by Jove Belle
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
Did that mean he had plans for the other four buttons? Were four more locations like Beckford targeted? If that was the case, he was spending way too much time transitioning between locations. At this rate, he’d never finish before the end of the day. Perhaps he only had one more target and the rest of the buttons would go unused? But if that was the case, why buy a remote with five buttons? Did they have a surplus sale at Psychos Are Us? Did the bad guys pick up a gross of five-button transmitters and then blow them out in a midnight-madness sale?
At this point, she had far too many questions, expanded beyond her concerns about her own safety, and far too few answers.
“Oh.” What else could she say? Every other attempt to get him to share his plans had failed. But now that he was in a talking mood, perhaps thinking they were bonding over his diabolical genius, it was worth another shot. “Want to tell me about it?”
“I’m going to do so much more than tell you. I’m giving you a front-row seat.” Marcus eased to a smooth stop in the red-striped fire lane in front of America First Bank. The second SUV pulled in behind them.
Sera’s stomach dropped. She’d avoided this bank since moving back to her hometown. At first, she’d had no reason to visit it. Then, after her mom told her about Tor’s success, about how quickly she’d risen to the position of branch manager, Sera had avoided it on purpose. As much as she wanted a chance to remove the qualifier “ex” from “girlfriend” when she referred to Tor, she also wanted to be prepared for that meeting. She didn’t want to face her while, by all appearances, she was a certifiable bad guy doing very bad things. Her mom believed her when she said she couldn’t explain what she was doing, but maybe someday she’d be able to. She couldn’t ask Tor to do the same, especially not when her cover would put her in danger, too.
“What are we doing here? America First Bank? What’s special about it?”
“It’s just like Beckford, a symbol for greed and selfishness in America. These institutions are the embodiment of it.” Marcus handed her a black pullover ski mask. “Put this on.”
Marcus and Craig slipped matching masks over their faces. Disappointingly, Craig had his own mask at the ready. That meant, despite whatever hope she was holding out, he was in this enough to know the plans and was prepared for action. No one was forcing him to participate.
She pulled her mask on but continued to ask questions. She needed to find a way to work their exact location into the conversation, just in case the GPS tracker on her cell phone wasn’t working. Her phone was old enough that it might not even include that option. Eventually, Beth would connect the dots between the armed gunman in a downtown bank and the phone call from Sera—assuming the call even went through—but the delay could make the difference between life and death for a whole lot of people. “But why downtown? Wouldn’t a bigger bank make your point a little better?”
“Are you really that dumb? The biggest banks are downtown.”
Of course Sera knew that. Banks put their center of operations in central locations. They didn’t base everything in an off-the-map suburb somewhere.
“It gives you a bigger body count when all is said and done, too, doesn’t it?”
“You’re overlooking the one real plus to this location.” Marcus’s smile chilled her. “Your girlfriend works here.”
Sera’s panic level spiked and pulsed like a raw nerve. Marcus knew too much about her past, too much about Tor. Beth, and everyone else at the FBI, had no idea who Tor was, yet this lunatic had managed to stumble over the most significant person from her personal history. It was unbelievable, and it set her on edge every time he reminded her of it. “How many times do I have to tell you she’s not my girlfriend?”
Marcus smiled but didn’t answer the question. “Enough talking. We need to get moving.”
With that, Craig handed Marcus a shotgun and held up an assault rifle of his own. They climbed out of the SUV. When Sera hesitated, Marcus pointed his weapon at her. She started moving before his finger made its way to the trigger.
Ready or not, she had to accept this was actually happening. She shook her head and sent out a plea to any god that might be listening. If she made it through the day, she promised to file her reports on time, to visit her mom more often, and to start attending mass regularly. In exchange, all she wanted was to live through the next five minutes.
Chapter Five
When Tor started working in the financial district downtown, she rented space in one of the monthly parking lots. She’d leave her car and keys with an attendant when she arrived in the morning, then pick them up in the evening when she got off work. They packed cars in the lot like a mad-hatter version of a jigsaw puzzle. Everything fit, but something wasn’t quite right about it. Sometimes she had to wait after work for ten to twenty minutes while they worked her car out of the puzzle, one vehicle at a time. It amazed her, the way they maneuvered the cars, like a twisted metal orchestra.
When America First recruited her, she’d negotiated for a personal parking space. She never appreciated it more than she did that morning. The streets were jammed fuller than usual, and the parking lots, like the one she used to use, were filled to capacity. Between onlookers and news vans, navigating downtown was a nightmare. She sighed in relief when she reached the underground lot beneath her building. She was even happier when she arrived at her space and found it empty. Her space was in a prime location, and the name plaque wasn’t always enough to deter people when the rest of the garage was full.
She parked and ran for the elevator. She didn’t expect anyone inside to know any more than she did about what had happened with Beckford or Chris, but it was suddenly very important that she be inside among people she cared about. America First Bank was more than a job for her. Yes, her career mattered to her, but the people she worked with were her Monday-through-Friday family. She needed the comfort of their presence and hoped to reassure them with hers.
Right as the elevator arrived, Tor remembered to lock her car. She twisted on her heels, remote in hand, only to have one of her damn heels snap. She staggered to find her balance.
The door to the elevator slid shut just as she was ready to step inside, and Tor fought the urge to cry. When compared to the big things, like exploding buildings and a missing best friend, a broken heel wasn’t the end of the world. Neither was a missed elevator. But no matter how Zen she wanted to be about the day’s events, she was still dangerously close to losing it. When the elevator finally arrived the second time, she said a quick prayer of thanks and moved into the car, determined the day had to get better.
Minnie met her at the elevator with a fresh cup of coffee and an iPad queued up to the day’s agenda. They reviewed the upcoming day, as was their normal routine, but it felt off this morning. Between the solemn look on Minnie’s face as she recited the schedule and her own off-kilter, broken-heel stride, Tor gave up all hope of looking dignified.
“Everyone is in your office.”
Tor stopped walking. She’d completely forgotten about the routine meeting scheduled that morning with her sales staff.
“Please tell me they haven’t been waiting in there for me all morning.”
“No, of course not. Security called when you pulled in. Besides, it’s not really that late.” Minnie pointed to the wall clock over the main entrance.
No matter how long she worked here, Tor never grew tired of the view. She parked under the building, so she and the other employees took the elevator up, but the main floor of the bank sat at street level. It opened up at an angle to the corner with a view of the small courtyard / amphitheater across the street. In the summer it hosted outdoor, lunch-hour concerts and was home to several food vendors, and every Wednesday and Saturday, local farmers brought their produce into the city and set up a market. They were already hard at work that morning and would soon be ready for sales. She usually made a trip over at some point, but she doubted she’d have time today.
“Anything else that’s not on the schedule?” On her way toward the stairs, she grabbed a cookie from a nearby counter. Minnie liked to bake and regularly brought in treats to share. Snickerdoodles were Tor’s favorite, and she’d gained ten pounds when Minnie started as her assistant before she’d convinced Minnie to take a few more cookies to her grandchildren. Now she limited herself to once a week, enough to give the employees and bank patrons a taste without surrounding Tor by constant temptation. She took a bite and brushed the crumbs off her lapel. “God, that is so good.”
“Thanks.” Minnie kept pace with her on the stairs to the meeting. “Maureen Presby just called. She’d like you to call her back.”
Tor had known Maureen for years, and she’d worked with Maureen’s husband, Edmund, long enough that she even considered Maureen a friend. Still, they didn’t have the kind of relationship in which they called one another randomly, so the news surprised her. Edmund’s sales numbers had been declining in the past few weeks, to the point that Tor had penciled some time with him into her schedule for after the staff meeting. That, however, was a business concern. It was unlikely Maureen even knew about it.
“That’s unusual. Is everything okay?”
“She didn’t say, sorry.”
“What else?” She looked over the rail toward the bank floor and waved at Astrid. It wasn’t the way she liked to greet her floor manager, but given the circumstances, it would have to do.
Minnie shook her head. “I checked in with Astrid. She said she’s good to go.”
“What about armored?” Today was a regular pick-up day for their armored services. That required heightened security when the vault was open. They were at their most vulnerable at that point.
“They are delayed due to traffic. Astrid and Bart have been notified.”
Bart was a retired city cop and current head of security for the bank. They were fortunate to have someone with so much experience in the role. His presence and expertise helped Tor sleep better at night.
Tor paused with her hand on the door to her office. “Have you heard anything else about Beckford?” That question translated directly to “Have you heard from Chris,” but Tor couldn’t stand for the answer to be no. Somehow if it was a broader question about Beckford in general, the answer wouldn’t sting as much.
Minnie shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Okay then. Buzz me in thirty minutes. We need to keep this short today.” Tor limped into the room and wished she’d arrived before her staff as she usually did. She kept a spare set of shoes in the closet off her private bathroom, but she couldn’t come up with any quick, subtle way to get them with everyone watching her. She stopped a few feet into the room and slipped off both heels. She saw no point in pretending everything was fine when her line of vision shifted by three vertical inches with each step. To their credit, her employees didn’t laugh at her. “Good morning, everyone. Sorry for the delay.”
They issued a round of murmured greetings as she took her seat and noticed that Edmund’s chair was empty. On a normal day, he was first into the office, often beating Tor. His absence was one more sign of how far from normal the day was. Before she could ask about him, he shuffled into the room, looking far worse than she did. His tie was slightly askew, and his hair, normally perfectly coiffed, was windblown, and not in a shampoo-commercial-sexy kind of way. He took his seat with a nod and straightened his tie as he sat. “Sorry.” When he spoke, his expression accentuated the wan, sallow tint in his cheeks.
Tor nodded. “I’m just getting here as well. Traffic was something else this morning.” She didn’t know for sure that traffic had held him up, but it was as good an excuse as any. She could talk to him privately after the meeting and find out what was really going on.
After that, she rushed through the meeting. On principle, their weekly meetings were important, but in function, more often than not, the daily distractions kept them from being truly effective. Still, the weekly face time was of value, so she kept up the tradition. Today, more than any other time, it was difficult to spend the time talking about sales quotas when all she really wanted to do was check to see if they’d learned anything new about Beckford since she’d last listened to the news.
“What’s going on with Beckford? Do you know?” an investment counselor asked.
“Did you see the traffic? Took me forever to get here this morning. I almost turned around at least fifty times.”
“You and me both. And did you see the wall of smoke? My God.”
“Do you think there’s anything left of the Hancock building?”
“I heard it was terrorists. That’s some crazy shit.”
Tor listened to her staff chat about the explosion and felt her control slipping further away. Instead of answers, all she got was more questions. The reference to terrorists chilled her. Would they ever reach a point where the threat of terrorist acts against financial institutions didn’t feel like it was lurking right around the corner? Despite all the training the bank had invested in, she felt drastically unprepared for the possibilities. All she could do was hope that the reports about Beckford were wrong. It could be something simple, like a natural-gas line, rather than a purposeful act carried out with deadly intent. It was an ideological dilemma she’d never before considered. When faced with the possibility of an angry political message delivered with explosives, she hoped for good old-fashioned human error. At the end of the day though, those people were just as dead, no matter the cause.
“Okay, let’s wrap this up.” She called the meeting a few minutes early, but no one seemed to mind. It gave them that much longer to discuss the Beckford situation freely among themselves. Before the armored truck arrived, she should have enough time to have a brief conversation with Edmund. “Edmund, a moment, please.”
The others left quickly, giving Edmund curious glances as they made their way from the room. Edmund. His name still got her. A normal “drink beer and watch football on Sunday” kind of guy would ask others to call him Ed. Or even Eddie. Edmund, however, drank tea from tiny cups with his pinkie extended and spent weekends antiquing with his wife. And somehow it worked for him.
“You wanted to speak with me?” Edmund spoke with formality despite the fact they’d been friends for years. Before she’d taken over the branch, they’d competed for sales, and she lost as often as she won.
“How are you?” She leaned forward and watched him closely. He wasn’t the type of guy to answer the question directly, but she knew by the way he straightened his tie and finger-combed his hair into place that something was wrong. Of course, she’d already known that by his sales numbers and his distressed appearance that morning. The point of the conversation was to figure out the source of his stress and what she could do to help.
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
She gave him a deliberate look and waited. She let the pause linger, hoping he would offer an explanation. She didn’t want to talk about his appearance and his sales numbers. He was aware of those issues, certainly. She wanted to know what was causing the changes. Something major must be happening to cause such a drastic deviation from the norm.
Edmund sat stoically, offering nothing to answer her unspoken questions. Despite their friendship, as his boss, she couldn’t force him to disclose personal information. The lines between personal and professional were blurred with him, but they still existed. She had to respect his right to privacy and focus solely on the performance issues. She waited another moment for him to relent. He didn’t and she sighed.
“Your numbers have been suffering lately.” She lifted the thin file that was barely a fraction of his normal weekly transactions. Saying they’d been suffering was a generous assessment. Dropped off the face of the planet was far more accurate. She pushed the file across the table to Edmund. “Can you offer me some insight as to why that is?”
He took the file but didn’t open it. Instead, he left it lying on the table with his palm pressed flat against it.
The manila jacket crinkled around the impression of his hand. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing happened. She waited, watching as his eyes grew bright and shiny. Finally, he stood and said, “If you’ll excuse me.” He left the room without waiting for a reply.
Tor almost called out to him, but in the end, she let him go without saying anything. For all his quirks, he was a quality salesman and a good person. It hurt to see him so obviously struggling when she had no idea how to help. The last thing she wanted to do was make him feel worse. She’d delay talking to him again until she knew more.
She waited for a few minutes to see if he’d return. When he didn’t, she moved the file from the table to her desk. Before she’d taken over this office, she’d been envious of the layout. It housed her workspace on one end and conference space on the other. It had seemed so official and fancy to her when she’d started at this bank. Of course, then she’d been relatively new to the industry, her business degree so new the ink had barely dried on the signatures. Now, she found it to be cumbersome. When she talked on the phone, her voice carried and echoed. No matter how many plants she brought in, she still sounded like a half-drunk sports nut in a bar anytime she spoke. Her voice carried in such a way it made her overly aware of her pronunciation. The upside was her diction had improved.
She sat at her desk and contemplated what to do about Edmund. With any other employee, she wouldn’t reach out to his spouse to check on his well-being. However, since Maureen had contacted her first, technically Tor was simply being polite by returning the call. No violation of ethics there.
She dialed Maureen’s phone number and checked her closet for shoes while she waited. All she found was a pair of flats that didn’t match her suit, but it was better than hobbling or going barefoot for the rest of the day. She slipped them on as Maureen picked up. Tor went through the niceties—hello, I’m sorry it’s been so long—then got to the point.