by Zahra Girard
“Based on your credit score — which is, to put it lightly, abysmal — I don’t know if you’d qualify to even take the free mints we have set up by the teller’s counters. Your score, combined with your likely history of illegal employment, means that it would be grossly irresponsible to approve you for this loan. No, Mr. Dunne, no matter how much you glare at me, loom over me, or threaten me, I will not approve your loan. And nor will anyone at this bank.”
His eyes fall to his feet, downcast. “There’s no way?”
As strange as it seems, I feel bad for him. He looks near the end of his rope and the threat in his voice borders on desperation.
I soften. Despite all my ingrained professionalism, my fervent desire to keep my job, I can’t help but feel a sense of pity for him. He needs this money. Bad.
I reach across my desk and put my hand on top of his.
“No. I’m sorry. Normally, I might refer you to the payday loan place just down the street, but this is larger than they handle and I don’t know if they’d approve you. Your situation isn’t good, Mr. Dunne. The only way you might get any sort of loan is if you had some collateral to put up, like a house, and even then, it’s doubtful.”
The downhearted look on his face disappears, swept away behind an expression of ferocity.
He shifts in his seat, reaches behind his back, and, in a flash, there’s a gun in his hand.
He levels it right at my head.
“I do have collateral. I have you.”
Chapter Two
Blaze
“What do you mean? What are you doing? This has to be a mistake.”
The look on her face is too cute; Shock and awe — nothing I haven’t seen before from plenty of women — and a bit of fear. Two deep brown eyes get as wide as dinner plates and her long, wavy dark hair rustles as she shakes her head in denial.
This pretty lady isn’t used to being surprised like this; being put in a situation she can’t think her way out of.
“This isn’t a mistake, this is a robbery,” I say, then I raise my voice to a roar. “Everyone get your asses to the ground or I will fucking blow this woman’s head off.”
With one hand, I sweep everything off her desk, sending papers, pens, even the keyboard to her computer, to the floor. With the other, I grab her and pull her to me. She slides right across the desk and pull her against my chest with one arm and brandish my pistol with the other.
The second she hits my chest and that long brown hair flies in my face, I catch a familiar scent. Lilacs. It sends me back. Years. To a time when life was even more uncertain than it is right now. To a senior year Biology class that I hardly bothered to attend but, when I did, I always remembered the gawky, brilliant, and wild-haired girl who sat next to me. She looks so different from the girl I remember, but there’s no way it’s not her.
“Tiffany Santos? Saint Tiffany?” I say, half gaping, half doing my best to look menacing as I point my gun at the security guard — some wizened old man in a wrinkly guards uniform — standing by the door. One gesture is enough to send him flat on the ground.
“Yes, that’s me. But no one calls me Saint Tiffany anymore,” she says, struggling in my grip. It’s not objectionable. She grew up in all the right ways and every time she moves she rubs that supple body against me.
Still, it’s hard to think about how hot she is right now and reconcile that with the gangly good girl she used to be.
“Is that because you finally pulled that stick out of your ass, or did everyone else finally grow up?”
I tighten my grip around her and start guiding the two of us toward the bank teller’s counter. I’ve never robbed a bank before — one of the few crimes I haven’t done — but I’ve got the general gist of it and catching up with someone I remember from high school isn’t a part of it.
“I just don’t see many people from high school anymore. I just don’t have time for it. Except Anna.”
So, the stick is still jammed high up her sweet little ass.
“Anna? Anna Ebri?”
With a flick of her hair and a nod, Tiffany gestures towards the woman sitting on a desk halfway across the bank’s lobby. She’s got bleached blond hair, a face that’s way too tanned, and she looks at least a decade worse for wear than Tiffany.
“She manages this bank. Her dad runs Southwest Regional.”
“She’s had some work done. I don’t remember her tits being that big.”
“Anna has had a lot of work done,” Tiffany says.
“Let’s go say ‘hi’,” I say.
Still holding Tiffany tight to my body, I drag us both to Anna and level my gun right at her large, too-perky tits.
“Hey, Anna,” I say. “Long time no see.”
She smiles at me. It’s a smile that stirs memories of a certain night behind the bleachers after a football game.
“Hey, Declan, I thought I recognized you beneath that beard. And those tragic tattoos. You look a lot more… rustic… than I remember,” she says, voice remarkably stable despite my gun being aimed right at her. “You want to put that away? Because this isn’t going to end well for you.”
“Put it away? I’ve never heard you say that before,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of the security guard scooting his ass across the floor and I send a bullet into the ground about six inches from his face. Several screams erupt. “How about you head back behind the counter and fetch me fifty grand?”
“You didn’t think this through, did you?” She says, still not flinching. This big-titted bitch is way too calm in the face of my gun.
“No. Hasn’t been much of a problem before, and I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem now, either,” I say. “So, why don’t you just tone down your bitch attitude and go fetch me my money?”
Anna doesn’t move. Her eyes narrow to snakelike slits, and her smile turns to a smirk. “No.”
Tiffany shifts in my grip, ever so slightly, and, in a barely audible hush, I hear her whisper, “Silent alarm.”
Our eyes meet for a second.
Is she helping me? Or does she just hate Anna that much? Not that I blame her — Anna’s kindness always ran opposite her looks.
With a pull of the trigger, I send Anna jumping as the tile at her feet explodes in a cloud of shards.
“I don’t like your attitude,” I say.
“And I don’t like that you’re trying to rob my bank. You always were a dick, Declan.”
Another shot — this one that tears a hole in the desk just an inch from her thigh — makes her jump and let out a scream that’s music to my ears.
Music that quickly fades beneath the sound of approaching sirens.
“You have a minute before the cops get here,” Tiffany says. “You obviously didn’t plan this. You should just do the logical thing and just leave before this situation gets any worse.”
“For once, Tiffany is right,” Anna says. “Leave, Declan. Before you fuck up your life any more than it already is.”
“Shut up, Anna, you soulless bitch. You’re not helping anything with your attitude toward the man who has a fucking gun and his arm around my throat,” Tiffany snaps.
“You’re fired,” Anna says.
“Fuck you, this is the worst fucking place to work, and I once worked at Cutco.”
Nice ass, same intoxicating scent, and a great attitude — she might still be a stuck up priss, but I like Tiffany Santos a lot more than I did all those years ago.
“I like you, Tiffany,” I say, shifting our stance so we edge closer to the door. “In fact, I like you enough to take you with me. Let’s go.”
“No. Please don’t. You don’t need to do this. Just go.”
She squirms in my grip, rubbing her ass against my hips and her tits against my forearm. My day might’ve been going to shit earlier, but this is making up for it.
“I do. You’re my hostage. Now, come on, it’s time for us to leave.”
Her struggling intensifies, grows wild, feral with fear, as she throws
her luscious body around in my grip while I drag her toward the front door to the bank. Then, halfway to the door, she freezes, still as a statue.
“Are you hard right now?” She says in a mousy whisper.
“How else am I supposed to be with you rubbing yourself against me like that?”
“Oh my God,” she starts.
“It’s time to go,” I say, and I throw her over my shoulder and, to quiet her struggling, I give her a hard slap on the ass. “Stay still. And keep your mouth shut.”
I fire a few more rounds throughout the bank — one toward the guard to remind him to keep his dumb ass on the floor, one at Anna to remind her she is, and always has been, a malignant whore, and one at the ceiling, because fuck this stupid bank — and then charge outside to my waiting bike.
Hurriedly, I set Tiffany down next to my bike.
“Get on.”
Sirens wail. They’re close.
Tears brim in her eyes. They shimmer with wild fear.
I hate the sight of tears in her eyes. I brush one off her cheek and wish there were some other way this could go.
But I hate even more the thought of going to jail. And, with how close those sirens sound, I don’t have time to coax this quaking woman into calming the fuck down and doing as she’s told.
Instead, I grab my helmet off my bike, shove it into her hands, and then growl. “Put that on and get on my bike or I swear to Christ you will not like what happens.”
She stays frozen.
Unable to help myself, I crack her across her plump ass.
“Move,” I snap.
She does.
The helmet goes on, one long leg slides over the back seat of my bike, and her lovely ass rests itself on my leather seat.
Fuck, if this was under any other circumstances, I’d take a moment and just appreciate the view. Saint Tiffany, you’ve sure grown up in all the right ways.
Instead, I get my ass in gear and hop on in front of her.
“Hold on to my chest. Not too tight, or I’ll crash and we’ll both get fucked up. Now, come on, Saint Tiffany, hold on, wrap your sweet legs around me, and let’s ride.”
There’s a second of hesitation and, in my rear view mirror, I swear I see a lovely blush cross her cheeks.
Sirens wail, so close they’re nearly on us. Then her legs clench against me, and her lips brush my ear.
“Where are we going?”
I fire the engine to life and pull away from the curb, leaving a trail of rubber and smoke in my wake. As the bike squeals down the street, chugging thunder and spitting fire, I grin at her over my shoulder. Just for a second, just long enough for my eyes to drink in her delicate oval face, fine cheekbones, and those lips that look made for sucking.
Saint Tiffany, you’ve sure grown up.
“I have no fucking clue. I’m making this shit up as I go. But I’ll think of something.”
Brown eyes go wide, those full, pouty lips part in an ‘o’, and it’s too fucking distracting to look at even in my rear view mirror. I keep my sight on the road, just so I don’t crash and kill us both.
“You don’t know?” She howls in my ear in utter disbelief.
“I didn’t plan for this shit,” I shout back over the growl of my engine and the whistling howl of the wind as we fly down the road at seventy miles an hour. “Maybe you should’ve fucking approved me for that loan and we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
As we burn down the road, my mind races even faster, looking for some place to escape to; somewhere to hide out until the heat dies down.
“I couldn’t. I swear, when I put your information in and saw your credit score, I thought it was a bug. Like, it’s not supposed to be that low.”
“Maybe you should’ve just bent the fucking rules and approved me.”
“I would never. I have standards.”
“And yet you work for Anna fucking Ebri and her sleazy father?”
That ramrod straight back of hers — likely a result of the stick that’s been up her ass for the last decade — bends a little; her full lips turn down; she leans into me and her arms grip me a little tighter in a hug.
“Not by choice. They’re my only option.”
“Welcome to the real world, Saint Tiffany. We all have to deal with shit we’d rather not deal with.”
Full lips curl in a rueful smile.
“I guess you’re right.”
I never thought I’d hear those words from a woman like her.
We’re a long way outside of town on a desert highway that gives me a view for miles — there’s not a flashing police siren in sight — and I gun the accelerator. This road stirs a flood of memories of a misspent summer that still brings a smile to my face and, guided by that recollection, I swerve and speed off the highway and onto a road that’s barely better than a gravel track. Dust and stones kick up in our wake and Tiffany screams in terror and grips me tighter. I can’t say that feeling doesn’t make me smile even wider than my memories of that long-lost summer.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? Get back on the road,” she shouts.
Ignoring her cries, we fly down the bumpy gravel road, until the desert gives way to hills, until scraggly trees dot the rolling landscape, until those hills turn into mountains and those scraggly trees turn into alpine forest.
We nearly miss the turnoff — it’s been swallowed by the forest since I saw it last — but a quick turn and a hard grip on the breaks catches us just in time. Tiffany squeals in terror as we skid and slide down an overgrown track of a driveway. It’s a beautiful sound and I gun the gas just to make her squeal louder.
“You are insane. Completely insane,” she shouts. “Where are we going? What are we doing?”
We come to a stop in front of a cabin that’s held together by moss more than anything else.
I hop off and give Tiffany a hand in sliding her fine legs and scooting her plump ass off my bike.
“What is this place?” She says, wrinkling her nose and staring with obvious distaste at the cabin.
I have to admit, it ain’t much. The last time it was occupied was years ago, back when my friends and I used to hide out here and drink the days away.
“Until we figure this shit out, this is home.”
She gives me side-eye.
“I’ve seen your record and your credit score. I don’t think you’ve ever had your stuff figured out.”
I grin at her and take out my gun.
“Well then, I guess you and I will be here for a long time. But your fine ass ain’t leaving until I say so, and that ain’t happening until I get my money. You’re my hostage, Saint Tiffany.”
Chapter Three
Tiffany
I stare at him, aghast.
“You don’t need to do this.”
Declan raises one eyebrow. Mirth crosses his chiseled features, lifting one corner of his mouth in a smirk that furrows his impressively thick beard.
“I’m sort of deep in it here. This is way beyond the point where I can turn things around. Besides, do you not know what the word ‘hostage’ means?”
“I know what a lot of words mean. Many more than you, I’m sure,” I say.
He laughs. “I’ll bet. But, for all your Stanford smarts, you can’t seem to grasp this little hostage situation we got going here.”
“But you don’t need me. You can just let me go. I’ll walk back to Torreon.”
His laughter grows. My cheeks flush.
“Walk? All the way back to Torreon? Were you not paying attention when I drove us out here, Saint Tiffany? Unless you’re able to fly, it ain’t happening. And here I was, thinking you were smart.”
“Declan, come on, just let me go. You don’t need me.”
“I don’t go by Declan anymore. It’s Blaze.”
My mouth falls open and I can’t help it — I snort-laugh. “What? Blaze?”
“Blaze.”
“But… why?” I say, still laughing.
“Why? I’ll fucking s
how you why,” he says. Irritation and anger crosses his face, turning that mirthful curl of his mouth into a snarl, and he turns to his motorcycle, throwing open a cargo compartment and pulling out a leather vest.
This is my opportunity. Maybe the only one I’ll get.
I turn and I run. As fast as I can. Even in heels and a knee-length skirt — which I hike up higher to give my legs my room to stride — I’m fast. Faster than him.
His curses drift after me as I sprint down the dirt pathway toward the road.
I have to get out of here.
Five steps down the road, I kick off my shoes. My feet kiss the stones and dirt and I find my stride. The same stride that earned me varsity on Torreon High School’s track team. The same stride that led to me running on Stanford’s team.
I soar down that road.
Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty.
Escape is a possibility that becomes more real with every step; my heart soars with hopeful elation.
Maybe I can make it.
Then I scream.
A rock bites into my foot, cuts through skin and into the flesh of my heel and buries itself deep. Pain blasts through my skull and rips its way out of my mouth in a sudden, violet eruption of agony.
I stumble, fall, hit the ground.
His heavy footfalls draw closer.
Gritting my teeth and groaning through the pain, I stand back up and limp forward. It’s useless, I know, but my body is flooded with adrenaline and fear enough to have me on the verge of throwing up. I have to do something.
Ten more steps. That’s all I get.
Then his hands touch my shoulders, lock down with a ferocious strength that draws a yelp of surprise, and he hauls me to a stop so suddenly I nearly catch whiplash.
“Let me go,” I scream, red-hued anger settling over my eyes and blinding me to everything but my abject failure.
I may scream it more than once. In his face. With every bit of frustration and fear that is surging through my gut. Frustration at my situation, at losing my admittedly shitty job, at being upset at losing my shitty job, at this painful moment — bleeding from a foot wound outside some gun-wielding maniac’s old high school drinking cabin — being the agonizing and ignominious nadir of the last too-many months of failure.