Free Takeover by Lisa Black Page B

Just have someone drive it here. No towing.”
    “No towing, got it. But about the money. That place is like Fort Knox. You need to cooperate with us in order to go get your money, because there’s a lot of security measures in place to pass through—”
    “Don’t be stupid, Chris.”
    Cavanaugh stopped.
    “I’m not going to go and get anything. There are robots downstairs that move cash around, and we have elevators. Have it brought to me. One hour. Or someone dies. And don’t screw up and use a tow dolly.”

CHAPTER 8
    9:46 A.M .
    The click of his hang-up filled the room, and then everyone began to talk at once.
    “He didn’t mention his partner,” Theresa observed.
    Frank lit a cigarette, and Theresa resisted the urge to snatch it from his fingers and take a few puffs. “Have the money come to him,” Frank said. “These guys aren’t as dumb as I thought they were.”
    “And they know something about the Federal Reserve. Please don’t smoke in here, Detective,” Cavanaugh added, nearly in unison with the librarian, Ms. Elliott.
    Theresa watched while Frank stared at the smoke curling up as if wondering how it got there, dropped the cigarette into his water bottle, and gave the librarian a sheepish smile. She also wondered why the librarian had been allowed to remain, but then they might need further assistance from the building, and after all they were occupying her workspace. Besides, she wouldn’t become emotional. Her fiancé wasn’t one of the hostages.
    Cavanaugh addressed the Fed executive. “Mr. Kessler.”
    “Yes?” It seemed to require physical effort for the man to tear his gaze from the television monitor.
    “How long would it take to bring up the money from the vault?”
    “Actually, he’s right,” Kessler admitted, his voice steeped in misery. “We could do it in about ten minutes. The paperwork would take two days, but I assume he means for us to skip that step.”
    “I think that’s a reasonable assumption. Can a robot really deliver the cash?”
    “Not to the lobby. They won’t fit on a passenger elevator. They’re designed to use the freight elevators at the back of the building, and they don’t go to the lobby.”
    “I wonder if he knows that,” Cavanaugh said.
    “But I suppose it could install the pallet in the passenger elevator and send it to the ground floor. I’m not really sure—it’s never happened.”
    Theresa spoke. “He knows about the robots but not that there’s eight million piled downstairs to be shredded instead of four. It’s possible these two guys don’t have anything to do with Mark Ludlow’s murder.”
    “That’s true.” Cavanaugh wiped the phone receiver down with a disposable alcohol swab as he talked. “Or maybe they couldn’t carry eight million. Wouldn’t that take up a football field or so?”
    “In ones,” Kessler said. He spoke firmly and calmly once on a familiar subject. “If they took only the hundreds, four million dollars in hundreds would weigh about eighty pounds and fill six hundred forty-three cubic inches, or four good-size briefcases. Between the two of them, they could carry it out. Or they could make more than one trip.”
    “They’d have to let go of the hostages.” Frank fingered his water bottle as if he regretted using it as an ashtray. “They couldn’t keep a gun on them and carry all that at the same time.”
    Theresa found it hard to take her eyes off the TV screen. “That looks like a duffel bag on the floor. They could fill that up, sling it across their backs, and still be hands-free. Or they could make the hostages help them carry it.”
    Cavanaugh murmured, “That’s another good point. We keep forgetting they have a ready supply of labor in there with them.”
    Theresa thought of something else. “What if Ludlow was their inside man? That’s why there’s no signs of coercion on his body—he gave them the information freely. Then they decided to cut him out.”
    “Leaving them short one