Lisa Black - Takeover

Jason had sorted out a phone handset, a tape recorder, a large console studded with knobs and buttons, and enough wires to stretch across the city if placed end to end. “We don’t want to do anything right now except let the hostage takers calm down. The first thirty minutes or so of any crisis are the most dangerous.”

She crossed her arms, both chilled and impatient. “And besides, Chris isn’t here.”

Jason answered in a diplomatically even tone, “Yes.”

“Won’t the FBI use their own hostage negotiator?”

“They’ll fly one in, but you never want to disturb rapport once it’s been established. So if Chris has already opened negotiations, they’ll leave him in place and the FBI negotiator will be the secondary. I just hope it isn’t Laura.” He rummaged through a plastic bin and came up with an electrical adapter and a book, which he thrust into Theresa’s hands. “This is Chris’s.”

She examined the glossy cover. Secrets of Hostage Negotiation by Christopher Cavanaugh. The artwork featured a ninjalike warrior with an automatic rifle, and she wondered if he was supposed to be the good guy or the bad guy. Either way it seemed more scary than comforting. She glanced up at Jason, whose proud smile turned sheepish.

“Officer Patrick told me about your fiancé, and… I just thought you might want to see that Chris has a lot of credentials. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say and told herself that if Chris Cavanaugh was savvy enough to get published, he would be savvy enough to get Paul out alive. He would be.

Jason returned to the electrical cords, and she opened to a page at random. Chapter 11 began, “The hostage taker will agree to surrender only if he trusts you, trusts you more than his mother or his best friend or even himself. The quickest way to get him to this level of trust is to give him something he didn’t think anyone could give him. This will be different for everyone. It can be as small as a compliment, as average as a perfectly baked pizza, or as unique as the cremains of his childhood buddy’s pet dog. Do this and you might as well call your wife and tell her to start dinner.”

Humph. No mention of calling your husband and telling him to start dinner.

She closed the book and went to set it on the table. The librarian followed its progress the way an Audubon Society member watched even a garden-variety warbler, so Theresa handed it to her. Like teachers, librarians were a profession one wanted to stay on the good side of. “I’m sorry we had to take over your offices.”

“That’s all right.”

Theresa glanced around at the faded book covers and the ornate paint job. “What’s heraldry?”

“The study of armorial bearings.”

“Like family crests?”

“Yes, and other genealogical records. I’m Peggy Elliott, by the way.”

Theresa introduced herself, and they shook hands, forming the instant bond that women do when surrounded by men. Peggy Elliott wore subtle blond highlights in her shoulder-length hair, no wedding ring, and a sympathetic expression. That was all Theresa took time to observe before hastening back to the telescope, suddenly panicked that she’d been away too long. Something might have happened. The bodies of the hostages might now lie scattered over the tile. Including Paul’s body.

But the tableau had not visibly changed.

Beside her, via his Nextel, Frank pushed an unseen officer to track down Ludlow’s next of kin, to see if they might have a clue as to where Ludlow’s wife and child had gone-and to pull his financial information ASAP. He snapped the phone shut and said, “I’d like to know if this guy couldn’t make his cable payment. He winds up dead, and an hour later the bank he worked at gets robbed? Tell me that’s a coincidence. What’s happening?”

“Nothing.” One of the hostage takers strolled into view. She could see only the back of his torso. He wore a dark Windbreaker and jeans and carried a very big gun, but his stance conveyed total calm, a commander reviewing the troops. “Why can’t we just shoot him?”

“Because there’s two hims,” Frank told her. “There’s only that one window, and they’re never both in it at the same time. So supposing we got a clear shot and took out the first guy…”

“… there’d still be his partner left to kill people.” And even if they did stand together, they’d be directly in front of their innocent captives. “Can’t we gas them? I don’t mean tear gas, I mean some kind of nitrous gas that would put everyone to sleep, including the robbers.”

“The room’s too big. There would be no way to disperse it evenly, so some people might pass out before others.”

“And one of the robbers might panic and fire.” The man in the telescope’s sight stopped and turned, glanced up at the library windows as if he felt her scrutiny. She began to pull away from the scope, realized how ridiculous that was, and returned to the eyepiece. The man still stared in her direction.

He had a slender frame, high cheekbones, and light black skin. He wore his hair cropped short and had a small tattoo or birthmark on his neck, slightly behind his left ear. His face seemed as calm as his walk-why? What did he have to feel calm about?

Armed robberies and hostage crises were out of Theresa’s area of expertise. She had no idea what had happened, what would happen, or what they wanted to happen. She had no way to orient herself, no way to plan a series of examinations or chemical tests that would give her information or direction. She could only stand and watch.

His partner must have driven the Mercedes; this guy was too tall, so the seat would have been farther back. Unless he had stolen the car and driven it without moving the seat - unlikely, as most men needed to be comfortable while they drove.

There. An interesting piece of deduction that told her absolutely nothing. It certainly didn’t tell her why they’d tried to rob a bank without a driver, allowing themselves to be separated from their getaway vehicle. That worried her. It meant they were stupid, and stupidity was dangerous.

She tore herself from the eyepiece and took a moment to run through her usual reaction to any crisis: a mental head count. Where is my daughter? Rachael would be in her eleventh-grade trigonometry class right now, with her cell phone turned off; a final exam had been scheduled, and she’d turned down a date the night before to study for it. My mother? She was at her job at the corner diner, trying to introduce the clientele to whatever she last saw on the Food Network. It was more a restaurant than a diner, and without a TV, unless the staff had a break room-did they have a break room? Tess couldn’t remember. Paul? He was in the bank across the street with his hands on his head. All not present, but accounted for.

“Shouldn’t we try to communicate with them? Or pretend to, long enough to distract them while the”-she had to make herself say it-“hostages get out through another door?”

Apparently Frank had already sussed out the lobby’s structure. “No. The Sixth Street entrance is the only way in or out of the public lobby. On the opposite wall, there’s two elevators to the upper floors and a door to the employee lobby. The employee lobby has an exit onto Superior Avenue and the parking garage; however, inside the employee lobby is a heavily armed team of Federal Reserve security officers. So our guys have two choices. They can go out the back door into the arms of the Fed security force-”

“Or they can come out the front, into the sights of CPD snipers.”

“Exactly. Either way is okay with me.”