Plan #2: Fucked
In the wake of the scream, we’re dead silent. This time, Iris is the one in the middle, Wes on one side, me on the other. No one is shaking, and all of us are tensed up. What to do, what to do, there’s nowhere to go.
“Who . . .” she starts to say, a breathless word that’s cut off by the scraping sound we all know now.
He’s coming in.
It’s not like before. He’s not like before. His face is all storm, no substance. No more curiosity. And there’s a lot more blood on a lot more than his hands now.
Shit. Shit. He’s got a knife somewhere. I thought I’d covered all the weapons, but clearly I hadn’t. That’s too much blood.
I jump up, because he’s reaching for me before he can even cross the room, and if I can get away from Iris and Wes, maybe I can . . .
He backhands me so fast, I don’t have time to plant my feet; I just go down. My teeth clatter together as my cheek smacks the floor. Wes bellows like I haven’t heard in years, and the only thing in my head is his scream and white-hot pain and ringing ears, and the only thing in my mouth is blood. I spit it out on the floor, along with a chunk of my back molar. Fuck.
“Don’t move,” Gray Cap says, and it takes me a confused, blinking moment to realize he’s not talking to me. He’s not pointing the gun at me.
He’s pointing the gun at Wes. Because Wes is standing there, big and threatening and three seconds from going for him, gun or not.
Everything around me wobbles as I cough out more blood and groan, “Don’t.” I dig my elbows into the uncomfortable, ugly, bloodstained carpet. I have to get up. “Wes, don’t. Isso okay.” I slur the last words, still too much blood in my mouth.
“You . . .” Gray Cap spits, and the gun’s back on me, away from both of them, thank God. When I meet his eyes, I see the burn of humiliation on his cheeks.
What happened? What did he find out? Who did he hurt across the hall?
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me.
The one in red isn’t behind him. Is he downstairs in the basement now that they have the welding machine? Does that mean we’re dealing only with Gray Cap?
“Answer me!”
I have a choice. I can cringe and cry and hope he thinks that one blow is enough to put me in my place. Or I can go with my gut, because it’s telling me that he’s never going to believe anything I say or do again, so I might as well lean into it.
I let the blood dribble out of my mouth and down my chin. “Bleeding,” I answer.
He snatches me up off the floor so hard my shoulder joints scrape in protest. “You’re going to bleed a lot more when I’m done with you.”
It’s a bad line, and I would tell him so, but I know what it looks like when a man wants to kill you and just needs one little push toward it.
“Don’t touch her!” Wes shouts as Gray Cap tosses me into the hall. I bounce against the other wall, the picture above me rattling at the impact. I scramble down the hall on my butt as he drags the table in front of the office door to block Wes and Iris in, but he catches up with me in seconds. He scoops me up again, fingers digging painfully into my armpit, and drags me down the hall.
Back in the lobby we go. Red Cap’s nowhere to be seen. He’s gotta be downstairs; is it even going to matter in a few seconds? Is this it? Am I dead? He doesn’t throw me on the ground this time. He keeps me close.
It scarier this time, because of that. He has a knife somewhere. That much blood on his shirt means he has a knife and he probably used it on one of the hostages across the hall. The knife scares me more than the gun right now.
What’s he planning? How do I get out of it?
“You little bitch,” he says in my face with such force I can feel the flecks of spit against my cheeks.
“Did you hurt the kid?” I ask, because I’m not supposed to know for sure that he’s taken her out of the bank. Lee honked. That means Casey is safe. I have that, at least.
It’s not enough. It’s not even close. It’s one speck of good in a whole world of bad. Wes and Iris are back there, and that means this can’t be it.
I have to keep spinning.
Did he put the guard out of his misery? Is the scared teller dead? The older lady?
“No, I traded the kid,” he says. “Just like you said.” He lets out a huff of breath. It’s not a laugh. It’s not a growl. But it spreads anger and a bitterness in the air.
“Why would you hurt one of them when you got what you wanted?” I hate how bewildered I sound. He got what he wanted. Lee wouldn’t have honked the horn otherwise.