Lisa Black - Takeover

The gunshots echoed through the lobby. The sound seemed to gather strength with every rebound off the polished tile until the waves deafened him. Missy screamed, Jessica Ludlow held her son’s head to her chest, and Thompkins came partially to his feet. Paul’s hand moved toward his gun. But he froze when Bobby and his M4 carbine materialized three feet in front of them.

He’s in the center! Paul screamed silently to the unseen police snipers who had to be stationed in the windows of the library across the street. One of them must be able to get a bead- Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!

But now Lucas could not be seen, not by the snipers and not by Paul.

“Did he shoot her?” the janitor asked. Missy sobbed. The security guys were all shouting, mostly obscenities, but Paul heard one say, “I can’t see.”

Brad moaned, “We have to get out of here. He’ll kill us all, one by one.”

“Are there offices behind the teller cages?” Paul asked Thompkins. “Other rooms back in there?”

“Three. Mine and-”

“I said shut up !” Bobby shouted at them as he backed up to the teller windows. “Lucas, you okay?”

“I’m fine. Be there in a sec.”

“If he killed that girl, then you’re both in very serious trouble,” Paul said to Bobby.

“Gee, like we weren’t before? You wanna act as my lawyer? Get me a deal?”

“You haven’t hurt anyone-yet. You should get out now, quit while you’re ahead.” Paul fought to keep his voice steady, reasonable, watching every minute for an opening. If Bobby would turn away, even for a second, Paul could fire, close the fifteen-foot gap between them before Lucas emerged, grab Bobby’s gun, and-

Bobby not only pointed the rifle at him, he raised it to his eye as if taking special aim. “You should shut up and quit while you’re ahead. I’ll hang with Lucas and kill all of you-”

Missy gasped.

“-but I ain’t never going to trust no cops. My whole family is dead because of them.”

Lucas reappeared behind him, with the backpack but without any sign of Cherise. “What’s going on?”

“This guy thinks I should give myself up.”

“Well”-Lucas dropped the now-stuffed backpack onto the floor-“a man’s entitled to his opinion. We have four hundred and eighty thousand and some-odd dollars, Bobby. I don’t think that’s enough.”

“Me neither.”

“Did you kill that girl?” the janitor asked again.

Lucas said, “Let’s just say we won’t be seeing Miss Cherise again soon. But right now we need to put our heads together. Where else in this building can we find some money?”

11:36 A.M.

“Something just happened,” Theresa said. “Every person there just jumped a foot.”

“I wish we had sound, ” Cavanaugh said.

Jason picked up the phone. “They have sound at the monitor station. I’ll ask.”

Theresa caught her breath as she saw Paul’s hand move to his side, going for his gun. It was an ingrained response, she knew. He wouldn’t even have time to think about it, wouldn’t even have time to stop himself, but Bobby Moyers would have time to pull the trigger on that submachine gun before Paul could get his Glock up and pointed.

She watched Bobby approach Paul. But the robber merely shouted something, and Paul’s hand stopped midmotion. He did not pull out his gun. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“That young woman didn’t come back,” Cavanaugh pointed out.

“Shots fired,” Jason said. “It sounds like he killed that girl.”

Don’t move, Paul. Don’t do a thing.

Cavanaugh let loose a string of expletives. “Can security see behind the teller cages?” he asked Jason.

“Just the counter area at each window. There’s no camera coverage in the offices behind the cages. She went back there with Lucas, and only Lucas came out.”

“Can’t we see through the windows? The ones in the outer walls are clear.”

Jason knelt on the window seat, phone in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. Where did he get those? Theresa wondered, resisting the urge to rip them out of his hands. She moved to the telescope instead.

“I don’t see anyone,” the young man reported. “There’s cabinets stacked against a few of the windows. They must be behind those.”

“So she could be alive.”

“The other hostages are asking if she’s dead,” Jason went on. “He’s not denying it. They can’t make out much else.”

“Why not?”

Jason dropped the phone onto the table. “Fed security snaked a mike down an air vent. It’s over on the east wall, so most of the talk is unintelligible. You can only make out what someone’s saying when they shout.”

“Crap. Who was that girl? Kessler?”

“I don’t know,” the bank executive told them. Theresa watched Paul through the telescope. Did he know she was there? Sense it, maybe?

“Is she an employee?”

“Oh, she works there. She looked familiar to me, but I don’t know her name.”

“Call your security team. They should have names to go with all the faces now.”

“I asked them an hour ago,” Jason told him. “They were too busy trying to keep the FBI agents out of their desk chairs.”

Kessler reached for the phone, then hesitated.

“What?” Cavanaugh demanded.

“I felt this sudden desire to ask if I could just go home.” The man’s face had become ashen over the course of the morning, approaching the shade of his shirt. “Cowardly, I know. I’m just not used to this.”

“You’re not supposed to be, sir.” Cavanaugh spoke more gently. “It’s not your job, it’s mine, and I should have thought to get a list of the hostages an hour ago. Maybe everyone on it would still be alive.”

Theresa couldn’t help but wonder if the bitterness in his voice had more to do with a woman’s untimely death or his perfect no-bloodshed record. “Now that he’s started killing people, he might keep on going.”

He did not thank her for stating the obvious. “If we’re right about Ludlow, he had already started. It may be time to let him know we suspect him of Ludlow’s death, to let him get used to the idea he’s not going to be walking away from this, even if we can’t confirm the woman’s murder.” Cavanaugh’s hand strayed toward the phone, then stopped. “Wait a minute. When we were talking about Bobby having been sent out of state, you said you bet you knew where. I’ll bite. Where?”

“Atlanta.”

Bobby Moyers had a brother. Eric Moyers worked as a baggage handler for Continental Airlines. He described his job as slinging golf clubs and countless wheeled suitcases onto a moving belt for people who could afford to go to much nicer places on vacation than he could. He had the same sandy hair and stocky build, a head cold, and he didn’t want to talk about his brother.

“What’s he done now?” he asked Patrick as they both had a cigarette on the tarmac outside Concourse C. An Embraer jet began to push back from the elevated walkway.

The heat levitated from the asphalt in visible waves, but Patrick wanted a smoke badly enough to risk passing out. “He’s robbing a bank and has taken a bunch of people hostage.”

“What?”

Patrick repeated himself, shouting this time.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Eric Moyers said, once the jet left for the runway.

“Why not? Has he said anything about it?”

“He hasn’t said anything to me in over a year. I didn’t even know he’d been released from jail, or that he came back to Cleveland. No, I mean I’m not surprised about it because Bobby has been going from bad to worse his whole life, and I can’t see any reason why he’d stop now. It killed our mother, you know, seeing her baby go to jail.”