Against The Odds

“Unlock the door and shut off the alarm. I’ll be right behind you. With the gun.”

The air in the car was laced with nervous tension and the smell of fear. Most of it hers.

“Do not turn on any lights, and don’t even think about pushing a silent alarm.” The gun barrel prodded her side. “The first cop that shows, you’re dead. Got it?” The cold glint in his dirty-green eyes would have evaporated doubt, if she’d had any.

“Got it.” Her screechy voice echoed in the confined space. She clamped her throat shut to keep further sounds from escaping. They only frightened her more.

Once inside, she keyed in the code for the alarm, her fingers moving by rote—a routine task on a very nonroutine day. Her normally familiar workplace environs loomed spooky and strange in the dim security lights.

What is my plan? She could care less about the money. They were insured. But her first employee would be here in an hour. And her captors hadn’t worn masks, so handing over the money and hoping for the best wasn’t an option. She did have one advantage. She knew this place, knew it for six years running. They didn’t. She had to do something. But what? She’d colored between the lines as a child, and lived by the rules ever since. It wasn’t fair that she’d wind up here, where there were no rules. No lines.

“Give me the car keys.” The leader stepped in and waved the gun at her.

She dropped them in his hand.

“Now, the safe.”

Guts jumping, she walked through the hall of glass-walled offices to the bull pen of teller windows. She angled to the huge metal door on the left wall, weighing actions and possible results. None of them ended well. She worked the combination, and with a loud snick, the lock disengaged.

She grasped the handle and swung the ten-inch-thick door.

The mug shot dude muscled her aside, and they all rushed into the money-lined room. “Woo-fucking-hoo.” The skinny one wheezed.

Hope stood in the breech of the door, one hand on the jamb. She’d lock them in, if the vault hadn’t been equipped with safety releases inside.

“Use those canvas bags. Hurry.” The leader stood tall, his gun trained on her, but his gaze held captive by all that cash.

She inched her fingers along the metal doorjamb, hoping in all the shuffling, he couldn’t hear her heart, pounding out an SOS.

The minions worked fast but loud, laughing and chattering like agitated squirrels.

When the pads of her fingers found the alarm button, they hovered, and she wondered if she had the guts to push it...wondered if she did, if those guts would end up splattered red ribbons on the marble floor.

Straining her brain for hours in search of a solution hadn’t helped. She could either die a good little girl or die trying. There was no way out.

She pressed the button.

* * *

“YOU’VE KNOWN THIS was a condition of your parole since the day you were released, Doug.”

That his parole officer would be the first since his mother to use his given name was an insult. The injury was this ridiculous “trauma group” the state dictated he attend. “Look. I paid my debt. I don’t need a stupid—”

“Let’s see here.” The officer flipped open a cardboard file folder with Douglas Steele on the tab. “An army scout sniper for four years, your last mission in Iraq.” He pushed the heavy glasses up his paper-pusher nose. “When you got back in the States...well, you know. You were there.” He looked over his glasses. “I’d say you have an anger issue or two. Wouldn’t you?”

“How can you say that, with all the money California dumped into criminal rehabilitation?” He raised his hands. “I’m cured.”

The officer shook his head. “You can argue all day, Doug. I’m just the messenger. I have no authority to change this, and you know it.” He dropped the folder full of societal sins on the desk. “Look, this is the last hoop you have to jump through and the state will be out of your face. Why not just get it over with?”

Because it’s a flaming hoop, asshole. Bear had always been a private person. The thought of talking to a bunch of whiny losers about his “issues”? It went against his upbringing. It went against his nature. It went against his guts like a punch from a heavyweight. All he’d wanted since he got stateside was to be left alone. There were lonely people everywhere. Why wouldn’t they just let him be one of them? “Give me the damn address.”

“I mean it, Doug.” He scribbled on a sticky pad. “Don’t blow this off. You’re never getting off parole if you don’t. I have a huge caseload, and I don’t have time for this.”

“You’re breaking my heart here, dude, really.” Bear took the fluorescent bit of paper, stood, snatched his leather jacket from the back of the chair and headed out. Ignoring the startled look of the guy approaching the door when Bear barreled through, he held his breath until he hit the parking lot.

The sun reflected off the chrome of his badass Harley-Davidson in a blinding laser that made him squint. And smile.

He pulled his skullcap helmet from the leather side bag and slapped it on. He’d sit through their wimpy-ass class, then he’d be free. Forever.

* * *

TWO HOURS POST button-push, Hope stood with the gun to her head, the leader’s arm squeezing her neck, facing down the local SWAT team on the other side of the glass doors.

“Do you want her dead?” the robber yelled.

She’d stopped wincing at the screaming beside her ear ten minutes ago. When her knees threatened to buckle, she sent the last of her energy to stiffen them. “I have to go to the bathroom.” She’d made up her mind. Time to finish what she’d started. The gunman’s face appeared in her peripheral vision. “Do you think I give a flying spider’s asshole what you need?” His breath hadn’t improved overnight. His arm cinched even tighter around her throat. “You may not have noticed, but we have a situation here. Hold it.”

“If you let the hostage go, we’ll talk,” the bullhorn-distorted voice said.

She had serious doubts about the negotiating skills of the small-town cop. Surely this can’t go on much longer. Maybe the FBI will show up with a negotiator that isn’t a relative of Barney Fife.

“We’re gonna die,” the skinny one wheezed from behind the desk.

“I’d rather die than go back to jail,” the bald one replied from behind another.

“Shutthefuckup. We’ve got us a hostage. They’re not gonna—”

Ssssst...whap!

It sounded like a missile hitting a watermelon. Hope whipped her head around in time to see the bald guy, sans forehead, drop behind the desk. Brain and blood sheeted the wall.

She heaved a breath to scream.

Ssssst...splat!

The hollow-cheeked one clutched his throat as if to stem the blood. It didn’t work. He fell, facedown on the desk.

Two neat holes marred the bank’s floor-to-ceiling window.

That’s going to be expensive to replace. Her brain worked in slow looping sweeps. The ringing in her ears surged, then retreated.

“She’s gonna die! You’re killing her!”

The gun barrel ground into her collarbone, loosing the screams that had built in her since she’d been awakened—it seemed a hundred years ago. “Eiiiieeeee!”

When her captor jerked in surprise, she unlocked her knees and dropped.

He’d held her in a tight grip, but it was with only one hand. She hung choking, his arm around her neck as time distorted, stretching and compressing.