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“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.
Sssssst...
Squid’s ink bloomed at the edge of her vision and spread, filling the world with black.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7d27a6a7-549c-52fd-82d6-80191281e157)
HOPE SANDERSON WOKE to her second worst nightmare.
A gray-haired woman in a scrub cap so pink it hurt, leaned over her, calling her name.
“Hope, how are you feeling? It’s good to have you back. You’ve been shot. You’ve just come out of surgery.”
Dopey and disoriented, Hope battled the cotton in her head. “Wah?”
“You’re going to be fine.” Her eyes crinkled in a mask-covered smile. “Sleep now.”
When the cotton expanded, Hope sunk into its soft embrace.
Until, sometime later, a piercing siren stabbed her brain.
She’s crashing! Bring the cart!
There was nothing for her to do, so Hope floated away again.
The cotton released her to the sound of squeaky shoes on waxed floors. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the window in the corner was a blacked-out rectangle. Monitors hovered over the bed, their snaking wires and tubes disappearing into several of her body parts. She shifted her arms, legs. All there, thank God. When she lifted her head, her guts bellowed, Stop—stop—stop!
With the pain came the memories, rushing at her: her finger on the alarm button, the evil black eye at the end of the gun barrel, blood and brains trickling down a cream-colored wall. Who shot me? The cops or the robber? She moaned. Did it matter?
The squeaking shoes got closer, and a nurse’s face appeared over her. “Try not to move. You had a bullet nick your stomach and take out your spleen. You gave us a scare, but you’re going to be okay.” She turned over Hope’s palm and put something in it. “The doctors repaired the damage, but it’s going to hurt like a mama bear for a while. Just push the button on the end of that, and it’ll dispense pain medication.”
Right now Hope didn’t feel strong enough to stand up to the pain—in her body or her mind. She pushed the button and the cotton came rushing to envelop her again.
When she woke, it was daylight. There were fewer machines, fewer tubes than before. She found if she didn’t move, her stomach only felt as though a smoking coal was burning its way through her gut. Her throat felt as if she’d inhaled desiccant.
“Well, look who’s awake.”
She carefully turned her head. Her boss, Andrew Horner, rose from the guest chair and stepped to her bedside. And here she lay in a too short, too skimpy hospital gown. Imagining what her mother would have said, she pulled the covers over her in spite of the knife in her guts. Nothing she could do about her bare face, or lack of suitable underwear.
His tie fell across her when he leaned in. “How do you feel?” His bushy eyebrows drew together, at odds with his thin, receding hairline. “We’ve been so worried.”
“W-water,” she croaked.
He lifted a cup from the tray hovering over her legs. “They say you can only have ice chips.” He fumbled with the spoon, managed to snag a few chips and dropped them in her mouth.
“Hmm.” The cold seeped into her parched tissues and down her raw throat. She wanted more, but asking her boss for personal maintenance was embarrassing—for her, and judging by the red spreading up from his collar, him, too. “The robbers—”
“Are dead. You’re safe.”
“What day is it?”
“Friday. You’ve been out for forty-eight hours.” He laid a damp hand over hers.
Hard to believe that only a few days ago, her boss had been transparently working up the nerve to ask her out. It now seemed harder to believe she’d considered accepting. Andrew (never Andy) was an efficient district manager, a good boss and a nice man. Middle-aged, middle management, middle—everything. They fit together like chalk dust and dust bunnies. Easily overlooked. Ordinary. Pedestrian.
She flexed her elbow, pulling her hand from under his. “Is the bank open for business?”
“Yes, of course. They haven’t yet replaced the front window, but the cleaning crew was able to clean the—oh. Sorry.”
She forced her face muscles to relax. “I appreciate your visiting, Andrew, but I’m really tired, and...”
“Of course.” Worried eyes scanned her face. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Could you bring my laptop from the office? I have the monthly reports almost done.”
“I submitted the reports yesterday. You’re not to even think about anything work related until you get home.” He patted her hand. “You’re a hero you know. It’s all over the news.”
Some hero.
When he’d gone, she listened to the hospital whispers, trying to get her head straight. Things felt different; as though the bullet that ripped through her guts had kept going, tearing a hole through her entire life.
She lay, testing the edges of the hole. How big was it?
Everything felt foreign. Off-kilter. While she’d slept, Andrew had changed from a possible beau to a well-dressed Rodney Dangerfield, but without the sense of humor. The bank manager role she’d been so proud of had morphed to a well-titled paper-pusher. Her apartment...
The shudder ripped down her spine so hard it woke the banked fire in her gut.
I can’t go back to that apartment.
Everything was gone. All the satisfaction, peace and sedate joy she felt about her life just three days ago were gone. With a flip, it had become someone else’s life. A boring person’s life. This was too big to contemplate right now. There were no edges to the black hole. Pressing the morphine button, she tumbled in.
* * *
BEAR MERGED CERULEAN blue with a touch of mixing white until he had just the right shade, then, with one long brushstroke, created a shadow on the robe to give it movement. Three more swipes and he stepped back, set down the brush and put his fists to the small of his back. The uncovered bulbs of several desk lamps threw light against the bright white wall and the start of his mural.
It had come to him in a dream, so stark and clear that it haunted him for weeks, until he began sketching the scene. He did it more to get it out of his head than anything; after all, no one would ever see it. A warped floorboard creaked when he backed up to double-check the perspective.
His angel floated above the harsh desert landscape on his dining room wall, cool, detached, serene. He still saw her when he closed his eyes. The face he’d painted fast and easily from his vivid dream-memory. White-blond hair you only see on small children, wide-spaced winter-blue eyes that spread a balm of peace over the burns on his soul.
He’d left his parent’s religion behind with his childhood toys. But you didn’t need to be a shrink to see where the dream came from. He grabbed a turpentine-soaked rag from the pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands. This mural was penance. Exhausted, he shook his aching head. A ten-hour workday, then three hours spent repairing the house and a few more stolen ones, here.
He walked through the doorless kitchen to check the time. Cabinets squatted at the base of every free inch of wall space, and plywood sheets that impersonated a counter surrounded the chipped and stained porcelain sink.
Two in the morning. And another full day tomorrow. He walked to the sanded door stretched across two sawhorses that served as his dining table. He should eat something.
Screw it. He needed sleep more. Not that his nightmares would grant him much of that, but he had to try. But as he walked the hall to his cot, he felt better. Lighter. Maybe, given enough pigment, even mortal sins could be painted over.
* * *
HOPE OPENED HER eyes to yet another nightmare. Her older cousin, Jesse Jurgen, stood alongside the hospital bed, hand on hip, from the look, royally pissed from her towering blond hair to the shell pink toenails Hope knew were peeking out from strappy sandals.
