In Death - 24.50 - Dead of Night

by J. D. Robb

  She quickly kicked off her shoes, righted herself, and yanked her arm out of his grasp.

  “You’re going to break your neck if you stay there.” He rested the hand with the gun in it on the top of the wall—not exactly threatening her with it but casually reminding her that she didn’t have one. “Get down now and come out.”

  Though the tone of his voice wasn’t harsh or menacing it left no room to doubt what he expected of her—full compliance. And in the fleeting seconds she took to decide if she would give it to him, she memorized the angles of his face, the small scar in his left eyebrow, the way his dark brown hair curled close to his forehead. His hazel green eyes were so keen and so aware they seemed capable of seeing through anything…including her.

  Bonnie jumped the seventeen inches to the floor—always a better bearing than falling—and slipped her shoes back on. He did the same in the stall next to her and exited while she straightened her blouse and rearranged her skirt. She was appalled that she had nothing to defend herself with: no purse, no cell phone, no semiautomatic of her own.

  He didn’t smile, but he nodded his head in approval when she left the stall. She edged forward and made a vague motion toward the sink. He waved his gun briefly. “Sure. Fine. But hurry.” He stepped up beside her at the sink. “Just so you know, I’m only taking one hostage today, and I’ve picked you. So anyone else who gets in my way from now on gets shot, and that includes anyone who tries to come in here while you’re stalling with the soap there.”

  Immediately, all her friends on the fourth floor came to mind and Angela’s name came up neon red with fireworks and a marching band. The Watsons were bound to have arrived by now and Angela would be looking for her.

  “S-so where are you planning to go next? From here, I mean.”

  “You do speak.” She nodded and took note of the gently worn jeans and brown tweed sports jacket he was wearing—nice-looking on him but misconstrued by so many these days to be proper business attire. “I’m not sure where to go. I didn’t come in here planning to rob the place. I wanted…I don’t have a real plan yet.”

  What? What kind of burglar was he to have no plan? This wasn’t some drive-through branch bank in the suburbs that passed out lollipops and coupons for a two-pound bag of grits with every transaction. This was Superior Atlantic, and everything about it—from the safe to the lamps to the locks on the front door—was state of the art. He was going to need a plan, a good plan.

  “Well, this is a busy bathroom so…so maybe we can…um…Oh! The small conference room. All the windows have blinds and there’s a lock on the door. Wewe’ll be safe there until you iron out your plan.”

  He studied her face. “Are you setting me up for a trap so you can escape?”

  “No. Not yet. I…I need time to iron out my plans, too.”

  One corner of his mouth curved up—like what she said was only half-funny. “Are you always this truthful?”

  “I try to be, but no, not always.”

  “Fair enough.” He took her by the arm and slipped the gun in the pocket of the jacket. “You look like a smart woman. Do I have to remind you not to do anything stupid? Don’t try to be a hero because I’m not going to shoot you—I’ll shoot your friends. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  Five

  There was no one in sight when they left the lavatory. They stopped briefly at a large support column, surveyed the territory, hurried forward. Her knees wobbled, she was so afraid of making a mistake. His hand was very warm around her arm, his grasp firm but not painful. She was aware of his height and the strength of his body as he walked beside her, close and dangerous.

  She wanted to scream—for several reasons—when she caught sight of the pinched-face and snide Valerie Barson from Mortgages coming toward them. Bonnie shuddered and shook her head, tried to feel shame for the overwhelming urge she felt to call out to her.

  “What is it?” His voice was deep and low in her ear. “You okay? You’re not getting sick on me, are you?”

  She turned to him slightly. “Please. Just please don’t shoot the woman in the purple dress coming toward us or I’ll go to hell for it.”

  His expression was only slightly more curious than it was confused. And the self-inflated mortgage broker was oblivious to his stare when she passed.

  “Bonnie.”

  “Valerie,” she responded, though any other day she’d have said “Val” to annoy her—and just like that the encounter was over and behind them.

  The Val/Valerie signal was weak and ambiguous, she knew that, and she didn’t expect Valerie to pick up on it, but she had to try. She had to stay aware and alert to any opportunity that presented itself.

  “Not a good friend of yours, I take it.” She shook her head in confirmation. “And you were thinking of doing something to get her shot.” She shook her head again in denial and disbelief. “I like the way you think, Bonnie.”

  She turned her head in surprise, remembered how he’d gotten her name—thanks a lot, Val—and decided that the more information she gathered about him…well, the more information she’d have.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cal.”

  “No last name, Cal?”

  He turned his head and glanced over her shoulder when he heard a door close behind them. His grasp on her arm kept her from doing the same. She couldn’t see if someone was going into an office or coming out, if they were walking toward or away from them. “No last name. Keep moving.”

  “This is your first bank robbery, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, no offense, but you’re not very good at it.” She met his eyes when he turned his head to look at her. They were a striking combination of deep green and golden brown—not too far apart—actually, really beautiful eyes for a thief. “There’s no real money above the first floor. No cash. Just forms, applications, a few checks, a lot of—” She stopped short and felt the small end of his gun in her ribs. Two young tellers came out of Human Resources chatting and happy. They smiled at both Bonnie and Cal as they hurried by.

  “Careful,” he said, low and light and somehow making that innocent word sound threatening.

  Bare minutes elapsed before someone else emerged from another office and stepped into their path. Another and then another. They would smile or speak if they knew her—it was almost like leaving bread crumbs for the police—and then suddenly, she remembered why she didn’t come this way very often.

  “Bonnie.”

  “Oh gosh, hello, Kevin,” she said, in much the same way Seinfeld greeted Newman. He was tall and so thin there was an inch of dead space inside his collar, with large brown eyes and a perpetually botched short, dark haircut. She was embarrassed to admit that they had had a very brief thing, nonsexual, thank God, several years ago, briefly, fueled by pity, for a short time. Big mistake. And he was married. Automatically, she stepped away to keep him out of her personal space and felt the robber at her back. She knew she should be too scared to stand so close to him, but frankly, Kevin was scarier.

  “It’s good to see you, Bonnie. How’ve you been? What brings you down to our end of the hall?” She could picture saliva dripping from his wolfish fangs as he contemplated an early lunch—her.

  “I’m fine. I’m showing my friend here, my good friend Cal around the bank.”

  “Right. Good. Hi.” He stuck out his hand to the robber. “Kevin McNally. Good to meet you.”

  Bonnie held her breath, unsure of what her captor would do. But then she had to wonder how, if he was holding her right arm with his left hand, he would hold the gun and shake hands with his right. And yet somehow, when he brought his right hand forward and locked his long-fingered, work-worn hand around Kevin’s soft, paper-pushing paw, it was empty.

  Her mind instantly pulled up several spectacular scenarios of making a dash for the stairwell, or for an office with a phone in it while his hand was empty, but every plan came up with the same snag—too many
people in the hallway.

  “How’s it going?” Cal said, shaking Kevin’s hand like it was any old day on the calendar.

  “I didn’t catch the last name.”

  “He didn’t pitch it.” Bonnie stepped back into the exchange, to give the robber an easy out. She was aware that criminals needed plenty of choices and options. It was when they felt cornered or pinned down that the real trouble started “You don’t have to tell him, Cal, but if you do be prepared to get buried in loan flyers and credit card applications.”

  She glanced up at Cal and caught him staring at her, bewildered and more than a little intrigued. A long second passed between them before he gave an indolent shrug and said, “I’m already on the mailing list.”

  “That’s right. I forgot.” Trying to suppress any unnecessary gestures that might attract attention, she slipped her hands behind her back. “And more than the people who are our potential customers, we love the people who already are…more…than that.” Denim brushed against her fingers and for a quarter of a second they robotically palpated the leg underneath…at least she hoped it was a leg! She instantly made two fists and brought them to her sides. “Okay. That’s all. We have to go now. Bye, Kevin.”

  “It’s great seeing you, Bon. Don’t be such a stranger.”

  Cal was all but running to keep up with her. “Hey. Hey. Slow down. I won’t let him bite you.”

  “Is that because you’re planning to bite me yourself? Because if you are you might as well shoot me now and get it over with, because I know what rape is about, buster.”

  “Rape?”

  “It’s about power and humiliation and…and little, bitty penises and I’m not going to give you the kind of reaction you want. Even if I feel it, I won’t show it to you. And…and that gun doesn’t really scare me either, you know. There are only five or six bullets in it and once they’re gone, they’re gone, and you’re dead meat. I’ll testify—”

  “Be quiet.” The pressure of his grasp and the stern set of his jaw sealed her lips. Looking up, she saw that his eyes were murky green and hard as stone. “I don’t plan on hurting anyone unless I have to, okay? And I don’t rape. I don’t know what kind of bug crawled up your—”

  “I put my hands behind me and felt your leg by accident.”

  “So?”

  “You moved.” His features softened with bewilderment. He looked totally unaware of the incident—and she felt like a fool. So she lied. “And I…well, I didn’t want anyone to see that you were holding my arm. People don’t walk around holding arms much anymore, and I hurried us away so no one would see and we could get to the small conference room quicker and…it’s there, behind you.”

  He turned, looked both ways down the hall, and led her forward.

  “Don’t go getting weird on me now, okay?”

  “No. No, I won’t. That was…a misunderstanding. I’m better now. Much better.”

  “Good.”

  “Oh, you know what, though? Wait. Wait.”

  “No.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  “Tell me inside.” He opened the door, turned on the light, pulled her into the room, and let go of her arm for the first time since they left the ladies’ room. It looked like one continuous move as he locked the door and twisted the knob to close the blinds, which were inside the window that was set inside the door. Then he hurried across the room to do the same to the the window that overlooked the street.

  This was her moment and she was taking it. Two steps to the door and half a second to wrap her hand around the doorknob, just another spark of time to get the door open and she’d be gone.

  “So who do you think will be faster, Bonnie? You getting through that doorway or me putting a bullet through your head?” he asked casually. He came up slowly behind her and gently steered her away from temptation.

  And that was it. She was locked in a room with a robber and his gun. Her legs suddenly went weak and she sat down.

  The small conference room was…small, and that’s why people didn’t use it often. There was space enough for the standard ten-foot table and the chairs if they were tucked neatly under the table, but put a body in a chair and there was no way to get around it. So Bonnie sat on the end where she had legroom. There was a cordless phone in the center of the table, no bathroom, no sink, no snack bar or soda machine.

  “Are you okay? You look pale.”

  She nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just not used to guns and thieves and missing important meetings and lying to people I hate.”

  “You’re missing an important meeting?” he asked, and again she nodded as she ran a hand through her chin-length auburn hair—with really fabulous highlights at the moment. “What do you do? Do you think they’re looking for you already?”

  “Oh yeah.” She was proud of the fact that people would miss her right away. A stupid thought at a time like this, she knew, but who wanted to be one of those invisible people who disappear and no one misses them. People with no friends and no family and no one who cares. One of those lonely people she was so afraid of becoming. “I’m a private banker.” She glanced at her watch. “And I’m about twenty-two minutes late for a meeting with a couple who made most of their money in car parts and wine. Interesting combination, don’t you think?”

  “So you don’t work at this bank?”

  “No, I do. I just don’t work with the general population anymore. I used to, but now people with certain amounts of money can hire me—through the bank, of course—to help them manage their finances, with everything from investment counseling to tax planning to legacy and philanthropic strategies to cash management. What about you? What do you do…when you’re not robbing banks, I mean.”

  “Construction.” He finished looking through the blinds in all directions on the street side of the room and did an awkward step-sidestep combo in the eighteen inches of space between the conference table and the wall, to check out the hallway. “People with certain amounts of money, you said. What’s a certain amount?”

  “Usually it’s at least $250,000 annually…although I do have two clients who started out with half that much.” She tapped her nails on the table, pinky to index finger. “One of them is my sister and her husband, even though I firmly believe that you should never do business with family…or mix family with money for that matter, so I’m actually doing both, but fortunately it’s working out fine.” She put her elbow on the table and hid her mouth behind her fist. “Sorry about that.”

  “What?” His eyes were focused on the hall.

  “I babble when I’m anxious.”

  He glanced at her briefly and went back to his surveillance. Then, after a few minutes, he said, “My mother used to talk all the time. Constantly. Even when she wasn’t nervous.”

  “And it drove you crazy, right?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly it was like having a bell on a cat; it helped us to hear her coming so we could vanish.”

  “Us?”

  “I have a brother and a sister.”

  “Do they know what you’re up to this morning?”

  “Hell, I don’t know what I’m up to this morning.” He left his post at the door and step-sidestepped his way back to the window. “Got any suggestions?”

  “On how to rob my bank? I don’t think so. But if you’d like to change your mind, you should do it pretty soon, before the police get here. The two of us can walk out the door together, part at the elevators, and go on about our lives. No one has to know about the past thirty minutes.”

  He shook his head. “Someone’s going to know I was here this morning. Someone in this place is going to pay attention to me.”

  She held her arms out wide. “What about me? You’ve got my full attention.”

  “Can you get me a loan for half a mil?” His tone was testy. “Personal or business, fixed rate or not, I’m not picky. I’ll pay it back any way you want—if it’s fair. I just need the money.”

  “For…”

  “Land. En
ough to build two hundred new houses on one-and-a-half-acre lots between The Plains and Markham.”

  “For half a million?” She knew the area. It wasn’t far from Pim’s house and he was going to need more than half a million.

  “Well, we already have $500,000 and the landowner says he’ll hold a note for that much more off the top.”

  “I see. And your collateral?”

  “Our business, our share of the land, my home, whatever you want.”

  “Not your brother’s home?”

  He shook his head once and lowered a blind with the nose of his gun. “He’s got kids.”

  She couldn’t say for sure that she’d ever fantasized about being kidnapped or held hostage but she’d bet the villain was never as decent a man as Cal seemed to be. “I do think I can get you a loan, Mr…. um…” She smiled at his profile as he peered down at the street. “You still haven’t told me your last name, Cal.”

  “I also haven’t told you the reason your…colleagues turned me down. And not just me but my brother, too, because he’s my partner.” She waited attentively—after all, talking money was her life. “I have a record.”

  “Under the circumstances, I don’t know why I’m so surprised, but I am. You don’t seem like a criminal to me.”

  “I’m not. Not anymore. The last time I was in jail was eleven years ago, for something I did four years before that. I was young. I was a punk. I paid my dues. Since then I’ve been busting my hump with my brother to keep our business together. And now that we’re at a place where we can finally take some risks and spread our wings a bit, we can’t because of my record.”

  Felony arrests were covered by a bank policy, she knew, but at the moment she couldn’t say it was a good one, nor would she say it was fair. He had paid his debt to society; he had turned his life around and made something good for himself, but he was still being penalized.

  And, no, the irony of discussing his sustained rehabilitation with his kidnap victim was not lost on her.