In the thief’s mind, Pria’s voice had an odd lilting quality. It calmed him and somehow he felt her words to be truth. The girl wouldn’t run, he realized. She knew he’d kill her. Closing his eyes, he saw the girl running; saw himself shooting her in the back as she got closer to the bank’s glass doors.
“She will not run,” Pria repeated firmly.
Then, the thief knew she was right. No one would want to die with a bullet in the back. The shirt wasn’t important. He could allow her to keep it.
“Yeah… I don’t have time to fuck around with this,” he said under his breath and moved away.
The girl clutched Pria’s hand, like the lifeline it had become.
“Be still,” Pria whispered. “Don’t make a sound.”
“Everyone on the floor!” the thief bellowed, still waving the gun like a riding crop “Cells, purses, wallets…right here…at my feet!”
Purses, wallets and cell phones quickly became a small mound in front of the thief, who pulled a spool of thin wire from a back pocket. Moving quickly from hostage to hostage, he bound their hands in front of them with the wire, which was meant to hurt as much as restrain.
The next two events told Pria a teller had somehow managed to alert the police. First, the power went out, killing most of the lights, air conditioning and several computers, plunging the bank into an oddly quiet state. Within a few minutes, a phone on a corner desk began ringing. The sound brought a look of triumph to the thief’s face, as he shoved a teller to answer it.
The tiny, gray-haired teller, bright-eyed with fear, snatched at the phone, which seemed deafening. “It’s for you,” she said in a whispery croak, as if her vocal chords weren’t cooperating.
Pria felt genuine fear punch a hook into her stomach, as the thief snatched the phone’s receiver and grinned. Reports of this kind of thing were plentiful and news images often showed live hostages being taken away by cops after the fireworks were over. Until she’d seen the sick grin, she’d hoped the guy would take the cash and bolt. This wasn’t just a bank robber, but a psychotic, who was far more dangerous than someone looking for money. She also realized, with a horrible sense of dread, the bank robber hadn’t covered his face. Since everyone in the bank could easily identify him, Pria recognized their chances for getting out alive were dwindling. Although the thief kept his voice low on the phone, Pria had the sense that he was asking for someone named Joe.
“Yeah, you get Joe in here,” he said smugly, leaving Pria to wonder who Joe was.
The thief concluded the conversation quickly, slamming the phone’s receiver back into its cradle. Three long strides brought him to Pria, with her legs tucked under her on the floor. Grabbing a fistful of her long, dark hair, he pulled her upright.
“Do what you’re told, bitch,” he hissed, spinning her to face the door. “Understand?”
Grimacing, Pria nodded, causing him to yank her hair harder. “You will not hurt me,” she whispered. The glamour wouldn’t work, she realized. He was too wired and she couldn’t make eye contact with her back to his chest. With one hand still fisted in her hair, he pulled her forward with him, yanked the bar out of the door handles and dragged her back to the middle of the floor. He propped his other arm over her shoulder to point the gun at the bank’s front door.
Pria couldn’t see police or anything else through the glass doors, but within minutes, they parted and a tall, dark-haired guy stepped through. He was wearing a dark suit, a pale blue shirt and a Kevlar vest. A badge was clipped to his belt, but he didn’t appear to be armed. His face showed no emotion, as he spread his hands wide in front of him.
“Hi Marcus,” the cop said calmly. “You could’ve called or sent me a text if you’d wanted to talk.”
“Wasn’t sure you’d wanna’ talk, Joe,” Marcus Whitwater, thief, gunman and ex-con answered, grinning again. He was enormously pleased to see Joe Cafaris. In fact, he almost had to stifle a chuckle because this was the cop who’d taken his freedom more than ten years ago to put him in jail. In hell, actually, but today, Joe would be the one to walk him out the door with all the cash in the bank. The situation was a delicious irony to Whitwater, who had every intention of killing the cop after they were away from the bank and perhaps not too quickly.
Joe noted the presence and position of the woman Whitwater was hanging onto. Dark, red slip, lots of dark hair, no shoes and …breathing. Her position would make the sniper’s job tougher. Had to hurt, being held by the hair, but he prayed she’d remain still and not fucking lose it now.
“Well, we’re talking now,” Joe said evenly, beginning his approach to Whitwater and Pria. “You’ve got my undivided attention, but you need to let the woman go, Marcus. I’ll take her place. That’s what you want, right?” If Joe could keep the bastard’s attention focused on him, the hostages stood a decent chance of getting out alive. Well, some kind of chance, he thought, taking another step forward. From the corner of his eye, he saw the door to the employee lounge open a crack, but he kept his face toward Whitwater. Behind the black slit, between the door and its frame, a police sniper waited anxiously.
“I can get you out of here,” Joe said, still moving toward Whitwater and Pria. “You were right about that. I’m probably one of the few people who could get you out of here, Marcus. The hostages…the woman you’re hanging onto …they’re a liability now. They’ll be too hard to move once you’re through the doors. But you already know the cops outside won’t shoot me…won’t even risk shooting at me. I’m your ticket out, Marcus. You’re too smart to blow it, right?”
Pria grimaced as Whitwater tightened his grip in her hair again. She watched Joe moving forward with a strange, powerful grace that spoke volumes to her. She sensed his anger…his determination… his intimate knowledge that death was possible for all of them, yet his approach was relentless and steady. Like the gun meant nothing.
Roughly a yard separated them. Joe knew time was disappearing fast. If the woman screamed or moved suddenly, Whitwater would start shooting. Or he’d start shooting whether she moved or not.
“Take the bag, Marcus,” Joe said, taking three slow steps forward. “Take the money and let’s go for a walk. Let me change places with her” Very slowly, he started to reach for Pria, who eyed him with horror.
For a single moment, Joe allowed himself to take his eyes away from Whitwater’s face to look down at Pria. She was breathtakingly beautiful, he realized. And utterly terrified. White hot rage flared in his chest, but he reined it. This was no time for an emotional response. He raised his hand very slowly, inching his palm forward toward her shoulder.
Pria turned her eyes toward Joe, seeing that he meant to ease her free of Whitwater’s grasp. What flooded her senses now was the intuitive knowledge that Whitwater wanted desperately to blow the cop’s head off and the robbery, the hostages and everything else revolved around that single desire. If Joe changed places with her, he would die.
“No,” she whispered. As a loud popping sound deafened her, a searing burn ignited Pria’s bicep. She raised her bound hands to her chest, squeezed her eyes closed and brought all of her energies to a tight, hot ball in her chest. She held the mental picture of Whitwater’s face as he’d screamed at the dark-haired teenager a short time ago and shot her energies outward at his image.
Standing behind her, Marcus Whitwater instantly felt like a lightning bolt had sliced through his chest as a hot pain grabbed at the very center of his body. His heart sputtered and seized causing a horrible grinding sensation to take root behind his sternum. Every nerve cell in his body tingled with electricity like he’d shoved both