Takeover

by Lisa Black

  Missy and Brad left without a word, without a backward glance for their fellow captives.

  The phone rang.

  “That,” Cavanaugh said to Lucas, “would be Laura. You might want to talk to her.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be needing another negotiator. You’ll all be going home soon, at least most of you. I can’t fit too many people in that car.”

  Cavanaugh muttered something under his breath.

  “What?” Theresa asked.

  “He’s going to take a hostage with him. I figured he would, but it still sucks.”

  “There’s no way to take him down with one of us in the car?”

  “A sniper could get him through the window. They’d have to do it before he gets moving, though. It’s risky.”

  She watched the two freed hostages through the glass door. Brad shoved his duffel into the backseat and then ran, not directly across the street but down the center of it, south toward Superior. Missy struggled, maneuvering the two bags into place as Lucas had instructed. Then she walked with defiant calm over to the library building, where three young men in fatigues emerged to welcome her.

  “All that money could form a barrier between him and the hostage,” Cavanaugh observed.

  Lucas surveyed the line. “Eeny, meeny, miney—”

  “What happened to letting four people go?”

  “That was Bobby’s deal, Chris, not mine, and unfortunately it fell through.”

  “You don’t seem real broken up about losing your partner.”

  Lucas didn’t glare at him, not exactly; his face just grew still in a way Theresa had come to recognize as equivalent to a glare. “Bobby was the best friend I ever had, so don’t tell me how broken up I am. But I respect his wishes.”

  “Him dying was part of the plan?”

  “I told him to stay where he’d have some cover. He could have hit Eric through the glass or an open door. Bobby worked on his impulse control in therapy, but apparently not enough. He had to tell Eric why he was about to die.” He took a moment to regroup. Theresa believed him. He hadn’t wanted to lose Bobby.

  “How did you know I’d produce Eric for you?”

  “We didn’t, but it was worth a try. The trick was to make you think it was your idea.”

  Cavanaugh looked as if he’d been slapped.

  “Time to go,” Lucas told them briskly. “I need somebody the cops would never shoot at. And could there be anything more beautiful, and more vulnerable, than a mother and child?”

  Jessica Ludlow gathered Ethan more tightly in her arms, eyes wide.

  “Yes, you, my little southern Madonna. And you, Theresa. You’re both coming with me. The guys can stay here. This is how it’s going to work—”

  “No,” Theresa said.

  “No,” Cavanaugh said. “Leave them here. You can only make things worse for yourself by adding kidnapping to your list of charges.”

  “Chris, you’ll be picking up a pitchfork in hell and still trying to talk St. Peter into opening the gates, I swear. We’re not negotiating. We were never negotiating, get it? We needed you to produce Eric and the money, that’s all. Now shut up. You, Theresa.”

  “You don’t need me.” She emphasized every word. “You have a young woman and a little boy. No one will risk hurting them. I’d just be in the way.”

  Everyone in the room stared at her as silence flowed in, tamping down the last echo of her voice, pressing on her shoulders like guilt.

  “Theresa…” Cavanaugh began.

  She couldn’t look at him. “He won’t hurt them. I trust him.”

  Lucas muttered, “Of all people…”

  “Leave both of them,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ll go.”

  “I just might take you up on that, Chris. I’m sure your heroism would do wonders for the sales of your next book. Even if it’s published posthumously.” Lucas still wore that cold, closed-down look that frightened her, and it settled on her as if she were the only person in the room. “I think you need to explain this sudden lack of altruism, Theresa,” Lucas said, speaking just loudly enough so she could hear him. The security guards almost certainly could not. “It’s got everyone quite mystified.”

  “I want to live, that’s all. Leave me and Chris here with the guards. You can’t fit us all in that car anyway.”

  “But I need good hostages. The cops won’t shoot at you, their little scientist lady, and they sure as hell ain’t going to risk their shining star. He’s the only cop who gets on TV without having to be indicted first.”

  “Let him go,” she repeated, desperation spreading through her voice.

  “No.”

  Cavanaugh interrupted. “Why do I get the feeling that you two are having a conversation the rest of us aren’t privy to?”

  “Can’t we just get out of here?” Jessica Ludlow asked. “What are we waiting for?”

  Lucas answered without looking at her. “First I need to know what Theresa knows and who she’s told.”

  “I’ve been stuck in here with you! How could I have told anyone anything?”

  Cavanaugh turned toward her, putting a hand to his chest when the movement hurt him. “Told anyone what?”

  “Go ahead, Theresa,” Lucas goaded. “I’m not going to let him go anyway.”

  Theresa sighed. “This was never about the money. It’s about Mark Ludlow’s murder.”

  Jessica stared. “Lucas didn’t kill my husband.”

  “No,” Theresa told her. “You did.”

  CHAPTER 31

  3:46 P.M.

  Chris Cavanaugh shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Start from the beginning,” Lucas instructed her.

  She kept her voice steady and strong. “You mean when Mark Ludlow died? Or when you, Bobby, and Jessica met in art therapy at the prison in Atlanta?”

  “Talk quieter, unless you want me to have to dispose of those three guards as well. There’s no air ducts in this outer wall anyway, so you don’t have to be clear for the microphones.”

  “How do you know about that?” Cavanaugh demanded.

  “I studied under an expert. Your book was quite popular at the prison library, by the way—you should let your publicist know.”

  “Let’s go,” Jessica Ludlow repeated.

  “In a minute. Go on, Theresa.”

  “Jessica’s an artist.”

  Lucas reached one hand toward the young mother, then stopped as he remembered the cameras. But their eyes met, and she smiled, for the first time all day. “She’s a fantastic artist. Do you see any of her stuff hanging in her house? No. Ludlow didn’t appreciate it, and besides, it was his house.”

  Theresa shifted, drawing her knees toward her chest. “Yeah, he wouldn’t even put her name on the deed. So you two met when Jessica worked in art therapy at the Atlanta jail, and you fell in love. But Mark Ludlow got wind of it and asked for a transfer, just as you were about to be released?” She made the last sentence into a question, but Lucas nodded. “You followed her here. I’m guessing that’s where things went bad.”

  He said, “All we wanted was a divorce, and custody.”

  Jessica spoke up, quietly. “I would even have considered joint custody. But Mark said no way. He said no court would allow even visitation to someone on felony parole, and I figured he was probably right.”

  “We had no choice,” Lucas said to Theresa. “You’re a mother. You must understand.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “We argued. Bobby hit him with the gun, just kept hitting. I told you he had poor impulse control.”

  “Convenient,” Theresa said. “But I don’t think so. You have a cast-off pattern of bloodstains traveling up your pant leg.”

  “So I killed him.”

  “You couldn’t be swinging an object and get a neat pattern like that on yourself at the same time. You were standing perpendicular to the swinging weapon, at a slight distance.”

  “So it was Bobby. Like I said.”

 
“Bobby is wearing khakis, light enough to see any bloodstains present. There aren’t any”—her eye fell on his bloodstained corpse—“or weren’t. It’s possible that for some reason he had time to change his pants and you didn’t, but I doubt it. Neither of you has spare clothes in the car. But Jessica had a closet upstairs, and besides, she probably ruined the pants she wore with the bleach she used to clean up the kitchen.” She turned to the girl. “You probably didn’t plan this, but even though I found the damp mop, I didn’t think the floor had been recently cleaned, because Lucas left a coating of sand particles from the floor mats in the car, just as he’s done on the marble tile here.”

  Jessica merely shifted her baby in her arms, her smooth face as innocent as ever.

  “You now had a problem,” Theresa went on. “You and Bobby dragged the body outside and planned for Jessica to go to work as if nothing had happened, but you knew she’d be the obvious suspect. You had to run off together, but in such a way that Jessica would appear to be innocent. She and Ethan would have been kidnapped by a violent bank robber and presumed dead. No one in Cleveland had any knowledge of your affair, unless Mark confided in a new friend.”

  “Tell everyone he’d been cuckolded?” Jessica snorted. “He wasn’t the talkative type.”

  “There it is again—you speak of him in the past tense. You said your husband ‘didn’t’ eat with you, not ‘doesn’t’ eat with you, when you weren’t supposed to know he was dead.”

  Jessica glared at her. Lucas frowned.

  Theresa kept talking. Any delay would give Frank and the other cops time to figure out what to do. “He wasn’t the talkative type, but you are. You told me so yourself. That’s the real reason Cherise is dead, isn’t it? You told her about Lucas.”

  She and Lucas exchanged a glance, hers abashed, his merely sad.

  “You didn’t kill Paul, a cop. You tried to keep your murders to a minimum, but Cherise had to go. The only way this could work is if no one had any idea you two were lovers. Jessica disappeared with a ruthless felon, never to be seen again. A tragedy, but forgotten in a week or two. However, cops—and the public—hate being duped. If they figured it out, you’d be on the evening news from coast to coast.”

  “But now you know,” Lucas pointed out, and the fact that he seemed more sad than angry scared her to death. “And Chris here, who didn’t have a clue, as I can see from the expression on his face.”

  “I asked you to leave him out of it.”

  “What I said goes. They’ll never strafe that car if he’s in it. You, I’m not so sure about—chivalry died a long time ago.” He stood up. “Jessie, take the tie-wraps out of the side pocket there and loop their feet together. Just one ankle. Make sure it’s tight.”

  He stood back, holding the automatic pistol. On the monitor it would seem as if Jessica followed his commands out of fear. She slid the sleeping Ethan to the floor, gently propping his head on her purse.

  “That’s the real reason for the cough medicine, isn’t it?” Theresa asked her. “To keep him quiet and still during your getaway. He’s really out—I hope you didn’t give him too much.”

  “You think I drugged my own baby?” Jessica kept her voice down, too low for the microphones in the ducts to pick up, and yet she hadn’t sounded that angry when accused of her husband’s brutal murder.

  “I think he hasn’t coughed or even sniffled once all afternoon. You stained his nose with the fruit juice to make him look as if he had a cold so that the day-care lady would tell you he couldn’t stay there. You came with a convenient supply of snacks for him, since you knew she wouldn’t be giving him lunch.”

  Jessica placed one plastic tie around Theresa’s right ankle and one around Cavanaugh’s left, then connected the two with a third. She pulled them tight enough to cut off the blood supply. “This whole thing has been for him,” she declared.

  “The same thing on their wrists,” Lucas told his girlfriend.

  Theresa protested. “No. It hurts.”

  Jessica slid the strap over Theresa’s right hand without hesitation. Theresa held it in place so that it tightened around the bones, to keep it from rubbing the already damaged area. The hand might go numb, but it was the best she could do.

  Over at the reception desk, the phone began to ring. Lucas ignored it, as she expected him to. He could not risk crossing that open area where the snipers could sight him through the clear window.

  Cavanaugh asked, “What’s the purpose of this, Lucas?”

  “Here’s the plan: Jessie, put Ethan in the rear driver’s-side seat. You’ll have to drive.”

  “But I’ve never even been in that car!”

  “Just press the gas and steer. It’s an automatic, and we don’t have much choice. I’ll go out behind you two. The snipers are all on the other side of the street, right, Chris?” When the negotiator didn’t answer, Lucas slung the rifle over one shoulder and pulled a handgun from the back of his waistband, pointing it at Cavanaugh’s head. Then he repeated the question.

  “I don’t know! They don’t tell me where the snipers are! It’s too easy for me to slip and give something away.”

  Lucas considered this. “That’s true, I remember reading that. I’m not worried about the ones on the library anyway. The car will block me,” he added to Jessica. “Any on the roof of this building will have to aim straight down, and the awning will block their view up until the last second.” He swung the gun’s barrel toward Theresa and Cavanaugh. “You two will get into the rear passenger’s-side seat. I’ll ride shotgun, if you’ll excuse the expression.”

  Theresa formed a picture in her mind, and not a pretty one. She figured that the cops could handle a vertical shot, desperate at this last chance to stop Lucas—and he intended to stay plastered to her back once again. All of a sudden, she wanted to vomit.

  “On your feet,” he ordered. “Jessie, pick up Ethan. Get ready to run. Move fast, but don’t panic—they won’t shoot at you. Here’s the keys. Get in, start the car, and drive. Don’t worry about me—I’ll be inside.”

  Theresa and Cavanaugh got to their feet, gingerly, trying to coordinate their movements. They managed not to fall, but three-legged-race walking required their full attention. She twined a few of her fingers around his. He smiled and gave them a squeeze, but she hadn’t done it as a show of moral support. “Try not to yank on my wrist.”

  “Sure.” The smile disappeared.

  She felt a twinge of guilt. “I’ll try not to bump your chest.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be an option. There can’t be a lot of room in that backseat, not with those two duffels in the middle.”

  “Shut up.” Lucas half crouched behind them, holding on to the back of Cavanaugh’s shirt with one hand and poking the handgun into Theresa’s spine with the other. He kept his head below the level of their shoulders. “Go, Jessie.”

  Clutching her son, she ran out and around the front of the Mercedes. Lucas pushed, and Theresa and Cavanaugh made for the passenger side in their stumbling gait. He opened the door and slid in. Lucas separated from them, jumped into the passenger seat, and faced them before Theresa could pull in her arms and legs. The barrel of the weapon appeared beside the headrest. He had only to hold down the trigger and she and Cavanaugh became hamburger.

  She hoped Rachael was not watching.

  “Get in,” he said. “Shut the door or I’ll shoot you both.”

  She heard a loud plunk, and something struck her calf. Two divots appeared in the pavement outside. She heard more toward the front of the car and retracted her body without thinking. There had been snipers on their side of the street, and she hoped that bullets would not penetrate the top of the car. Cavanaugh yanked the door shut, and then they were moving, with her butt on his thighs and the top of her head rubbing the upholstered roof. She remembered to breathe just as they approached the intersection of Rockwell and Sixth.

  CHAPTER 32

  3:58 P.M.

  “Go straight,” Lucas
instructed, though he did not stop facing Theresa and Cavanaugh in the rear seat. He reached back and locked their door. “Keep up the speed so they can’t jump out. Don’t stop for anything.”

  “What now, Lucas?” Chris Cavanaugh asked, and Theresa couldn’t believe how calm he sounded. Their bound wrists caused her right arm to bend double and stretch behind her; he slipped his left arm over her head to relieve the strain. The duffel bags created a solid, cloth-covered wall between the two halves of the car. She could only assume that Ethan lay sleeping on the other side. As she ducked her head under Cavanaugh’s arm, she noticed a swatch of white at her feet. Her lab coat—she had left it in the car, and Brad had plopped the money-filled duffel bag right on top of it.

  “Roll down your window, Jessie.” Lucas unzipped the end of the top duffel bag and reached in. He had perhaps six inches of clearance between the top of the bag and the roof of the car, and he pulled out a bundle of money. “Rip the band off this and throw it out.”

  “How am I supposed to do that and drive at the same time?”

  “Just throw it. It doesn’t have to be neat, as long as it gets people into the street. They’ll slow down the cops.”

  The negotiator pressed. “Where are you going to go?”

  “That’s a good question, Chris, but I don’t have time to discuss it. Turn right when the road ends, Jessie. Don’t slow down any more than you absolutely have to.”

  “Red light.”

  “Run it.”

  “I hate driving!” she snapped at him.

  “You’ll be fine. Just keep throwing.” He rolled his window down a few inches, and even the hot breeze came as a relief. He caught Theresa’s eye. “Don’t think about jumping out.”

  She had no intention of it. The idea of the pavement scraping off most of the skin on her face dissuaded her, but more than that, she was not ready to let go of Lucas and Jessica. Paul might be dying because of them, and they were not going to go free. “What about the explosives, Lucas? The ones you cooked up on Jessie’s stove last night? By the way, where did you find a health-food store open in the middle of the night?”