Against The Odds

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_82bbe99a-eb9a-553a-9eb1-d4dd5e3b53fb)

HOPE SANDERSON WOKE to her worst nightmare.

The hand clamped over her mouth smelled of garlic and sweat. She gagged, struggling to get away. A cold circle at her temple made no sense until fetid breath washed over her. “Stop. I have a gun.”

She froze, trying to see through the dark, her heart throwing panicky rabbit beats. Her breath, whistling through her nose, was the only sound in the room. If her body hadn’t screamed for oxygen, she’d have held it, to hear better. A lone intruder? That rustling in the corner, was that another?

What do they want?

Her muscles were strung so tight she thrummed with their vibration. Clamped knees wouldn’t stop them for long, if they intended rape. Her stomach roiled. She locked her jaws tight and swallowed. What would he do if she threw up on him? “Please, no.” It came out muffled by his sausage fingers.

“You promise not to scream, I’ll let go.” A deep scratchy whisper abraded her face.

Her head jerked up and down in a spasm that once started, wouldn’t stop.

The offensive hand withdrew, but the cold circle pressed harder. How did it stay cold, held against a head superheated with speeding thoughts?

Menace emanated from corners unlit by the weak moonlight spilling over the sill. A scuff of carpet in one corner, a wheezing breath from the foot of her bed.

Three of them?

Rape wouldn’t be the worst they could do. Her throat worked, trying to swallow the drought in her mouth.

“Get up.”

When the gunman pushed a finger into the soft underside of her breast, Hope fought the tangle of covers and leaped out of bed. She pulled at her nightgown, trying to cover everything at once, thanking God she wore a floor-length gown. Wishing it covered more.

“Get dressed.”

“Wh-what do you want?”

“You’re taking us to the bank to make a withdrawal. A very large withdrawal.”

A bronchial chuckle from the shadow at the foot of the bed.

They only want money. Of all the scenarios pinging against her skull, that hadn’t been one of them.

Her brain shifted from personal torture to bank manager mode. Procedures outlined what to do in the case of a bank robbery, but were woefully silent on home invasion and kidnapping.

“I can’t get in.” She jumped when the cold circle touched her breast.

“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re the manager. You telling me you don’t have keys?”

“I mean the vault. It’s on time-release. No one can open it until seven.” She snuck a look at the red digital display clock. One ten.

He turned to the shadows. “Fuck. You idiot! How could you not have known that?”

“The guy I talked to didn’t—”

“Shut up, you fool. Jesus, if there was a brain between the two of you...”

The room fell silent enough to hear the spring wind outside the window, whipping the trees to a frenzy. It was nothing compared to the wind that whipped around the corners of her mind. She lived so carefully, tiptoeing around her own life...to have it end like this? “I—I’m sorry.”

“Then we wait. Sit.”

The menace in the corner spoke. “I can think of a way to entertain ourselves for a few hours.”

Hope’s heart convulsed, then throttled up, just short of fibrillation.

The gunman growled, “That is not happening. Now shut the hell up.”

“C-can I put on my clothes?”

“Do it here.”

She pushed down a whimper that scrabbled at her throat, knowing that if it escaped, it wouldn’t be the last, or the loudest. And that would get her killed.

For the first time grateful for the shadows, she fumbled, hands shaking, doing the junior high school gym class quick-change, putting on clothes under her gown, praying all the while that the man with the cold circle could keep his dogs under control. The power that cold circle could have over my life. Or death.

When she was dressed, he led the way to her neat living room. He demanded darkness, docility and dead silence. Silence that made her thoughts scratch and skitter like manic rats in an unsolvable maze.

As it turned out, it was possible to be pee-her-pants terrified for five straight hours.

At six thirty, he stood, and with a gun prod, informed her she was driving them to the bank. She led the way to the carport, and her Camry. Black velvet overhead, but a strip of deep charcoal at the eastern edge of the sky was proof this night wouldn’t be interminable after all.

Hands in a death grip on the wheel, she drove to Santa Maria precisely, conscious that rather than a rescue, a traffic cop’s stop would mean death. His, hers, someone’s.

In the shifting spotlights of the streetlamps, she saw her captors for the first time. The gunman beside her was swarthy with a three-day beard, broad nose, narrow eyes topped by a watch cap. In the rearview mirror the bronchial one was extremely thin, his hollow cheeks gray with straggly stubble. The one who’d wanted to be entertained in the bedroom was large, bald and mean-looking—a mug shot poster child.

They’re not worried about you identifying them. Hysteria ricocheted through her, looking for a way out.

“Park around back. We’ll go in there.” He held the gun in his lap, the deadly cold circle at the end pointed at her.

Hands clenched white on the wheel, Hope pulled into the rear parking lot of her Community Bank building sitting cockeyed on the corner, a strip mall at its back.