The Job

by Jove Belle

  “You can always call back, Marcus. You want to be in charge, you talk to the police.” It was absolutely foolish to continue pushing Marcus, but she didn’t care. Everything she’d worked for was gone, and everything she’d hoped to accomplish was lost because of this asshole. She needed to watch for her opportunity, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t also create it. If he got frustrated enough, he’d get sloppy. Of course, he might kill her as an expression of that frustration, but she was willing to take the chance. If he shot her, the police force outside would have a clear set of protocols to follow. Dealing with an active shooter looked much different than negotiating with a bank robber turned hostage taker.

  Marcus glared at her but didn’t pick up the phone. Instead he turned to Keith, who’d just returned from whatever errand he’d been assigned. The heavy black duffel he’d carried looked to be empty now.

  “All set?”

  Keith nodded. “It’s ready whenever you are.”

  Marcus pulled the five-button trigger switch from his pocket and showed it to Sera. He waved it back and forth, tempting her to snatch it from his hand.

  “Remember this?”

  Sera’s stomach sank. How could she forget? According to Marcus, that device had triggered a massive explosion earlier that morning. She feared it was primed to do the same here but wanted to believe that wasn’t true.

  “What about it?”

  He smoothed his thumb over the second button and smiled. “This button. One push and it all goes boom.”

  The sinking feeling rose quickly, bringing bile high into her throat.

  “All what?” Her voice came out surprisingly strong and level.

  “But this one.” He moved his thumb to the third button without answering Sera’s question. “This one gets the party started.”

  Sera didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to consider the consequences. She lunged. The force of her full body was behind her when she crashed into Marcus, knocking the remote from his hands. It skittered across the floor, stopping against the glass edge of the exterior wall.

  Marcus careened to the ground, pulling Sera with him. She landed on top, punching, scratching, and kicking, anything to stay on top and keep him from getting up. The sound of rapid, wildly scattered gunfire barely registered. Nor did the high-pitched keening whine that rose out of the group of hostages in one voice, then another. By the time the sound pierced her awareness, the surprised murmur of the group had escalated to loud, confused chaos. She hesitated half a second when she heard Tor’s voice above the din calling for her help.

  “Sera, please. I need you.”

  Marcus seized the opportunity and shoved her off. She rolled easily, curling her body in to protect all her vital parts as he kicked her over and over with his heavy boots.

  She didn’t count, couldn’t count, how many blows he landed before he stopped suddenly. She unfurled slowly, testing to see if it was a trap waiting to be sprung. Would he start his assault anew once he detected signs of life? She saw several sets of boots, but none were primed to kick her. Most faced toward the exterior wall, but a few were turned toward the group of hostages.

  First, she sat. When nobody stopped her, she stood. Slower than normal, but she managed to get up without help, and that was a good sign. She felt like a concussion grenade had detonated inside her. Marcus kicked hard.

  “Where is it?” Marcus screeched. He’d come fully unhinged.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Me either.”

  “I swear it was next to the wall.”

  The detonator. He was looking for the detonator and couldn’t find it. Her brain was too fuzzy to decide if that was good or bad, but it was definitely an opportunity. First, she had to get to Tor. Then she would worry about what came next.

  *

  Tor knelt next to a young man, a customer whose name she didn’t know, and applied pressure to the wound in his side. Minnie did the same on the other side, only she tried to stop the flow from a second bullet hole in his thigh. There was so much blood, seeping out of seemingly nowhere to pool around his body in an ever-spreading arc. Her knees were soaked in it, as were her hands and her arms. It filled the crevices around her nails and the cracks in her palms. It was unlikely she’d ever be able to look at her own hands again and see them as anything other than red-tinged and tainted.

  She didn’t know what had happened. One minute Sera was talking calmly with the men around her, and the next, she tackled the leader, knocking him to the ground and bumping into another. Somewhere in the middle of that, someone had fired. A loud, fast streak of bullets had ripped across the floor, catching at least two people before the shots curved up the back wall to the ceiling. They’d stopped as suddenly as they’d started.

  She and Minnie had crawled to help a pale, stricken young man. His mouth gaped open and closed, but no words came out. She lost track of Edmund in the melee, but two other employees, including the uninjured security officer, were helping the other shooting victim, a woman whose wounds didn’t appear to be nearly as severe. Or bloody.

  “What do we do?” Minnie, no longer shivering, sounded small and confused, but as always, she didn’t shy away from the challenge. If they made it out of here alive, she’d have one hell of a story to tell her grandchildren that night.

  Of course Tor had taken first-aid courses over the years, diligently learning the right number of chest compressions to breaths. She’d bandaged her classmates and the test dummy, careful to apply pressure when instructed and to verify that the tape adhered properly. But none of that had prepared her for so much blood. “Just keep pressure on it.”

  She stripped off her jacket and pushed it against the man’s chest. All too quickly, a red starburst formed around the edges, filling to deeper red at the center. She pushed harder.

  Miraculously, Sera appeared at her side, like the hero Tor had always suspected she’d become. “How bad is it?”

  Tor didn’t know the scale of bad for gunshot wounds. But she did know that blood should stay inside the body, not out. And too much of his was on the wrong side. She shook her head. “Not good.”

  “He needs an ambulance.”

  Sera looked up, scanning the room. Tor followed her line of sight. The men were scattered around the lobby, peering under desks. None of them were watching the hostages.

  “What are they looking for?”

  Sera ignored her, instead pulling the man to his feet. Sera moved carefully, her face contorted in pain, but she didn’t stop. “It’s now or never.”

  Minnie tried to help on the other side, but she wasn’t strong enough. A man took her place, and they dragged the wounded man toward the door. Sera kept her eyes on the gunmen, so Tor did the same, scanning between them and watching for signs that they’d realized what was happening.

  Twenty feet to go. So far so good.

  Fifteen feet. Sera kept up a steady pace. Tor trailed behind, trying not to slip in the blood that threaded out behind them.

  Ten feet. Still safe.

  At five feet, the other hostages realized what was happening. The man with children ran toward the door, tugging the boys behind him.

  Three feet. More people, a blur, ran past, slowing their progress.

  Two feet and Tor knew there was too much movement for the men not to notice. How could they not? She’d counted as one after another scurried past, including the security guard carrying the wounded woman.

  One foot and their luck ran out.

  “Stop!” A rampaging voice rang through the lobby, bouncing off the glass and concrete in a demented echo.

  Sera didn’t stop. She pulled the door open and pushed the man toward the opening. The wounded man stumbled, but the man supporting his other side caught the weight and steadied him momentarily before they both slumped to the ground, more outside than in. Sera turned slowly and stepped away from the door.

  Laughter, in that same high, maniacal register, filled the foyer. “You don’t get away that eas
ily. Come back. Nice and easy.”

  Sera walked toward him as directed but kept her body between the gun and the rest of the group at the door. Tor didn’t know where her new tendency to act as a human shield had come from, but she didn’t like it at all. Still the opportunity was being provided, so she pushed Minnie toward the open door.

  “Go!”

  Minnie didn’t protest. She skirted the men, tripping over their limbs and slipping in the blood, but she didn’t stop. When she hit the sidewalk, she ran until a policeman grabbed her and pulled her behind a barrier.

  “You!” The man who Sera had tackled pointed at Tor. “You’re going to help me.”

  Two of the gunmen stormed forward to the door. The man who had helped Sera pulled frantically on the wounded man. They just managed to clear the opening before the gunmen pushed the door into place and twisted the deadbolt lever into place. They ran back to the shadows of the inner lobby, dragging Tor and Sera with them.

  They yanked Tor to a stop in front of the leader, pulling her arm so hard she could feel her shoulder socket tearing apart. The joint was not meant to be wrenched so brutally. Sera stopped short next to her. Surprisingly, they let her stay. When she reached for Sera’s hand, a reflex that she’d learned long ago and apparently never gotten over, Sera squeezed her fingers fleetingly, then dropped her hand altogether. She sidestepped, angling her body until she stood between Tor and the men. “Did you lose something, Marcus?” Sera asked in a cool, taunting voice that Tor had never heard before. She didn’t like it.

  Marcus backhanded her again. This time, Sera crumbled to her knees. She stayed there, one foot beneath her, taking slow, metered breaths. When she stood, blood dripped from her nose and her mouth curved in a cruel, hard smile.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Marcus raised his hand but didn’t strike her this time. Instead, he turned his attention to Tor. “This bank has security doors, right?”

  He pointed at the metal cylinders at the top of every bank of windows. When activated, metal doors rolled down to cover the glass. They weren’t bulletproof but were a much bigger deterrent to would-be criminals at night when the bank was unprotected. They were also a great deterrent for vandals. She nodded slowly.

  “I want you to close them.”

  “Okay.”

  She crossed to the panel, inserted her key, and then watched as the outside world slipped away.

  Chapter Ten

  Sera focused on her breathing and tried not to grimace with the sharp, heavy pain that radiated through her chest with every inhalation. Damn Marcus and his heavy boots. It felt like he’d cracked a rib, but she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. Instead of curling up on the carpet beneath one of the desks, she swallowed the wave of nausea and surveyed the lobby.

  The interior of the bank was much darker with the metal doors lowered. The shiny, polished banking institution had been transformed to a bunker with minimal light and gunmetal gray as the dominant color.

  The number of hostages had been cut in half. Good. Tor was still among them. Bad. How so many had made it out before Marcus realized what was happening was nothing short of a miracle. Or maybe he didn’t care. Without the detonator, his great jihad had been aborted midway through. Instead of becoming the face of terror, he was instead doomed to the reputation of a failed bank robber. The thought made Sera smile. She couldn’t wait to visit him in prison.

  Dread steadily replaced her relief from saving so many. Prior to this point, Marcus and his men had been acting with well-coordinated precision. The second things went slightly off course, Marcus had lost it. Without his direction, the other men floundered. When they were in control, she had some hope of predicting their next move. Now she was in uncharted territory, with too many hostages still left inside the bank.

  “It can’t just be gone.” Marcus paced the front of the bank, muttering to himself. “Things don’t just disappear.”

  She felt Tor next to her for a split second before Tor’s fingers brushed against hers, then retreated. Sera closed her eyes and stretched her own fingers to curl around Tor’s. She gave herself a moment to simply enjoy the way Tor’s palm felt pressed against her own. It’d been far too long since she’d enjoyed something so basic, and the fleeting experiences since she’d been at the bank were not enough. At the same time, they were too much. It was crushing to think she might never feel Tor’s hand in hers again and that distracted her from her primary goal. Survive first. Then they could sort out the rest. It was the second time Tor had reached for her hand in the past few minutes, and Sera forced herself to let go yet again.

  “What’s he looking for?” Tor asked.

  “A remote.”

  “A remote? To what?”

  Tor lived in a simpler world where people didn’t shoot one another over grievances at the office, a world where she didn’t recognize a remote as being useful for anything other than the TV. Sera didn’t want to be the one to change her worldview, to bring the reality that people sometimes blew shit up to make a point. But it was too late for all that. Marcus hadn’t picked this site by accident or because it was downtown. He’d picked it because this was Tor’s branch and was therefore most useful for hurting Sera. Why just blow up a building when you could also destroy your enemy at the same time? Marcus, for all his crazy pacing and talking to himself right now, was a smart, devious villain. And Sera had played right into it.

  “Sera, to what?” Tor nudged her arm gently. The easy jostle was enough to remind Sera of her cracked rib. The day was far from over, and she suspected the pain was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  “He didn’t tell me.” She skirted the question instead of answering head-on. Why upset Tor? Sera needed to focus on finding the explosives and disarming them, not on comforting Tor.

  “But you know. I know you know.”

  Sera nodded. Even though she hadn’t looked away from Marcus and the rest of his crew, she could feel Tor next to her, the closeness of her body. After more than a decade, her awareness of Tor was as acute as ever. She ached to pull Tor to her, to hold her, kiss her hair, and promise that everything would be okay. She would make this right. She would keep Tor from harm. She had to.

  “Tell me.” Tor touched her arm and, when Sera didn’t pull away, squeezed gently. “Tell me,” she repeated, her voice soft and tender and so reminiscent of too many nights spent cuddled together under the covers.

  “It’s a detonator. He filled the building with explosives.”

  The people around her gasped, and Tor’s fingers dug into her arm, gripping hard enough for the nails to scratch half-moons over the surface.

  “What?”

  “Search them,” Marcus yelled. “Someone has it.”

  As the men started toward the remaining hostages, the phone started to ring again. Sera exhaled heavily and headed toward the phone. Tor moved to join her, but Sera motioned for her to stay put. She was safer with the group than with her.

  “I’ll answer it.” She held her breath during the entire walk to the phone, waiting for Marcus to cut her off. But he didn’t. Instead of the police sergeant she spoke to earlier, Beth was on the other end.

  “Glad you’re still with us.” Beth’s voice held a forced lightness that scared Sera more than if she’d simply said, “You’re pretty fucked, you know?”

  “How are the wounded people?” In the rush of people for the door, the second shooting victim, a woman whose arm had been grazed, had also made it safely out. That was another mark in the plus column for the day.

  “The woman will be fine. The man…”

  Sera waited. She didn’t have the energy to fill in the blanks for Beth. She’d either tell her or she wouldn’t.

  “He’s headed for surgery. The odds aren’t good.”

  There had been so much blood. Sera had never seen anyone survive after losing that much. But maybe, maybe they’d gotten him out in time. She had no choice but to hold on to that possibility.

/>   “He doesn’t have demands, does he?”

  “Not yet.” Sera knew exactly how bad that was. A hostage taker without demands and an escape route was on his way to becoming a mass murderer. With the explosion on Hancock that morning, Marcus had already reached that status.

  “How many hostages are left?”

  She did a quick head count. “Eleven, twelve if you include me.”

  “Does he count you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know about the explosion this morning, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was him, right?”

  “I believe so.” Sera had no way to know for sure. Sometimes crazy people laid claim to acts that had nothing to do with them. Marcus definitely wasn’t at his most stable today.

  “He said it was?”

  “That’s correct.”

  She kept her answers brief, non-specific, and trusted that Beth would ask the right questions.

  “Are there explosives inside this building?”

  Sera hesitated. She had only seen a detonator, no actual explosives. But where there was smoke… “Yes.”

  “Do you think he plans to die in there today?”

  Marcus said he was willing to die for his beliefs, but he hadn’t specifically said he planned to blow himself up with the building. Then again, he hadn’t specifically said he was going to blow the building up either, and she had no doubt that was his plan.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think—”

  Marcus yanked the phone out of her hand, jerking her body around, and pain shot through her side. It took all her strength to stay on her feet. Marcus glared at her before turning his attention to the phone.

  “You talk to me, now.” Marcus spoke with a clarity she hadn’t heard from him that morning. The veil over his eyes had lifted, and he looked like a normal, smiling young man rather than a deranged terrorist with a mission.