Theresa had curled and rolled to all fours, trying to raise herself. With the M4 carbine in his left hand, Lucas grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her up, marching her away before she could get her feet underneath her.
“Take the shot!” Patrick shouted, looking to the assistant chief for some backup, but the man merely stared at the TV screen with a dumbfounded expression. “He’s going to shoot her just like he shot Cherise!”
Cavanaugh stared at the monitor. “Don’t panic.”
“Why the hell not? Where is the SWAT team? Where’s Mulvaney?”
“He’s not heading for the teller cages,” Cavanaugh pointed out. Indeed, Lucas headed away from the cages, toward the east wall of the lobby.
“There are classrooms there,” Patrick said. “He’s trying to get her off camera.”
“Why? If he wants to force us into a concession by killing someone, why do it out of our sight?”
“That’s how he killed Cherise. Maybe he can’t work with an audience. Take the shot. We have to take the shot.” In another few steps, they would leave the center of the lobby, the small area where the snipers could see through the clear glass.
Cavanaugh hit another button on his telephone console. “Harry, you there?”
“Roger.”
“Target A is taking a hostage away from the others, moving northeast. Anyone got a clear sight?”
“In sight, but chance of deflection too high. Target B not in range also.”
“What’s he talking about?” Patrick demanded, though he knew. A sniper could hit Lucas from across the street without a problem, but shooting through a window was another proposition altogether. The glass would alter the path of the bullet, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot. The glass in the antique Fed building might be particularly thick, and the two people were a good distance from it, so that any deflection would be amplified by the time the bullet reached them. The odds of its striking Theresa instead of Lucas were much too high.
They continued to move, two silent, dark figures on the screen.
“Oh, God.” Patrick heard his own voice and hated the sound, almost like a whimper. “He wouldn’t rape her, would he?”
Cavanaugh snatched up the phone, hit a button. “I’ll get him back to the phone. It’s all we can do.”
“That’s not all. SWAT has to go in.” He turned to the assistant chief of police. “Viancourt. Send in the assault team.”
“I can’t. FBI’s in charge of this operation.”
“You’re here, and they’re not. You can act before they can stop you.” What Patrick heard himself suggesting was insane, he knew. It did not even slow him down.
Viancourt gave the detective his full attention. “Sucking up to me won’t get you the Homicide chief ’s slot.”
Shock silenced him, the idea that he would use Theresa’s imminent murder to get in good with the assistant chief. Patrick put one hand on the man’s shoulder to make his point. Unfortunately, he wrinkled the lapel of the expensive suit by bunching it in his fist and gave the guy a little shake while he persisted in requesting the assault team. Again, déjà vu-he now played the same scene with the chief that Theresa had played with Cavanaugh, and it would have the same effect. He’d be shut out of the operation.
The assistant chief knocked his hand away with more force and speed than Patrick would have anticipated. “Get your hands off me, Detective, and control yourself.”
Cavanaugh’s call went through. On-screen they saw the hostages glance toward the ringing phone, but Lucas did not pause until he reached the other side of the room. Then he spun Theresa around and slammed her up against the marble wall, holding her there with one hand at her throat.
Patrick swallowed hard. He would never be able to explain this to his aunt. “He’s about to kill a hostage. We have to act.”
Cavanaugh answered him. “They go in shooting, we’ll have an instant bloodbath. You told me yourself that Jessica Ludlow said exactly that. We can’t do it, Patrick. Not even for Theresa.”
“We’re just supposed to stand here and let him kill her?”
“He didn’t kill Paul.”
“But he killed Cherise, with a lot less provocation. Who knows what this guy will do?”
Patrick’s hands hurt, and he glanced at them. Bright red semicircles appeared where his fingernails bit into the flesh of the palms.
She was in sight, and still alive. But for how much longer?
“He’s underneath the air-conditioning duct,” Cavanaugh observed.
How could the man be so damn cool? Patrick wondered, then saw the point. “Do we have a microphone in that one?”
Cavanaugh disconnected his phone call to the receptionist’s desk and dialed Mulvaney’s HQ instead. Within seconds they could hear Lucas’s low tones and Theresa’s choked replies.
“What was that all about?” the robber demanded.
Theresa gasped for air. “What?”
“Cute choice of words.”
“You wanted me to tell them about Cherise.”
“What do you know about ‘explosive,’ Theresa?”
A pause. “I can’t breathe.”
Patrick couldn’t breathe either, standing in front of the TV screen.
“She’s stalling,” Cavanaugh told him.
“How do you know?”
“She’s debating with herself. Should she tell him we know about the explosives? Will it make him more likely to give himself up, or less?”
They saw Lucas pull her slightly forward, in order to slam her head once again. Instead she knocked at his arm with her elbow, trying to twist away, and kicked him in the groin. The M4 carbine clattered to the ground.
This time it really was a whimper. “Oh, God. Tess.”
She was going to die.
22
1:10 P.M.
The kick to his groin worked. Lucas doubled over. Unfortunately, he bent right into her and kept going, throwing her to the hard floor and knocking every molecule of air from her lungs. As soon as she sucked a few back, she pushed him off. The automatic rifle lay on the other side of him.
Take him out, Theresa told herself. Then you can shoot Bobby.
She reached over him, and he punched her in the rib cage. It hurt, but not as badly as it would have if he’d hit the stomach. She struck back, but she had about one-third his weight and muscle. She sank her knee into his groin once more, but he pressed his thighs together, deflecting most of the blow.
She reached again for the gun.
He bucked and rolled, and suddenly she felt the cool stone floor against her back and a sharp pain at the base of her skull. He sat on top of her, suffocating her, hands and legs pinning her down in a tidy spread-eagle.
What was that about taking somebody out again?
“You really shouldn’t hit me, Theresa.”
“Can’t breathe.”
His weight shifted upward as his face came down to hers. She felt his hot breath against her ear. “You know, if I didn’t have so much on my mind right now, I might enjoy the position I find myself in. How about you, Theresa? You enjoying this?”
Her fingers stretched toward the gun and found nothing but smooth marble. “Get off me.”
“Not until you explain your choice of words to Cavanaugh just now.”
She was out of air and out of ideas. “They know about the explosives.”
His mood got unsexy in a hurry. He sat up, with the unfortunate result of again settling his weight on her slight body. “What?”
“Can’t breathe.”
“What explosives?”
“My ribs are going to break.”
He lifted himself off her, just enough to let her lungs expand. “What explosives?”
“The stuff you have. The homemade RDX. We know you brought it in here and set it where you killed Cherise.”
His face loomed over hers. “What else?”
“That’s it. We don’t know why.”
“I don’t like conflicting with you, Theresa. Of anyone here, you ought to understand what I’m doing.”