by Amelia Wilde
“No, we should’ve known about this reschedule,” Zeus retorted.
“Fucking-g small-town America,” Odin said. “So we smash out. That is what God made hostages for.”
“No, we sit tight,” Zeus said. “They don’t know this van.”
“They’ll figure it out,” Odin said. “They’ll come down the line and look in, and do you think a tied-up, blindfolded girl is gonna give us away? ’Cause I’m gonna go with a Yes on that.” He mumbled something about bailing.
“Shut up and let me think,” Zeus grumbled, power radiating through his words. The men shut up.
“I’m guessing we’re on the Ganuck Bridge,” I said. “FYI, boys, that river’s shallow right now. In case you’re really thinking about bailing. Don’t do it. You’ll crack your heads.”
Mumbling from the front.
“We’re on the bridge in a traffic jam, right?” I asked, wishing they’d just take off the blindfold. “With cops and a checkpoint up ahead?”
“Yup,” Thor said softly.
“It could be a drunk check,” I said.
“Nah,” Thor said. “They’re looking for us.”
“And it’s too late for me to leave the van now? I could stumble around and play dumb.”
“Even if we trusted you for that, which we don’t, there are too many witnesses to see you leave,” Zeus grumbled.
“We’re fish in a barrel,” Thor said.
“Wait, they’re looking for three guys with a girl hostage, right?” My pulse raced. “What if I weren’t a hostage? Take my blindfold off. I’ll sit in front like, Hey, boys! We’re late to the tractor pull!”
Zeus snorted. But I heard nothing from Odin and Thor. “No go,” Zeus said. “What’s to stop you from giving us away?”
“The fact that I’m on your side? That I want you to get away with Hank’s stuff? And also you’ve been nice.” Well, Thor had been nice. But it wasn’t too late for Zeus and Odin to buy a clue.
Silence.
Were they thinking about it? My hopes soared like fun little birds.
Yes, these were bank robbers. But they were named after gods, and this idea fit my life’s mission of saving the farm and my sisters. And taking more stuff from Hank Vernon would be a nifty side effect.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “If the next bank we rob is a First City National owned by the Vernons and we split it four ways, I’ll put everything I have on the line to get us out of this. I mean it.” My voice sounded strange to my ears. “You’re either shooting your way out of a traffic jam with a hostage, or you can let me help you.”
“Even if you mean it…” Odin’s voice. “You can’t bluff us out. They’ll have your picture. They’re looking for you.”
“I’m a woman. I can change my whole look. I can change my hair in two seconds if we have scissors. Anyway, they’re looking for me the hostage. Ooh, also, they probably have my license photo, and it barely looks like me.” Or at least, that’s what I liked to think. “I’ll talk us out of it—I know I can.”
“Let’s go for it,” Thor said beside me.
“She thinks it’s a game,” Zeus growled.
Thor said, “You like our odds better in a hot exit with choppers above us? And she showed us the diamonds. So she tags along. It’s better than a hot exit.”
Hot exit. I was liking this outlaw lingo.
Odin said, “I’m going with Thor on this.”
Zeus groaned. Grudgingly.
“Two against one.” Thor was already untying the blindfold.
“I’m in?” I whispered.
Hot breath in my ear. “Yup.”
I grinned as he pulled at the knot. We were going to do this! I was feeling better and better about this. I felt that the voting thing showed healthy mental balance.
“You’ll be sorry if we start seeing police sketches of our faces after we let you go, Melinda,” Zeus grumbled.
I was surprised they knew my name, but of course, it was right there on my badge. “I totally get it,” I joked. “Police sketches are so unflattering!”
Thor snickered and whipped off the blindfold.
It took a while for my eyes to get used to the brightness. And the amazing hotness of Thor, with his creamy skin and wavy blond hair and velvety blue eyes. He wore a dove gray business suit, but even so, he looked more like a soccer player from Scandinavia dressed up for an interview. It was fitting he was named for a Norse god. I was guessing the big scowly guy with the short brown hair in the driver’s seat was Zeus.
The handsome, unshaven, dark-haired guy in the passenger seat would be Odin. He wore squarish, scholarly-looking brown glasses, much to my surprise. I hadn’t gotten “spectacles” from his badass mode of speech. And, let me say, the glasses looked awesome on him. He was like a gorgeous model, which I guessed could be a problem in the robber line of work. Because who wouldn’t stare at him? Who wouldn’t remember him? His strategy for counteracting his runway model appearance seemed to be to swear a lot and seethe with bad-boy heat.
It just made him hotter.
Focus, I told myself, sucking in a breath.
I looked all around. Cars jammed the bridge in front and behind us; some of the people had gotten out of their vehicles. Frisbees flew through the air. Sirens and lights up ahead meant accident or police blockade.
“Cops are going car to car—I see a pair a dozen cars up,” Zeus said. “We have maybe five minutes. They may interview you. Can you handle it?”
“So I’m in?”
“Perhaps we should alert her to the rules,” Odin said.
Zeus shot Odin a hard look. There was something hunted and haunted about Zeus.
I was already taking off my stuffy gray bank teller jacket, wondering about these mysterious rules, and pleased I’d worn a skimpy, strappy white tank underneath, perfect for a tractor pull. I undid my bra and pulled it out from under my shirt.
“We’re all going to the tractor pull,” I informed them. “We want Big Bessie to kick ass. The three of you—suit coats off. Down to your T-shirts. And those slacks? Nobody wears slacks to a tractor pull.”
“Unless they get suspicious, they’ll probably only pull me out,” Zeus said. “And you. They’ll want to talk to you.”
“Shit, this business skirt is so not right.”
“I don’t have a T-shirt,” Odin said.
“No shirt is better than that one,” I said. “Take it off.”
The guys were stripping. Muscles were rippling. Sweaty skin gleamed. I tried to look all serious, but deep down I was like a lechy little fish swimming in a delicious cocktail of testosterone and total freaking hunkiness. Yum!
Thor stuffed our suit jackets under the seat.
“They’ll be looking for a girl with long red hair,” Zeus said, handing back a hunting knife. “You wanna be in? You gotta lose the hair.”
I took the knife. I knew he was right. “No scissors?”
“We’re bank robbers, not beauticians.”
Thor grabbed the knife. “I’ll help you. This blade is sharp.”
I pulled my long red hair out of my bun and shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I want you guys to remember how long and awesome my hair is, and how far out on a limb I’m going here. You better be good for your word.” I took a deep breath, gathered my red hair into a ponytail at the back of my head, and showed Thor where to cut, then cringed. I could feel the hair weight disappear as the knife sliced through. He stuffed the hair into the pocket on the door. I said a silent goodbye.
“Avert your gazes,” I said as I started wriggling out of my business-like black pencil skirt, down to my lacy underwear. When I looked up, Thor and Odin were watching me hungrily. Heat spread through me. Commanding the total attention of these insanely hunky bad boys was an off-the-charts turn-on.
“Maybe the god Zeus is the only one who knows what avert means.”
Thor smiled wickedly. “We’re bank robbers, baby. We make our own rules.”
Ooh.
>
I put a flattened piece of box across my lap and laid my skirt over it, running the knife along the grain of the fabric, creating a quick mini-skirt, trying not to smile like a crazy woman. Zeus was right; I did feel like this was a game.
The best game ever.
“Thor, see if you can find any cooks’ pants or anything,” Zeus said.
Thor twisted around to root in the back. No use for other people’s rules—it was so deliciously roguish. In spite of this—maybe it was their professionalism and sense of fairness, what with the voting—but I instinctively trusted them to follow their own rules, to be good for their word.
I held the skirt up. The hem was ragged in spots, but it would do as a mini skirt. I slid it back on. “Now I’m the only one who looks proper for a tractor pull.”
Zeus turned in his seat to face me. He held a little metal box in his hands. “Bare your teeth,” he said.
I bared my teeth and he opened the box and took out a small brown thing the size of a fingernail and held it up. Then he picked out a different small thing. “Hold still.” He pressed it to one of my front side teeth.
“Smile.”
I smiled. Odin laughed. Then I looked in the mirror. The little thing made it look like one of my teeth was dead.
“You have got to be kidding.” But it was smart. My driver’s license and bank ID photo showed a girl with all her white teeth.
Zeus shoved some mirrored sunglasses at me. “Put these on your head. The best thing is for you to hide in plain sight. Step out of the van, stretch your legs. Look down the line and see what kind of time we have.”
I put the sunglasses on top of my head and pushed my now short hair behind my ears, then I climbed out into the bright sun. The door slid closed behind me. I stood outside the van, heat rising from the pavement, hitting my bare legs. We were in the very right lane behind a small gray car, and in front of that, more cars—four lanes of cars lined the bridge—two lanes heading north, two heading south, and none were moving.
I walked around the front of the van. In the lane to the left was another group going to the tractor pull—a bunch of teens in the back of a truck. They were drinking sodas and throwing fluorescent orange cheese curls at each other.
Some people looked my way, but I was pretty sure it was the outfit. It was sexy, what with the paper-thin spaghetti strap top that you could totally see my nipples through, and the ragged cavewoman mini skirt, and my high heels.
It was like a different me stepped out of that van. Like a bad-girl butterfly emerging from a bandit cocoon.
I felt good.
I felt free.
I took a five-dollar bill from my still intact skirt pocket and walked over and offered it to the cheese curl kids in the back of the truck in exchange for two of their sodas. “Any flavor, I don’t care,” I said.
I came away with two Mountain Dews and some pitying looks from the girls for my dead tooth.
My blood raced when I caught sight of the cops, five cars ahead, talking to people and looking in cars. I rested my forearm on the open window and smiled in at Zeus, who was pulling on a pair of cutoffs.
“They coming?”
“Sure are,” I said. The jeans shorts were just a little tight for Zeus. Un-Midwestern, but they were cops, not fashion police. “Four on foot, two with motorcycles.”
“Move,” he said.
I moved out of the way and he got out of the van, shut the door.
Zeus had wide, muscular shoulders, a tree-trunk neck, and lush, handsome features. A tiny jagged scar on his cheekbone made him hot in a badass way. Like a tough-guy beauty mark.
I handed him a soda. He opened it and flopped an arm around me. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“Not planning to,” I said, loving the feel of him, warm and hard against me. Loving his thuggish caveman vibe.
It was a vibe that probably made people underestimate his intelligence. I sure wouldn’t. Not now, anyway.
He squinted when he drank his soda. “Hate this stuff,” he said, looking casually around with those intense green eyes.
He was a handsome tough guy with the eyes of a feral animal.
His short brown hair twinkled merrily in the sunlight and curled wrong on the ends—it curled outward on one side and inward on the other, like the curl didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to be symmetrical, and he’d never learned to properly manage it.
His whole primal thing was making me feel primal. Nobody had ever made me feel like that.
And of course I kept thinking about Thor’s skills comment. And the rules. The well-oiled organization.
“Does my hair look not too fucked up?” I asked.
He gazed at me with those green eyes, and it was like a tremor through me. “It looks convincing enough.”
I swallowed. “If you think you can sway me with flattery, you’re wrong.”
He looked away. I’d thought we had a connection, but he seemed wary of me now. He sipped his soda again, then wiped his mouth with his arm. Even that was badass.
“Look, you’re doing great.”
“Are you trying to build my confidence?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“It ruins the effect if I know that’s what you’re trying to do.”
He said nothing. Really, just having him close was heartening. He had the calm power of a large animal, and his possessive arm over my shoulder felt weirdly reassuring.
I hadn’t had a lot of boyfriends in my life, but those I’d had would’ve never thrown their arms around me in such a presumptuous and possessive way, and they certainly wouldn’t have named themselves for gods.
He said, “Let me do the talking until you think I don’t know the answer, then butt in. Let me see your tooth. Smile.”
I smiled.
“Don’t lick it.”
I looked over my shoulder, into the van window. Thor and Odin were both lounging in the van doing phone things. Or at least pretending to.
One of the cops came to talk to the kids in the back of the truck next to us. Another pair of cops strolled up to us, both middle-aged men. One wore wire-rimmed glasses.
“There an accident up there?” Zeus asked.
I was amazed at how different his body language was, all hunched and frowny and bewildered. Like he was an oafish and victimy guy who would never in a million years rob a bank.
“Bottleneck,” the cop with glasses said while his partner peered into the window. “Where’re you off to?”
“Tractor pull,” Zeus said.
“Who you rooting for?”
“Big Bessie,” Zeus said. “If we even make it.”
“You, too?” the officer asked me.
“Bessie for the win.” I raised my soda, heart pounding. “What happened? We’re going to miss everything.” I frowned. “Do you think they’ll hold the main event?”
One of the officers shrugged, and I frowned harder.
Engines were gunning ahead.
“Drive safe,” the one said. The two of them headed to the car behind us.
Zeus and I stood there together for a second. We’d done it!
Under my breath, I said, “Well, now I know what you think about the kind of people who attend tractor pulls. With that act you put on. You know, I go to tractor pulls. They’re fun. They’re not just for oafish bumpkins.”
“Let’s go,” he said simply, straightening back up to his cool badass self. Maybe that’s what they thought of me—a country bumpkin.
I walked around to the passenger side. Odin was there. “I think the girlfriend should sit up front.”
Odin’s darkly glittering smile set off quivers in the pit of my stomach. “The girlfriend sits where we tell her to sit. That happens to be one of our rules.”
My pulse raced. The rules.
“The rules don’t apply to Melinda,” Zeus said.
The back door slid open and I got in next to Thor and shut the door. I wanted to hear more about these rules, and I wanted them to be really di
rty.
“Please,” I said. “Call me Isis.”
Thor looked surprised at this, and both he and Odin swung their gazes to Zeus, as if to see what he’d do. Zeus just stared ahead grimly. His silence brought a hush down over the van. The man’s silence had power.
Finally I spoke up. “You all have god names. You said I could be in the gang until the next job. I think I deserve a god name.”
Thor seemed to pull himself together. “Thank you, Isis. You are awesome. That was awesome.”
I pulled off my dead tooth thingy. Odin handed back the box and I dropped it in. There were other dead tooth thingys in there, plus tattoos, fake scars, and moles. “I can’t believe you go around with a kit like this. Did you send away for it from the back of a comic book or something?”
Odin snapped the box lid shut. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Zeus said. “But—” He caught my eyes in the mirror and nodded. “Thank you.”
The cars in front of us started to move. Soon we were off the bridge and speeding along.
My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning out the hum of traffic and distant sounds of police choppers.
They all had their shirts back on, but I was weirdly aware of their muscular shoulders and their powerful hands and tree-trunk legs. And every time one of them would talk, it was as if I could feel the echo of it between my legs, like a harmonic vibration.
It was just the four of us. Alone. No more rules.
Zeus and Odin rumbled on about how the cops had handled the search, all cool about the whole episode. Maybe it was a bandit thing.
I put my hand over my chest. “Wow. Phew!” I felt like my insides were vibrating.
“I know,” Thor said, blue eyes sparkling. He seemed…aroused. It was exactly how I felt, like all my sex and danger circuits had crossed.
“What now?” I asked, holding his gaze.
From the front, Zeus said, “We lay down miles, change license plates and van decals, and then stop for the night.”
Stop for the night. For some reason my mind went right to Zeus, to that moment in the bank when I touched his glove, handing off the bag, the frisson of shivers.
“And hit another First City? As a gang?”
“You’re staying with us through the next job, we didn’t say you could take part in the next job,” Zeus said.