Holding On To You

by Anne-Marie Hart

  'Time to get on the floor Princess', River says to her, lilting his accent to make himself sound even more like a cowboy than he already is.

  Maddy looks around her. She hasn't quite grasped it yet, and seems to be the only one who hasn't. Everyone else is on the floor already, shocked faces pressed as far down into the puke green carpet as they can manage. Fergal has grabbed Maddy's bag of money and sits shivering under his wooden desk, hoping no-one has seen him. For Maddy, it's as if things are moving in slow motion.

  'Get the fuck on the floor', Carlos says to her, seeing that she still hasn't moved. When she doesn't respond, he goes to her and pulls her violently out of her seat until she's kneeling on the ground, which is not quite lying down, but a step better than sitting. Carlos is completely taken aback by her unwillingness to comply.

  'What the fuck is wrong with you?' Carlos spits at her. 'Do you want me to shoot you?'

  'This floor is going to ruin my dress!' Maddy screams at him. 'It's filthy.'

  Carlos laughs and looks at River. Obviously nothing like this has ever happened before.

  'Not as much as a gunshot wound would', River says pragmatically, and winks at her.

  Carlos holds a gun to her head, drops the safety catch and begins to squeeze the trigger when Maddy finally complies. She presses herself flat on the ground and puts her hands behind her back when commanded to do so. A moment later, she realises how much she's shaking.

  'Thank you all for your compliance', River says, addressing the room like the lead in a Broadway play. 'We will take no more than five minutes of your time, but we are going to take all of your money. If anyone does anything stupid, they will die. No alarms, no police, no have-a-go heroes. Is that understood?'

  Nobody responds.

  'Is that understood Princess?' River says to Maddy, bending down to give her special attention.

  She puts her hands on her head and it makes River laugh.

  'Let's get the fuck on with this', Alex says, growing irritated with River's desire to be centre of attention. Peters watches the crowd, while Carlos and River begin emptying the cash drawers.

  'Fergal Murphy', Alex says, loud enough for him to hear.

  Fergal hears his name, closes his eyes and leans his head against the inside wooden leg of the desk. For some reason he doesn't move straight away.

  'Fergal Murphy', Alex says again, this time a lot louder. When the only movement Fergal makes is to tighten his grip on the bag of money Maddy has brought in to deposit, Alex takes out his gun, and holds it against the head of a fat man lying nearby, who has pressed his face so closely into the ground, it looks like he's trying to eat his way to safety.

  'Last chance', Alex says. 'Come out, come out, wherever you are.'

  'Please', the fat man says, his mouth full of spit and carpet hair. 'I don't want to die. I don't want to die.'

  Fergal cranes his head to take a look at what's happening, and when he does so, he can't help but reveal his location. Peters catches a glimpse of his movement, and goes straight for him, like a bull would a red rag. Instead of bothering himself by squatting down, he uses his immense strength to upend the table in one go. He grips the edge and rips it off the ground as though it were made of nothing but paper. Underneath, the cowering mess of a very scared senior bank manager, still grabbing onto his clients sack of money as though it contained all of his life's worldly possessions instead of her money, tries to shrink more and more into non-existent shadows of a table that no longer shelters him.

  On the other side of the room, hidden amongst a huddle of people, Ramirez Lopez uses the commotion as a distraction, and reaches towards his pocket.

  Peters grabs the bag of money from Fergal in disgust, and tosses it over to River.

  'That's my company's money', Maddy says, her voice a little shrill from the adrenaline running through her body.

  'Not any more it's not.' River reassures her.

  'Get up off the ground you snivelling shitheel', Peters says to Fergal, and drags him over to Alex.

  'Four minutes', Carlos calls out, before continuing to loot the cash drawers of the teller's desks.

  'Please don't kill me', Fergal says. 'I'll do anything you want.'

  'Open the fucking safe', Alex says.

  'I...I...I can't', Fergal says, tripping over his words.

  Alex puts a gun to Fergal's face.

  'Wait, wait, wait', he says holding his hands up in front of the gun, as though they'd be effective in holding back the lug of metal Alex is growing ever keener to put into his brain. 'I need an authorization code.'

  'Then get it, before I kill you.' Alex says simply.

  'I have to call to get it', Fergal says.

  'Then call', Alex says, his voice now grizzled with impatience and his trigger finger growing itchy.

  'That's not it' Fergal says, thick beads of sweat wetting his brow.

  From his pocket, Ramirez Lopez slides out his mobile phone. A woman nearby sees him do it. There is panic on her face. She hugs her children closer and shakes her head.

  Ramirez ignores her. He holds up his hand as best as possible to indicate that she shouldn't be worried, and that, despite the circumstances that are going on around them, he knows exactly what he's doing.

  'Please', she mouths at him. 'Please don't.'

  'It takes five minutes for the code to come through', Fergal says, 'you won't have enough time.'

  'Three minutes', Carlos says.

  'How much do you have?' Alex calls to him.

  Ramirez flips open the mobile phone, hiding it as best as he can with his sleeve and palm.

  'Not enough', Carlos calls back.

  They've gone through the drawers and taken everything they've been able to find.

  'How much is in the safe?' Alex says to Fergal, the gun pressed against his temple. Fergal gulps. 'How much?' Alex says again.

  'Six million, seven hundred and seventy five thousand, four hundred and six dollars', Fergal says.

  'How the fuck do you know that?' River says, sat up on the table now, smoking his cigarette.

  Fergal is sweating so much his thin white shirt has stuck to his skin and his nipples and belly button are all visible. He looks like the pig that once used to be on the stress ball that Maddy is now furiously pumping.

  'I'm good with numbers', Fergal says.

  'No shit', Alex says. 'Make the call.'

  'There isn't time', Carlos says to him.

  'There's time if I say there is', Alex shouts back at him.

  Fergal hovers over the phone. He doesn't know what to do.

  'We'll get burnt', Carlos says, trying to reason with him.

  Alex grits his teeth and presses the gun further into Fergal's gut, so the nozzle is almost an inch into his belly. 'Make it', he says to him, all the while looking at Carlos.

  In an emergency room call centre, over a thousand miles from where the call his been placed, Rachel Steele answers the phone.

  '911, what is your emergency?' she says.

  Ramirez slides the phone out from under his palm so it can pick up as much atmospheric sound as possible.

  Fergal makes the call with shaking hands. He gives his name, his employee identification code, and the reference number for the bank. A moment later he puts down the phone, unable at first to get it back in the cradle.

  'Is that it?' Alex asks him.

  'They'll call back in five minutes' Fergal says.

  'Two minutes', Carlos says. 'We're going to get fucking burnt.'

  'Calm down', Alex says to him. 'Nobody is going to get burnt. Everyone is going to get fucking-'

  When it happens, Maddy has one hand on her stress ball, and the other keeping her head from coming in contact with the carpet, desperate to avoid the filth that she believes is built into the floor. The sound of the gunshots are so deafening and unexpected, that after they come, one following the other almost immediately, as though the second bullet has been pulled out of the chamber of the second gun via a chain connecte
d to the first bullet, a wave of silence descends on the room momentarily. Afterwards, while Alex clutches the hole in his upper chest, where blood seeps out liberally like water from the hole in the side of a bucket, and the off-duty police officer bleeds from a wound in his upper arm, the room descends into a panic greater than the first few moments of realisation that the bank was being robbed.

  Alex drops to his knees, unable to keep himself balanced, blood pouring out of his mouth.

  'Fuck', Carlos says and goes to him. 'Fuck, fuck.'

  He doesn't know what to do with him, first laying him on his back and then putting him on his side, when he realises his lungs are quickly filling up with blood.

  River still holds the gun in his outstretched hand, responsible for firing the second bullet, and knocking the other gun out of the off-duty police officer's hand from the other side of the room, just a moment too slow to knock the bullet out of the air, and save Alex's life.

  In the 911 emergency room call centre, Rachel Steele hears the two bullets as one shot, and the chaos that follows as a wall of noise. Adrenaline flows through her body that wasn't there before. She is seventeen seconds away from tracing the call.

  Maddy has her eyes closed. For the first time that morning, she fears for her life. All of the remaining hostages back away as Peters centres on the wounded off duty police officer, and picks up the man's gun. Ramirez watches him, his mobile phone still connected to the call centre, expertly hidden back up his sleeve. The woman to his right watches him, her children's faces buried into her jacket. The stout woman that spoke to Maddy earlier watches him. Fergal watches him with his mouth open.

  He lifts the gun and focuses the nozzle on the man's face.

  'No, please', the man says, begging for his life.

  No-one had seen him. He was the kind of man that no one ever noticed. It was why he was in the police force in the first place. Bullied throughout his childhood for his height, he wanted to make a difference by showing people he was powerful and to be respected, not to be made fun of. He had dreamt about this situation a hundred times, and had always wanted to be a hero, never finding the chance usually in what he was disappointed to find were the mundane ins and outs of his day job. When he thought the right moment had arrived, he took out the snub nosed pistol he kept hidden in his sock - a just in case for situations like this he hoped one day to be involved in - and pointed it first at the man he thought was the most dangerous of the group. He would have got a second round off too, the turned back of Peters his intended second target, but hadn't counted on River's lightning reactions.

  'That's not necessary', River says.

  'You fuck', Peters says, and buries a bullet into the off duty police officer's face, from such close range, that his head opens up like a grapefruit dropped from the top floor of the empire state building. The rest of the room is eaten by silence. No one can believe what they've just seen.

  'For fuck sake', River says, his words echoing in the room like those of a priest at mass.

  While the trace finally registers, and Rachel Steele makes a call to the closest unit in the area, Alex slowly loses his grip on life.

  River re-holsters his gun, gathers the bag of money that he has collected, and lowers himself down from the desk. He walks over to where Carlos is knelt down at the side of Alex's body.

  'Leave him, he's dead', he says to Carlos.

  Carlos has blood all over his hands, and there is a pool of it underneath Alex's lifeless body, staining the carpet.

  River makes his way over to Peters, who is staring at the mess he has made of the police officer, as though he's trying to work out the meaning in a famous work of art.

  'You didn't need to do that', he says to him.

  Peters moves away from the body. 'He was my friend', he says, pushing River out of the way. 'How much time?' he says to Carlos.

  'What?' Carlos says, not really understanding the question. Not really understanding much about the situation apart from a general sense of shock at what has just happened.

  'Pull yourself the fuck together', Peters snarls at him, and drags Carlos to his feet. He sticks the now dead off-duty police officer's snub nose gun into Fergal's belly and asks him the question instead.

  'How much fucking time?'

  'Two minutes, maybe more', Fergal says.

  With the mention of time, Carlos snaps back to reality. He notices the alarm on his watch, and realises it must have been sounding for a while. Their five minutes has long been up.

  'Fuck', Carlos says, rushing to the window.

  On the street below them, a police car pulls up, sirens wailing.

  Inside the city's police headquarters, hard-nosed senior police officer Inspector Frank Giamatti, an American born from Italian immigrants, with an innate dislike for two-bit criminals, and a police record of successful case closures that has earnt him a list of awards as long as the enemies he's made along the way, hurries along a corridor as quickly as the recovering bullet wound in his leg will allow him. He is flanked by several other police officers, none of whom have even an eighth of the testosterone, nor the courage he contains in spades. If there was one police office you didn't want on your back, it was Frank Giamatti, known in his precinct as 'The Bulldog'.

  'How long?' he says.

  'All units, eight minutes tops', officer Indigo Garland responds. 'We've got one on scene and one closing in.'

  'Tell them not to do anything stupid, and get me the number of that fucking bank.'

  Carlos looks down on the police car parked below.

  'Fuck', he says. 'We're burnt.'

  Maddy feels the cold metal of a gun nozzle on the back of her neck, and a hand under her arm that drags her upright.

  'Please don't kill me', she says.

  'I'm not going to kill you Princess', River reassures her.

  'Where the fuck are you going?' Peters says to River, levelling his gun at him.

  'I'm leaving', River says. 'I suggest you do the same if you want to get out of here.'

  'The fuck you are', Peters says.

  The two men stare at each other for a while, while everyone else stares at them, the tension palpable. They've seen Peters kill and there is nothing to say he won't do it again, even if it's one of his own men. The phone rings and it nearly gives Fergal a heart attack. Peters is distracted momentarily.

  'Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, please don't kill me', Maddy says, the words barely a whisper on her lips.

  'I aint going to kill you', he reassures her, and makes his way with her over to one of the guards, who is slumped up against a back wall, face as white as a cloud.

  When he gets the nod from Peters, Fergal answers the ringing phone.

  'It's the police', he says gravelly.

  'Fuck', Peters says. He grabs the receiver from him and slams it down.

  'How many?' he calls to Carlos.

  'Just one squad car, two officers. They look like rookies. Wait, make that two squad cars', he says, as he watches another pull up.

  'How long once we're inside the safe?'

  'A minute, maybe two', Carlos says. 'Fuck, I don't know Peters, it's close.'

  The phone rings again. Peters stabs the nose of the gun so hard into Fergal's belly it makes him piss his pants a little. He picks up the phone. 'It's the police again', he says.

  Peters grabs the phone from him. 'There is a dead hostage already in here. Each time you call, I'll kill another', he says.

  Before Frank can ask him how many hostages he has inside, Peters has slammed the phone down again.

  'Hurry the fuck up', Frank barks to the driver, who is already driving as fast as he can to the scene of the crime.

  River takes the handcuffs from the guard's belt, and clicks them around Maddy's slender wrists. With her hands safely bound behind her back, he makes his way towards the stairwell.

  'You do what I say, and only what I say, and you won't get hurt, I promise you that', River whispers into Maddy's ear. It's the firs
t time, for as long as she can remember, that someone has been so physically close to her. If she wasn't so scared, she might have time to enjoy it.

  'I said where the fuck are you going?' Peters calls to River again. His gun is levelled at River's head, but River knows he's a much better shot if it comes down to it.

  'I'm walking out of here. The money in the safe is yours. I don't want any of it', he says to him, slowly backing away.

  'And the money in your hand?' Peters says.

  'Like the lady said already', River says. 'It isn't ours to take.'

  The phone rings again, and it shocks Peters so much he nearly squeezes off a round. While he's distracted, River slips down the stairs and out of sight.

  'Fuck', Peters says when he notices, and then fires the gun anyway, digging two bullets angrily into the beautiful, hand-carved wood of the curving banisters.

  'Fuck him', Carlos says. 'He won't get far.'

  Fergal has the handset pressed against his ear, and with his shaky hand writes down the code for the safe with his gold plated pen.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, and still hidden from the main door, River prepares himself. He hugs Maddy tightly across the middle, and presses his body so snugly into hers he can feel her heart beat. Lastly, the cold steel of the gun goes up against her temple and makes her gasp with fear.

  'This isn't going to be easy', River whispers to her, 'but it sure is going to be fun.'

  He takes a deep breath and moves towards the glass door so the waiting officers can see him.

  'Don't shoot. I'm coming out', he calls, and kicks the door open.

  'Drop your weapon! Get face down on the ground', come the shouts from the officers, all four of whom have their guns trained on the bodies in front of them, unable to separate the hostage from the robber.

  'Yeah, do you know what?' River says, 'I'm not going to do that. Instead, you are, unless you want this poor young woman to die.'

  Maddy can't help herself. She's crying like she hasn't cried for a long time. Her day has just gone from bad through worse, to life threatening.