“He was a bank examiner for the Fed, previously worked in Atlanta. We found him murdered this morning.”
“Never heard of him.”
“There’s an off chance he’s telling the truth,” Frank whispered to her. “It would explain why he’s not paying any attention to Mrs.
Ludlow. You’d think if he knew Mark Ludlow enough to try to extort inside information about the Fed, he’d know about his wife and kid.”
“And we still can’t be sure Cherise is even dead. What if she was in this with him? What if she was the inside connection, not Ludlow?”
“Then why is Ludlow dead?”
“Maybe he found out, or maybe he had access to something she didn’t.”
Cavanaugh, meanwhile, continued, “You have to understand our point of view, Lucas. We found a man dead this morning, and now Cherise has been killed. To let you take people out of that bank… well, how can we have confidence that you wouldn’t hurt them?”
“You’re going at this all wrong, Chris.” Lucas set down the receiver and punched a button to turn the speakerphone back on. Unencumbered by the cord, he moved back to the young man in the tie, Brad. “I want you to have confidence that I will hurt them. And time’s up.”
He had left the phone line open. He wanted them to hear this.
The M4 carbine came up.
As Theresa watched, Paul stayed on the floor but brought his sidearm out and upward in one fluid motion.
“Stop.” His voice sounded light-years away, but still she heard the strength of it, the clarity of purpose. “Police.”
Two shots, in quick succession.
Paul fell back, both hands to his right leg. He dropped the gun, and the janitor kicked it across the tile, shoving it away from himself as if it were a live grenade.
Someone screamed, “He’s hit!” When Theresa’s throat tingled from the effort, she realized who it had been.
“Anyone else?” Cavanaugh scanned the monitor, his face flushed as if with heat and fear. “I heard two shots.”
“No one else acts hurt.” Frank squinted at the scene. “Not Lucas. Bobby- No, there’s Bobby, he just darted out to pick up Paul’s gun.”
“He’s hit.” Theresa didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t have enough breath in her lungs to say it anyway.
Frank tried to guide her to a chair. “Just in the leg, Tess. He’ll be okay.”
“Just in the leg?”
Cavanaugh punched the phone’s numbered buttons with savage force, nodding at Frank. “Get her out of here.”
She voiced some unintelligible protest.
“I can’t have screaming in here, Theresa. They have that second monitor in the map room. You can watch from there. Hello, Lucas?”
“Well…” the robber drawled. “That was interesting.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Where I come from, we call that a snake in the grass. Guy was a cop, and I didn’t know it. Serves me right for not searching everybody at the beginning, but I am a little shorthanded. And you know what? I still don’t see my car.”
“Shooting a cop is not a way to demonstrate good faith.”
“Point A.” The gunshots had rattled him; he seemed to be fighting to keep his voice low and insolent, but higher tones kept slipping out. “I didn’t know he was a cop because he neglected to mention it at the start of this exercise, which really wasn’t demonstrating any good faith on his part, don’t you think? Point B: What makes you think I’m interested in showing good faith? I don’t care if you have faith in me. All I want is my car!”
Theresa watched the monitor, her vision of the world narrowed to one nineteen-inch black-and-white screen. Paul had his back up against the reception desk; he had not moved his hands from his wound. The older black man next to him removed Paul’s suit jacket and began to wrap it around the injured leg, revealing the now-empty holster. “Trade him the car for Paul.”
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.
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.