavanaugh’s screwed, too. I just want that wounded officer out of there.” When he didn’t answer, she pressed. “Look up and down the street, Lucas. There’s an army out here. No matter what else happens today, what do you think they’re going to do to you if a cop dies?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a forensic scientist with the medical examiner’s office.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m engaged to marry that cop.” The truth, Cavanaugh had said. That’s the only way it can work.
“Really.”
Having to hold her arms up ached. She needed more push-ups in her routine.
“Theresa!” Frank called from somewhere behind her. She did not turn. The poor guy could forget about the Homicide chief’s position if he couldn’t handle one hysterical relative—another corpse littered in the wake of her decision.
“So I let him go,” Lucas said, “and you’ll walk in here with the keys?”
“I’ll throw them to you.”
“I don’t think so, sugar. I’m going to be down one hostage, and a cop makes a good one. You’re close enough. He goes out, you come in. With my keys.”
Her personal phone rang. She didn’t want to answer it. It was probably Cavanaugh, and she didn’t want to think about the names he’d call her.
But it gave out the first few notes of “Devil in Disguise” before she could turn it off. “My phone is ringing,” she said to Lucas. “I have to answer it.”
He only laughed.
She took that for permission and slowly pulled the phone from its clip.
“Mom?” her daughter said. “The math final wasn’t so bad after all. The first question had this triangle—”
“Rachael, I can’t talk right now.”
The briefest of pauses, a hiccup of time. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m glad your test went okay, but I have to go. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You should probably go to your dad’s after school. You know he likes to see you.”
“Something’s really wrong, isn’t it? You always think you sound so calm, and you don’t, you never do! What is it? Is it Grandma?”
“No, no. I just have a situation at work.”
“Don’t give me that shit!”
“Language,” Theresa said automatically, but didn’t blame her. Her daughter had just walked into her own personal Twilight Zone, and they both knew it. Theresa didn’t take her sight off of Lucas, hovering beyond the door. “I have to go. But I love you, Rachael. No matter what, I love you more than anything.”
The last thing she heard before flipping the phone shut was her daughter screaming. “Mom—”
Theresa pushed the “power” button.
She had just terrorized her daughter and might render her motherless before the day was out, and all to save her boyfriend. Looked like the Mother of the Year award would slip through her fingers once more.
To her surprise, Lucas asked, “Are you okay?”
Make your decision.
Then stick to it.
“Keys,” she reminded him, making them jangle for emphasis.
“You stay right where you are. You don’t move, you don’t drop those keys for nothing, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you got a deal. Don’t move.”
She saw the shadowy figure retreat, listened to the bottom tones of a conversation. She heard Lucas say, “I don’t care!” but everything else was unintelligible.
Let him still be able to walk, she thought.
Where was Rachael? She had to be in school, probably in lunch period. Was she screaming at the phone now, demanding that her mother answer her? She’d probably call her grandmother next. Who was sixty-four. With a bad mitral valve.
I may have just destroyed every member of my family.
Paul appeared in the doorway, with the black man in the uniform who had been sitting next to him. Theresa could see why. Paul’s face looked ghost white in the brilliant sun, and he leaned his weight on the other man until they both staggered. The blood-soaked suit coat around his thigh had begun to slip from his hand. They emerged from the door. Usual city noise went on in the surrounding blocks, but this stretch of East Sixth had become as silent as the grave.
Two hostages for one. That’s something, she thought. Cavanaugh should be pleased with that.
Her sweat turned to ice. Paul’s face reflected his bewilderment as his conscious mind receded. He didn’t seem to recognize her at first, but then he stretched out a hand. “Theresa—”
“Step down,” the man told Paul. They had reached the curb.
“Keep walking, baby.” She extended her left arm, and their fingertips met in a touch so light she might have imagined it. Her throat closed up. “Just keep walking.”
The older man tugged at his burden, and they continued their shambling gait across the burning street. She listened to their footsteps, and with each one her heart urged him to take one more.
“Now you come in here,” Lucas ordered her from inside the bank. “With my keys.”
“I’m going to turn my head to see that he makes it. That’s all—I won’t move anything else.”
“I can just shoot you, you know.”
“Then I drop the keys.” She turned her head, straining her neck, expecting to feel a bullet rip through her heart with every breath. Frank and two other officers emerged from the library building to help the two men, and her spirit lifted a millimeter to hear a siren on the next block. Someone had thought ahead to call an ambulance; maybe Cavanaugh, or Frank.
Her cousin caught her eye over Paul’s shoulder. Shock there, and anger.
“Okay, he’s gone. Now get in here.”
Part One has ended. Time for Part Two.
The light reflected off the glass doors, blinding her, or perhaps the heat had made her faint. If I run, I won’t make it. If I go in, there’s no reason to assume he’ll kill me. He has plenty of other people to shoot first, and I brought him his car.
Make your decision. Then stick to it.
Slowly, hands still up, she moved toward the door.
Her traitorous body longed for the marble lobby—anything to escape the sun. With its blinding rays blocked from her eyes, she saw him. His skin, the color of caramel, had become shiny with beads of sweat just under the ball cap. He had slender lips and a wiry frame. “You wanted in here awful bad.”
“No,” she corrected him. “I wanted him out of here awful bad.”
He appraised her with light brown eyes. “Hope he was worth it.”
So do I, she found herself thinking. Would Rachael think so? Would her mother?
Up four or five marble steps, she saw the lobby, saw the terrified people cowering in front of the information desk. Saw the pool of red liquid that Paul had left, in a large puddle and then a heavy trail to the door, his living tissue, his lifeblood. The thought of stepping in it…She jumped away with a shudder.
“Give me the keys,” Lucas snapped. “And don’t pass out on me neither.”
She held them out for him to snatch.
He eyed her trousers, the clinging silk blouse. “I’m guessing you’re not hiding anything in there.”
“I’m not a cop. I don’t carry a gun.” The other hostages watched, wide-eyed, except for Brad, who did not look up from Paul’s blood.
“What are you, then?”
“I’m a forensic scientist.”
The lines on his face wrinkled as he broke into a laugh. “A freakin’ scientist. Okay, ma’am, welcome to the club. The hostage club.”
The automatic rifle dipped toward the floor. Her hands began to sink as well.
“However.”
She froze, hands splayed at hip level.
“I obviously screwed up with that guy you just sent out of here, and I’m not big on making the same mistake twice. No excuse for it, my mother used to say. So I’m going to have to pat you down. Be assured I’ll do so with regret as well as the utmost respect.”
She blinked at him.
“That means stand still. Very still, because Bobby over there has you covered. Got it?”
She nodded. Bobby peeked from around the corner, gun at the ready.
He came closer. She could smell aftershave mixed with sweat, as well as a sour, oily smell, perhaps gun lubricant. It felt odd to have a strange man’s hand passing over her body, but he went lightly and quickly and didn’t linger. He took her cell phone and stuffed it into his back pocket.
“Okay. That’s cool. I was lying a little bit, though—I don’t regret it. Now have a seat with the rest of the group over here, and we’ll proceed.”
She headed for Mrs. Ludlow and the little boy. She could not force herself to take Paul’s place, to sit by his blood while it dried to black.
The phone on the reception desk rang.
“That’s probably that negotiator dude
. Can’t get rid of him.” Lucas snatched up the receiver. “Thanks for calling, Chris, but I really don’t need you anymore. I’ve got my car, I’ve got my posse, and we’re going to be leaving now.” He listened. “She’s fine…. Why?…. Yeah, but why?…I’m putting you on speaker.”
He turned. “Are you Theresa?”
She had stopped her motion toward the desk, afraid to move while he’d been distracted by the call, afraid to startle him. “Yes.”
“He wants you to get on the phone.”
She knew what he would say. “No. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I don’t really care what you want, ma’am. Get over here.”
She began to shake, coming down from the adrenaline rush. Hadn’t she been through enough today? “No. He’ll yell at me.”
“You’re lucky I need a laugh, ma’am, because you’re sure giving me one. But that’s it. Get over here.”
She moved to him, breathing in gasps. The body of the telephone, a black and silver model, perched on the raised ledge of the reception desk. The “in use” light glowed red. Cavanaugh’s voice sounded tinny and much too far away. “Theresa?”
“I’m sorry, Chris.” Her hurried breaths dissolved into sobbing. “I’m sorry.”
“Theresa, it’s all right,” he soothed, and sounded as if he meant it. But then, feigning empathy was his stock-in-trade. “We’ll get through this okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Calm down. It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry. Tell Oliver I’m sorry.”
“Just calm down, okay? I will get you out of there.”
“Shouldn’t make promises you don’t know you can keep,” Lucas observed.
Theresa choked out, “Is Paul all right?”
“He’s in the ambulance now. They’re—”
Lucas interrupted. “Okay, you spoke. Now the lady is going to sit down and you’re going to hang up, Chris, because, like I said, I don’t need you no more.” He gave Theresa a small shove. She walked with leaden feet to join another woman who had lost her other half.
Perhaps Paul would live.
Perhaps she would not.
Was it worth it? Would Rachael agree? Would the girl ever forgive her mother for taking the risk, even if she lived? Even if Paul lived?
