Suddenly, dying did not seem the most frightening option.
The little boy continued to watch her, warily. Jessica Ludlow’s breath had not yet slowed to normal.
Theresa leaned toward her. “Cute Browns dog.”
The young woman glanced down at the stuffed animal her baby held. “He loves it.”
“I remember when Burger King gave those away-it was years ago now. My daughter collected the whole set.”
“I think our new neighbor gave it to him.”
Dogs, Theresa thought. The dog with the security guard was trained to sniff explosives, not drugs. It barked up a storm every time Lucas passed by. She’d assumed that the dog had also been trained to recognize a bad guy when it saw one, but what if he scented plastic explosives in Lucas’s aura?
She had been close to the man twice, once when he frisked her, once when he pressed an automatic pistol into her side before escorting her to see Cherise’s body. She had brushed up against his chest, his sides, and felt nothing under the clothing but muscle. Even with the dark colors and the loose jacket, she could not see any suspicious bulges. And the explosives were not in the car. They could be in the duffel bag on the floor in front of her. Or they could have been installed somewhere in the offices behind the teller cages, and that was why he’d killed Cherise. He needed her to open something-what? a vault? a computer server?-so that he could set the explosives, but he couldn’t leave her alive to tell the other hostages, who might panic.
But why not just detonate the explosives, if that was his plan? What he was waiting for?
And why would a target worth blowing up be found in a minimum-security area on the ground floor?
She watched Lucas converse with Cavanaugh. He had to have a plan. She shouldn’t let his super-cool persona convince her that he had more brains than he really had-perhaps his only talent lay in acting-but everything she felt about him gave the impression that he did have a plan. He’d also have a backup plan, and a backup to the backup.
Maybe there was nothing of financial value in the cubicles. Maybe there was only a part of the foundation, a structural support, without which at least a few floors would collapse. She knew that four or five pounds of RDX would turn a good-size truck to pieces of rubble. He could have carried twenty pounds back there in his trip with Cherise, and no one would know. But why set the charges out of sight? There were no cameras back there, and he had killed the only witness.
Perhaps the real hostage here was the Federal Reserve building, a historic landmark built in 1923. Or was it the backup plan? Is that why Lucas had not blown it?
Perhaps he needed the RDX for his escape. A large explosion would make a great diversion. All eyes and rescue personnel would head for the destruction, while Lucas and Bobby and a hostage or two made for the Mercedes.
It could be a booby trap, so that after all the excitement had ended and the workers poured back into the building, an explosion would take some out. But deaths under those circumstances would not help him, and they would produce a relatively low body count if he meant it as some sort of protest. Whatever else he was up to here, politics did not seem to be part of it.
She needed to talk to Cavanaugh.
“Thanks for holding him.” Jessica Ludlow startled her out of her reverie. “He’s getting hungry, is the problem.” Bobby watched them but did not tell them to shut up. Jessica Ludlow had been through an extremely stressful morning and, like most people would, needed to vent. “He’s fussy now, but he’s going to be ten times worse in another half hour. I have his snacks in my bag, but I don’t know what that monster will do if I try to get them.”
Theresa tried to soothe the worried mother. “I don’t think he wants to hurt a child.”
“I think he wants to hurt all of us.” Jessica frowned. “Why don’t these guys just leave?”
“I keep asking myself the same thing.”
“My husband must be frantic.”
Theresa’s chest tightened up for a moment. She had no idea what to say. Jessica’s husband lay on a gurney at the M.E.’s office, but Cavanaugh had been right. She could hardly tell Jessica that now. “I’m sure the authorities will let him know you’re okay.”
“But Ethan-” The young woman ran out of words, no doubt imagining her husband imagining his child’s demise.
Theresa patted her shoulder. Ethan knocked at Theresa’s hand with the Browns dog, pointed at his mother’s floral-print handbag, and said, “Baba.”
“Bottle,” Jessica translated. “I told you he was hungry. We don’t do bottles anymore, remember, baby? You’re a big boy now.”
Maybe we can use that, Theresa thought. Cavanaugh said to keep the hostage takers occupied with details to wear them down.
Bringing in food would do it. She felt amazed that no one yet had asked to use the bathroom, though Cherise’s fate might have put them off asking for anything.
“Theresa,” Lucas called her, as if on cue. “Come here.”
1: 07 P.M.
“What’s he doing with Theresa?” Patrick demanded to know, stalking the monitor. “What did you say to him?”
“I asked if he’d reconsider the two o’clock shipment, since it’s only fifty minutes away now. That’s all.”
Over the speaker they heard Lucas’s voice, slightly muted as he turned away from the receiver to speak to Theresa, but still clear. “Chris wants me to take the two o’clock shipment and go. This is acceptable to me, provided a SWAT team doesn’t come along with it, provided all the people here cooperate in moving the money for me-got that, team?-and provided no one and nothing comes near that Mercedes parked outside. That’s the deal we’re working on, Theresa, to bring you up to speed. The problem is, like Bobby, I don’t trust cops, and I don’t trust the great Chris Cavanaugh. I think maybe he thinks I won’t strike back when double-crossed. So I just need you to clarify what happens to people who don’t cooperate, like Cherise, because obviously they have no camera feeds in the cubicles behind the teller cages. Understand?”
Silence, but on the monitor, Patrick could see her head move in a small nod.
“So, Theresa, what happens to people who don’t cooperate?” He held out the phone.
A slight brushing sound, then Theresa’s voice. “Cherise is dead. He shot her.”
“Damn,” Cavanaugh muttered.
“Hardly a surprise,” Patrick said.
Theresa asked, “Is Paul all right?”
Patrick dropped his cigarette into Jason’s empty water bottle. He hadn’t even called to check. Cavanaugh caught his eye, and Patrick shrugged. Cavanaugh pushed the “talk” button on the phone.
“He’s at the hospital, Theresa. That’s all I can tell you,” he added before changing the subject. “Did you see Cherise?”
“I did. She’s very, very dead, believe me. It was an explosive sight.”
A second of quiet and then a whistling sound. The receiver made a clanging noise, as if it had been dropped.
Patrick stared at the monitor in disbelief. “He hit her!”
“What?” Cavanaugh stood, moving closer to the screen, though he could see perfectly well from his chair. Lucas had ripped the phone from Theresa’s hand before punching her in the face with his right fist. It had to have been hard; it knocked her completely off her feet, so that now she sprawled across Missy and Brad.
“Shit!” Patrick screamed.
Lucas picked up the receiver, dangling by its cord against the outer wall of the reception desk. “Excuse me a minute, Chris. Theresa and I need to have a chat.”
He hung up.