From the corner of her eye, she watched the row of hostages, but no one moved. They had nowhere to go anyway-any movement toward the employee lobby would be noisy and immediately obvious, and there was no other way out. Besides, Lucas switched his gaze between them and the street every half a second. She could feel each swipe as his chin brushed her hair.
Bobby held his automatic rifle pointed down, the folding barrel resting against his chest. Tiny glints of deep red speckled the butt. She kept her voice very low. “Is that what you beat Mark Ludlow to death with?”
Lucas’s arm tightened.
Bobby scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady.”
“He had two types of injuries-a long, rounded indentation, probably from the barrel when you swung the rifle like a bat, and an oval shape just like the flat end of that rifle stock.”
“What are you doing, Theresa?” Lucas asked her, his breath warming her ear.
“I still don’t understand why. Did he tell you about the money shipment? Give you the layout of the building? Obviously he didn’t provide you with any special access, or you wouldn’t have spent the whole day stuck in the lobby. What did he have that you wanted?”
The very ends of Bobby’s mouth turned up, though his eyes remained cool. “That’s a good question, lady. I wish I had a good answer.”
She pondered that opaque response for a split second, getting nowhere. “Or did you screw up and kill him before he could tell you what you needed to know? I saw his body-he didn’t suffer any physical question-and-answer session. Is that why you seem to have been making it up as you went along?”
“That’s where you’re wrong. This day has gone exactly according to plan.”
That did not sound good.
How could Bobby have planned for his brother to be alive? Only if he knew all along that his brother wasn’t really dead-but why the charade? If he wanted to see his brother, there was nothing to stop him from showing up on his doorstep. Eric Moyers had said he’d changed his address and phone, but surely some old friend or relative could have clued Bobby in.
Unless Eric Moyers was part of this plot and his appearance part of what the cops had wondered about all day-the robbers’ exit strategy. Though one of the cardinal rules of hostage situations was never to bring family members to the scene, these two might not know that. It happened on TV all the time.
Either way, it seemed clear to her that Bobby Moyers had expected Cavanaugh to produce Eric and that Bobby had no intention of giving up afterward.
Cavanaugh was about to walk into a trap and bring a possibly innocent civilian along with him. A civilian-or a reinforcement?
She couldn’t warn Cavanaugh. She didn’t even know if she was right.
Sunlight slanted off one of the glass doors across the street as it opened. A young man in fatigues, rifle in hand, stepped out and held the door open. Cavanaugh and Eric Moyers filed out.
Cavanaugh wore the same shirt and pants she’d seen him in earlier, but a bulletproof vest covered his chest. They had put one on Eric Moyers, too. They must have been sweating in those, for all the good it would do. Even Theresa could squeeze off a head shot at this range.
“Here they come,” Lucas said.
Bobby said nothing. He seemed suspiciously unsurprised at his brother’s existence.
Theresa let her gaze roam the street without turning her head. Did a sniper have her in his sights? Trying to leave the doorway would get her a bullet through the spine, and cops and robbers alike would assume she had tried to escape, instead of tried to warn them away from the subterfuge about to take place. She looked up at the sixth floor. Surely Frank stood at the telescope, though she saw only a row of dark holes. The sun had shifted to the west.
Despite the heat, Eric Moyers’s skin shone a pasty white. He had to be terrified. Agreeing to walk across the street and talk to his brother probably didn’t sound so bad until he stepped out in front of all the guns, glanced at the barricades demarcating the safe areas from the unsafe ones, and noticed that while the hum of the city went on around them, East Sixth remained deathly silent.
I hope you’re watching, Frank. She slowly shook her head in a one-inch arc.
“Hold still,” Lucas hissed.
Cavanaugh and Eric Moyers stepped off the curb and into the waves of heat rising from the pavement. Bobby pushed on the metal frame of the door closest to him.
Behind them Ethan let out a laugh, his high-pitched giggle bouncing off the walls.
Cavanaugh and Moyers reached the middle of the street. The negotiator spoke. “Bobby, we’re here. Come on out.”
I have to warn them. I’ ll have to scream, and quickly. But if I take a deep breath, Lucas will know.
If she could even get a deep breath, he held her so tightly. She began to suck in air, slowly, steadily.
Bobby pushed the door completely open.
Now. “Don’t-”
Lucas’s hand covered her mouth, pulling her head back against his shoulder. Damn, he was fast!
She wriggled, more to keep him from slicing the insides of her lips against her teeth than to reattempt her plan. She needed only a split second to shout a warning, but the more she twisted, the tighter he held her.
On the other side of the glass, Cavanaugh waited with Eric Moyers in the street while Bobby crossed the sidewalk. Both men watched him; Cavanaugh gave no indication of noticing her struggle just inside the door.
“That’s close enough, Cavanaugh,” Bobby said to him. “Hands up, and turn around in a circle. I want to see that you’re not armed.”
She watched Cavanaugh turn slowly, fingers splayed above his head. Defenseless, unless he had a handgun underneath the bulletproof vest.
Bobby stood about eight feet from them, blatantly armed to the teeth. “Okay. You can put your hands down, but don’t come any closer.”
Eric Moyers spoke. “Hi, Bobby.”
From behind him she watched Bobby cock his head. “It don’t sound like you, bro.”
“I told you I have a cold.”
“What are you doing alive?”
“Why would I be dead? Who told you that anyway?”
Bobby’s shoulders slumped. The hand holding the gun fell to his side. He began to say that it didn’t matter, but then his voice trailed off and he put his other hand to his eyes.
Cavanaugh took the moment to glance her way, but she couldn’t even shake her head in Lucas’s viselike grip. Perhaps he saw the panic in her eyes, because he opened his mouth to speak, possibly to tell Lucas to let her go, before realizing the futility of it. Talking to Lucas all day had proved futile. Cavanaugh could not help her, and she could not warn him.
“I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry, Eric. I’m sorry about Mom and all the pain I caused her. I’m sorry you had to spend most of your life looking out for me.” The level of his voice continued to move up and down, so that the two men in the street moved a few steps closer to hear him.
No! Theresa tried to shout. Go back!
“What was that?” Lucas whispered in her ear. “I didn’t quite catch it.”
Between the heat and the tension, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible for Eric Moyers to look any more uncomfortable, but he managed. “Listen, Bobby… we all make mistakes.”
“But I made more than my share. I never thought about anyone else. At the prison we had to paint a picture of our family, and I did the whole thing in red. The therapist said that’s because blood and pain is all I see when I think about us.”
Eric Moyers took another step toward his brother. “Mom never stopped loving you.”
Bobby’s voice turned harsh, and the hand on the automatic rifle tightened. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”
Cavanaugh spoke up. “It’s really hot out here in the sun, Bobby. Do you think we could talk about this inside the library? Are you ready to put the gun down and go?”’