by Sharon Sala
* * *
The phone rang just as Jessica was getting out of the shower. She answered it, dripping wet, and with a towel clutched beneath her chin.
“Hello?”
“Hi, honey, it’s me. Are you ready to go?”
She glanced down at the puddle in which she was standing and then up at the clock.
“Just about.”
“Great. I’m going to run by the bank and cash a check and then I’ll be right there, okay?”
A shiver of foreboding suddenly swept through her, and she yelled, afraid that he was about to hang up.
“Stone, wait!”
“I’m right here, what’s wrong?”
The sensation was gone. She had nothing but instinct on which to focus.
“Oh…nothing, I guess. Just that I love you.”
His voice deepened. “I love you, too, Jessie Leigh. And I can’t wait for you to see the cabin. You’re going to love this one, I swear. It has running water and an indoor toilet and a real feather bed. Out back, there’s a place where moss grows thick, right beneath a big tall pine. And at night, if you lie on your back and look straight up through the trees, you can see stars. And if you squint your eyes just right, it almost looks as if the stars are hanging on the ends of the branches like Christmas ornaments.”
The image was beautiful, and with Stone in the picture, just about perfect.
“I can’t wait to see it,” she said softly.
“I’ll be there soon,” he promised.
“Be careful,” she said, but he’d already hung up.
She glanced at the clock again and then swiped at the water on the floor before heading back to the bathroom to get a fresh towel. She didn’t have much time to get dressed, but at least this time, she was already packed.
* * *
An hour had come and gone since Stone’s call, and the sun was completely up. The day was getting hotter by the minute as Jessica sat in the porch swing, staring intently up the street, watching for him to turn the corner.
Bumblebees dipped in the flower beds below her, buzzing a warning in case anything came too close. Sweat had beaded on her upper lip, and the shaggy style of her haircut was raking the back of her neck in damp persistence. The longer she squinted into the bright light of day, the more strained her eyes became. She couldn’t imagine what was taking him so long, but she was worried. With the beginnings of a nagging headache threatening to ruin her day, she finally gave up and went inside to get something for the pain.
For Jessica, the silence inside her house was unnerving, and after she’d taken her pills, she flopped down on the couch, picked up the remote and turned on the TV, unprepared for what she was about to hear.
“…Police. No word on the situation is available as yet, but we have it on good authority that several people have been taken hostage.”
Jessica froze, watching the screen with a wide, blank stare. It didn’t matter what they were saying, because in her heart, she already knew. The very thing that she’d feared most of all was happening. And even though she didn’t know details, she knew that somehow Stone was involved.
“Again, for those of you just tuning in, word has reached the station that the main branch of the Bank of Grand Springs is being robbed as we speak. Over an hour ago, a silent alarm went off. Police responded by surrounding the bank, although no one has made any attempt to come out. For your information, the following streets have been blocked off to normal traffic for the protection of passersby. Please take an alternative route to work.”
She groaned. What about the protection of the people inside?
The announcer droned on, having repeated the story several times already, although Jessica wanted to scream.
Tell me more. Tell me more. I’m just tuning in.
She glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve. Almost noon. She covered her face with her hands and remembered her dream—and the blood.
Stone. Oh, Stone.
She got up from the couch and headed for the door. She had to be there. She had to see for herself. Someone would tell her that Stone was all right.
* * *
Stone glanced down at the check in his hand as he entered the bank. When he looked up, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a gun.
His first thought was Oh, hell, and his second was for the gun locked in the glove box of his car. Before Stone could move, a heavyset man with a pockmarked face jammed his gun in Stone’s ribs.
“Give me your cell phone. Then get your hands in the air, and get over there with the rest of them!” he shouted, waving his gun toward the counter where at least a dozen people were crouched on the floor.
Stone did as he was told. Twice the gunman jabbed Stone in the back, and each time it happened, Stone flinched, half expecting the gun to go off.
Phones were ringing all over the building. A woman was crying hysterically, while two others tried to comfort her. When Stone met their gazes, he knew they were as frightened as their friend, just too afraid to speak.
Another man was crouched on the floor, holding a handkerchief to his head, while blood seeped out from beneath the edges in a slow, steady stream. It was Bill Jackson, the vice president of the bank, and when he saw Stone, recognition flickered. Stone’s instinct was to check Jackson’s wound, but as he started to crouch, the gunman jabbed him in the side.
“Sit down over there and don’t be a hero. If he’d done what he’d been told, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Stone sat. If any of the gunmen figured out he was a cop, he was in trouble. And as he sat, he began to focus on the man with the pockmarked face, and the way he kept waving his gun.
The man moved back and forth like a caged cat, all the while keeping his assault rifle aimed at the hostages’ faces, while another man, smaller in stature and weight, kept darting from the windows to the hostages and back again.
Even though the big man seemed to be the one in charge, it seemed that he was nervous about something other than being caught. When the man suddenly yelled, it became all to obvious.
“Damn it, Scanlan, you and Cody hurry up back there!”
Scanlan? Cody? Then that meant there were four of them instead of two. Stone’s muscles became tense as he continued to watch the pair in front of him, gauging their nervousness against the possibility of someone getting shot. And at the thought, he suddenly remembered Jessie’s dream and his stomach knotted. My God! What if her premonition about me is going to come true? What if I never get out of here alive? Stone sat without moving, contemplating the times he and Jessie had wasted because of him—because of his inability to believe she wouldn’t turn out like Naomi if he married her. He kept seeing her face, those eyes, that smile. And then the man they called Trigger began pacing in front of where Stone was sitting and he began to watch him, knowing that at any moment this situation could get deadly.
Trigger was a small man, nervous and wiry, with stringy blond hair and a thin, wispy beard. He kept looking toward the street and sniffing repeatedly as he danced from one foot to the other.
Stone didn’t move, but his expression mirrored his thoughts. Junkie. That one is a junkie.
Trigger danced closer to his buddy in a nervous jerk. “Hey, Garrett, want me to go see what’s keepin’ Cody and Scanlan?”
Garrett. The name rang a bell in Stone’s memory, but as he searched the man’s face, no sense of recognition came.
Coldly, and without warning, Garrett pointed his rifle in the little man’s face. “Damn it, Trigger, you do like I told you and nothin’ else.”
Trigger’s attention shifted instantly, like a dog that had been given a fresh quarry to point, and he focused on the woman in tears, jamming his semiautomatic at her nose.
“Shut up!” Trigger yelled. “Or I’ll give you somethin’ to cry about!” Then he laughed, and it was a wild, crazy kind of shriek. “That’s what my old lady usta tell me.”
When the gun touched the woman’s face, her eyes rolled back in h
er head and she slumped to the floor in a faint.
Stone watched her fall and knew a sense of relief. Fainting had probably saved her life. The little man was high as a kite. There was no telling what he might do.
And while they all sat, caught in a web not of their making, someone in the back of the room suddenly shouted, and there was a loud thump, then sounds of a scuffle. Stone guessed it was coming from the vault where the other two robbers had supposedly gone.
At the noise, Garrett pivoted, his eyes cold, his stance tense and crouched. Then he turned to Trigger.
“Go see what’s taking them so long.” Then Garrett changed his mind and caught him by the arm. “Never mind,” he said. “Here they come.”
Stone eyed the two approaching men. One was short and stocky, with thinning red hair that looked stiff and dirty. While Stone didn’t recognize him, there was something about his behavior that told Stone the man was an old hand at this game.
“Damn it, Scanlan, where’s Cody?” Garrett snarled, his eyes darting nervously toward the back of the bank.
Scanlan yanked at the man standing beside him, then began to curse as he jabbed his gun in the middle of the man’s back. “He’s in the vault. This son of a bitch here locked him in the vault!”
Stone watched Garrett freeze. Unlike Stone, who’d come into this mess slightly late, everyone else was aware of the news, and they held their breath with great fear.
“What the hell are you sayin’?” Garrett whispered. “Where’s my little brother?”
“That’s what I been tryin to tell you,” Scanlan yelled, and shoved the teller to his knees. He fell at Garrett’s feet. “He locked him in the vault. Says he can’t get it open again until eight o’clock tomorrow. Says it’s a damned time lock.” Then he aimed his gun at the man on the floor. “You know what I say? I say shoot him and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Garrett’s face flushed, making the pockmarks look even deeper and darker. Momentarily speechless, he stalked around the lobby in a complete circle, and then yanked the young teller to his feet, shoving him up against a desk.
“What’s your name?” Garrett asked.
“David Clark.”
“Well, then, Mr. David Clark, you get back there and unlock that vault, and you do it now.” He shoved the barrel of the gun beneath Clark’s chin to prove his point.
“I can’t,” Clark said, and started to cry. “It’s on a time lock and won’t open until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I swear!”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed, and he reacted with cold precision, drawing back and hitting the young teller on the side of the head. Clark dropped like a poleaxed steer.
Garrett pointed his gun at each and every hostage individually. “You people better say your prayers and bed down for the night, because that’s my brother in there, and I ain’t leavin’ here without him.”
An elderly man suddenly moaned and slumped. The woman beside him screamed. “It’s his heart! He’s having a heart attack!”
Trigger started cursing, and Scanlan and Garrett were shouting in each other’s faces.
Stone couldn’t stay still any longer.
“Let me help him,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, everyone, including the robbers, froze.
Garrett turned, his gaze fixed upon Stone’s face.
“I didn’t say you could talk,” he said slowly, jiggling the rifle loosely in his hands, as if testing it for weight.
Stone pointed. “You can do time for robbing a bank, but they’ll execute you if that man dies.”
He never saw the blow coming. One minute Garrett was standing over him with a look of hate on his face, and the next thing Stone knew, his cheek was bleeding and the cut had gone straight to the bone. He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth—then looked up.
“You can beat the hell out of me, and it won’t change a thing.”
Stone started to get up, when Garrett jammed the gun in his belly.
“On your knees, pretty boy. You want to help him, you crawl.”
Ignoring the blood dripping down his cheek from the cut, Stone took off on all fours, and moments later, he had the man flat on his back and was administering CPR.
Just then, at the entrance to the bank, a uniformed officer suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a woman who was starting into the bank, hustling her quickly out of sight. Trigger screamed and began waving his gun over the hostages’ heads, then toward the door and back again.
“Cops! Cops! We’ve been made! Son of a bitch, we’ve been made!”
“So what,” Garrett growled. “We ain’t goin’ anywhere, at least until tomorrow mornin’. I ain’t leavin’ Cody behind.”
Stone continued the motions of CPR, and in the back of his mind, kept thinking that on a scale of one to ten in a worst-case scenario, this mess would be about a twelve. The only positive thing about the entire episode was when the old man’s color began to improve. Suddenly he coughed and then moaned.
Stone leaned back on his heels, catching his breath as he checked for a pulse. It wasn’t good, but it was there, and for now, it was the best he could do. The woman, who Stone supposed was the wife, started to sob, and he reached out to touch her.
“Try to keep him still,” he said softly.
“His pills. They’re in his jacket,” she said, pointing toward her husband’s pocket.
Stone took them out, read the instructions and slipped one under the man’s tongue, then handed the bottle to his wife.
“Better hang on to these for him. Just in case.”
Her fingers curled around the small plastic vial. “Thank you. Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved Gordon’s life.”
“You! Dr. McDreamy! Get back over here where you belong.”
Stone gave the woman one last assuring glance, and then crawled back to where he’d been sitting, taking careful note of the situation as it now stood.
Trigger was scratching his skin and cursing without pause. Scanlan was huddled in a corner with his gun across his knees, and if looks could kill, they’d all be dead. However, it was Garrett who worried Stone most. There was a wild, hunted look in his eyes as he kept glancing toward the vault in the back of the room.
And the phones in the bank continued to ring.
* * *
Jessica was running. Every now and then she got a glimpse of herself as she flew past the plate-glass windows in the downtown district, and it was like looking at a stranger. She saw flashes of blue—her jeans and the sky blue shirt that Stone liked so much, the one he said matched the color of her eyes. She saw traces of white—the tennis shoes she was wearing, and the stark fear that had drained all the color from her face.
Wind whipped through the streets and into her eyes, raking through her hair and giving it a more windblown appearance than normal, and yet she ran without caution, dodging streets that had been blocked off—taking alleys to get where she wanted to go.
And then through the mouth of the alley just up ahead, she saw the stone edifice that marked the front of the Bank of Grand Springs. There, parked in front, just as she’d feared, was Stone’s car. She burst out of the alley, straight into an officer’s arms, and before he could stop her, she was screaming Stone’s name.
Someone grabbed her from behind and she spun, her eyes filled with hope, only to see Jack Stryker’s face, drawn from worry. She grabbed his arms, the plea in her voice no less urgent than the expression on her face.
“Jack! Where’s Stone?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he began dragging her out of the danger zone. When they were safe, he turned, his grip still firm upon her arm.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing down here?” he growled. “You could get yourself killed, and then what do you think Stone would say?”
It was all she could do not to scream. “He’s in the bank, isn’t he?”
Stryker sighed. “We think so. I recognized his car the moment I arrived. Our best guess is they’ve taken at le
ast a dozen hostages, maybe more.”
She moaned, and he caught her as she swayed.
“Look,” he added. “We don’t really know what’s going on. They’ve made no contact. They don’t answer the phone. No one’s made any demands. Right now, it’s simply a waiting game.”
“What if they don’t know the police are out here?” she said.
Stryker’s face darkened. “Oh, they know, all right. Our best guess is they’ve been in there at least forty-five minutes, maybe longer. And since they’ve made no move to come out—”
“They’re going to shoot him,” she moaned, and covered her face.
“No. You’re wrong, Jessie. I’ve been here almost from the start and no shots have been fired.”
She clutched his hand, squeezing it hard enough to make Stryker wince.
“No, you don’t understand,” she cried. “They’re going to shoot him.”
Stryker blanched as the implication of her words finally dawned. He looked toward the bank in disbelief, and then back at Jessie, wanting to argue. But he knew more than most about her, and the doubt factor in this situation had to be ignored.
“Hell,” he said softly, and then he heard his voice shake as he asked. “Will he die?”
She paled and slumped to the street in a faint. Stryker reached out, but not soon enough to catch her. Her head hit the curb with a thump.
“Oh, man,” he groaned as he lifted her up in his arms and carried her toward a parked ambulance that had been called to the scene. “First casualty.” He said a quick prayer as he laid her down on the grass.
* * *
Jessica woke up with a headache, and her first thought was that the painkillers she’d just taken hadn’t worked. And then she looked up and saw sky and the back of Jack Stryker’s head, and she moaned. A cold pack shifted on her forehead, and she reached up to feel it with a shaky hand, wondering why it was there.
Jack turned, his face mirroring his concern, then leaned down and laid a hand on her forehead.