Takeover by Lisa Black

getaway driver. But Ludlow’s only been here a month. Not much time to hook up with a team.”
    “He’d be an unlikely suspect for that very reason, and a month’s long enough to get the layout.”
    Kessler stirred. “Mark Ludlow came with an excellent recommendation and has—had—worked for the Federal Reserve for a long time. At least ten years, I think.”
    “I’m sure he did,” Cavanaugh soothed. “Why did he want to move here from sunny Atlanta?”
    “I don’t know. The weather, maybe. It can get miserable there in the summertime.”
    “Do me a favor—most of the employees should have been evacuated to the Hampton Inn. Would you call whoever recruitedLudlow and the Human Resources person who coordinated his hire and get them over here? Maybe they’ll know how Ludlow came to transfer here, and why, and something about his wife.”
    “Certainly.”
    A new voice sounded. “What’s going on here?”
    Theresa turned from the window. The bigwigs had arrived.
    At the head stood a towering man with gray hair and a matching mustache. Despite appearing a little too paunchy and florid to be an FBI agent, he introduced himself as the special agent in charge of the Cleveland office, and the two young men Theresa had seen earlier flanked him like a pair of groomsmen. “My name’s Torello. You’re Cavanaugh?”
    “That would be me. I just spoke with the hostage taker named Lucas. He wants four million and his car back. In an hour.”
    “He called you?”
    “We’re on a first-name basis already,” Cavanaugh said, which of course didn’t answer the question.
    In the three steps it took Torello to reach the reading table, Theresa could see his mind churning as he analyzed Cavanaugh’s actions, motives, and results, accepted same, and moved on. This did not surprise her—one didn’t make it to the top FBI slot in a large city without possessing both sense and self-control. “Laura Reisling will get here from D.C. in an hour and a half. She can be secondary.”
    Cavanaugh spoke with every appearance of sincerity. “It will be great to see her again.”
    SAIC Torello did not sit but kept the psychological advantage of looming over the upstarts at the table while the rest of his party filtered in. Theresa recognized Viancourt, the assistant chief ofpolice, who took a seat next to a graying man in fatigues. This man’s name tag read MULVANEY .
    She remained by the wall, close enough to the window to grab a peek through the telescope but not close enough to be warned away from the opening should the robbers emerge shooting. She tried to make herself invisible and glanced over at the librarian, Ms. Elliott, who had retreated into the rows of texts in order to do the same. Or perhaps they’d simply been pushed back by a mushroom cloud of testosterone.
    The diplomatic Jason opened the discussion with a refreshingly nonjurisdictional question. “What about the secretary of state’s visit? I know we’re several blocks away, but what if this is some sort of diversion? We get every cop in the city over here, it might put holes in the security at the convention center.”
    Assistant Chief Viancourt shook his head. “No, the plan for the secretary of state will stay intact. There’s Secret Service coming in, too, to fill out the ranks.”
    “Still, the timing is suspicious,” Cavanaugh pointed out. “Any available cops not working the luncheon will be working that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction concert tonight, so if this thing goes on, our resources are going to get stretched pretty thin. Maybe one or both should be canceled, or at least change the venue for the State luncheon.”
    “Are you nuts?” Viancourt began to flush at the very idea. “ Cancel? Cleveland needs this exposure, needs to show the rest of the country that we’re still a major city. Our star began to fade shortly after the paint dried on Jacobs Field, and by now it’s in an all-out spiral. Canceling is not an option. Besides,” he