The Job

by Jove Belle

  “My assistant said you called this morning. Was it to discuss what’s going on with Edmund?”

  She was met with silence. When Maureen finally answered, trepidation had replaced the warmth in her voice. “What has he told you?”

  “Nothing, really. But something is clearly off. He’s just not the same man he normally is.”

  “He’s dying.”

  Of all the things Maureen could have said, that was the one Tor least expected. She must have misunderstood.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, Tor. It’s just so awful. He has stage-four pancreatic cancer. I tried to convince him to stop working, but he says it’s the only thing that makes him feel normal.”

  Tor sat, silent and stunned, trying to make sense of Maureen’s words. They wouldn’t translate into anything meaningful in her mind. If the words meant what she thought they meant, then Edmund… She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Not even in her mind.

  “How long…” She wasn’t sure if she was asking how long he’d known or how long he had to live. Maureen decided to answer the first question, and Tor was both grateful and saddened.

  “He found out about a month ago.”

  That coincided with his sharp drop in sales productivity. “That explains a lot, actually. I wish he’d told me.”

  “I don’t think he quite believes it himself yet. He’s still trying to figure out what to say. He feels like he’s broken, defective, and he doesn’t know how to explain it to people. Especially his friends.”

  Of course she knew how serious stage four was, but this was her first time to experience the emotions that went with cancer. She didn’t know the right words to say, to express her shock and sadness, or her desire to help. How did you help someone in that situation? And words like “I’m sorry” felt inadequate. She felt helpless and could only imagine how Edmund and Maureen must feel.

  They talked awhile longer, but the tone of the conversation was flat. She couldn’t possibly come up with a good way to fill that kind of silence. She ended the call a few moments later with a promise to check in soon. Because she had to do something, she reviewed the bank’s policy for leaves of absence, then printed out the appropriate forms. She debated asking Edmund back into her office to discuss the details further but decided against it. She realized then that her bank had grown unusually quiet. Banking wasn’t a particularly noisy activity, but a certain hum was in the air all the time. Now there was stillness.

  She looked out her office window to the lobby below and saw a group of masked gunmen corralling people to the inside wall directly beneath her office.

  Her bank was being robbed.

  Chapter Six

  Robbing a bank felt different in real life than it did in the movies. In the movies it all looked shiny, with every motion perfectly clear and in high definition. In reality, Sera couldn’t keep up. Everything was a blur, happening too fast for her to track. Not to mention, Sera could feel the energy and excitement pumping through Marcus and the other five men as they breached the entrance guns first. Her adrenaline spiked even higher. She assessed the weapons reflexively as the men secured the lobby, disarming the guards and forcing them to the ground along with the other customers. Among them, they had a small arsenal.

  Two of the men broke off toward a door at the end of the line of tellers, which Sera assumed led to the vault. They each carried an oversized duffel bag, the sides sinking in to indicate they were empty. The men set the bags on the counter, leapt over it like it was two feet tall, and then stormed through the opening, ignoring the cries from the employees. Two employees ran out and joined the others.

  Marcus smiled and fired his gun at the ceiling. He carried a modified shotgun, not impressive in terms of range or accuracy, but it made a hell of a boom. Bits of plaster rained over the crowd huddled together on the floor. Craig stood just behind Marcus to the right, his bangs dropping into his eyes even with the stocking cap in place. She wanted to tuck it back out of the way and straighten his collar. He looked far too young to be holding an AK-47 so comfortably.

  “This, in case you haven’t guessed, is a robbery.” Marcus spoke in an exaggerated, loud outlaw voice.

  Sera’s priorities shifted the second they entered the bank. Now, instead of worrying only about her own safety, she had to prioritize the needs of the public over her own. First and foremost, she needed to keep them safe, except she had a gun with no bullets.

  The combination of gunfire and Marcus’s announcement brought a hush over the crowd. Everyone stared wide-eyed at the guns. One man rocked on the floor, crying quietly to himself.

  Two other members of Marcus’s crew rounded up the employees, bringing them around to sit on the floor with the customers. Sera scanned their faces, but she didn’t see Tor among them. Maybe she’d gotten lucky and Tor had taken the day off. Or maybe she didn’t work here at all.

  “We’re clear.”

  “Good. Twenty seconds. Keep moving.” Marcus’s attention to detail impressed Sera in a sick-to-her-stomach kind of way. His precision made her want to vomit. She’d clearly underestimated him. Nothing about this morning matched up with her profile of him. She hadn’t even considered that he had the mental capacity to conceive a plan like this, let alone the stamina and wherewithal to follow through on it.

  While the other men moved throughout the bank, Craig stayed near Marcus, shadowing his movements. When they finished gathering the employees and customers together in the lobby, the two men in charge of that job, Keith and Reg, split up. She could tell who they were by their stature. Reg went to the elevator and Keith headed toward the other side of the bank. They both carried black duffels so full the sides bulged out. Keith went through a door marked Not An Exit as elevator doors closed in front of Reg, leaving her alone with Marcus and Craig. Her palm itched with a desire to close around the butt of her Glock. No one so much as looked at the teller tills. Marcus clearly had his eye on a bigger prize today.

  She did a quick mental inventory. Marcus had a shotgun, plus a handgun holstered at his side. Craig, an AK-47. Keith and Reg both carried MAC-11s. God only knew what they carried in those bags. That left the two men who went over the counter. They both had assault rifles, AK-47s. It was a safe bet all of them had additional handguns as well.

  She was seriously outgunned, and the security officer to her left who looked like he was thinking about making some sort of hero play was only going to get her, or someone else, killed.

  “I’m disappointed, boss. I don’t see your girlfriend.”

  Every reference Marcus made to Tor shot her blood pressure just a little higher. She’d spent years trying to forget about her ex, followed by even more years accepting that she’d never truly get over her. She hated Marcus for being able to tap into that part of her memories, for being able to exploit a weakness that no longer even existed on paper. “No one to find, Marcus.”

  She continued the trend of using his name. Yes, she ran the risk of pissing him off even more, but it was a calculated gamble. When he didn’t react, she worried even more. He wouldn’t care about a witness knowing his name only if he planned to not leave any witnesses behind. A lot of people were in the lobby, including a woman who reminded Sera of her grandmother and a man with two small boys. Marcus might be planning to take his own life before this was over. But nothing about him matched the profile of a man planning suicide. Not that she could trust her own assessment of him. She’d been wrong about everything else.

  The security guard shifted again, stretching to reach a small .22 pistol strapped to his ankle. Sera shook her head at him. Rather than backing down, he looked even more resolved. She didn’t blame him. Unlike her own mother, who could stop the devil himself from doing something with just one look, Sera was largely ineffectual in the stern-look department. Finally, because she knew pointing the guard out to Marcus would only result in a gaping chest wound, she pulled her gun and pointed it just above the man’s right shoulder. From the point of view of
the man staring down the barrel of her gun, it would look like she was aiming at his heart. She didn’t want to kill him—couldn’t without any bullets—but she sure wanted him to think she’d pull the trigger if he didn’t fall in line. “Why don’t you go ahead and give me that, okay? I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  The guard froze, his gaze stuck on her gun. She hated the look of fear on his face, hated that she was the one to put it there. It was her job to protect citizens like him, and that’s what she was doing, but he didn’t know that. Most of the time, acting like a gangster didn’t bother her. The people she intimidated were mostly thieves, murderers, and drug dealers. Secretly, it gave her a thrill to see that expression on their faces. But not this man. This was a guy who came to work every day, who took pride in his appearance. She could tell that by the reflective shine on his shoes and the sharp crease in his pants. This was someone who cared about the people around him, and she was the criminal asshole making his job harder. She was the one he would cry to his wife about later that night. If he made it home, that is.

  “Nice job, boss.” Marcus stepped up and took the man’s small handgun. He tucked it into his pocket. “I didn’t see that there.”

  Marcus gave a small, almost not-there nod to Craig. Craig returned the gesture, then stepped up and struck the guard over the head with the butt of his rifle. Craig gave her a fleeting look she couldn’t decipher. He looked almost remorseful, but that didn’t change his actions. With every move, Craig confirmed that he wasn’t just an innocent pulled into the mire. He was thick in it with Marcus.

  The guard collapsed into a heap on the ground, disturbingly silent and still. She knelt beside him and checked for a pulse. It was strong and steady.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” she whispered. The words wouldn’t reach him, but it made her feel better to say something reassuring. One of the little boys looked up at her, tears lacing the edges of his eyes. She wanted to say the words again, this time to him, but before she could form them, the man pulled the boy closer to him, forcing his eyes away from Sera.

  When Sera stood, she realized she still held her gun. She’d never felt so ineffectual, so useless. She had a gun she couldn’t use against the bad guys, and to top it off, she was scaring children. She stuffed it back into her holster and muttered sorry to the back of the kid’s head.

  Marcus picked up a phone and said, “One minute.” The words went out over the PA system, reaching every part of the bank. Whatever tasks Marcus had assigned his crew, they were working against a timeline.

  She wanted to check her own phone, to verify the call to Beth had gone through, that it was still connected. But if it was, where were the police? Yes, it would take longer than sixty seconds for the FBI to respond, but the fact that not even a single police cruiser had driven by concerned her. What if she’d only thought she’d dialed out? What if she’d actually just pushed the pound key over and over, activating a special memory wipe on her phone rather than calling Beth like she’d intended? With the way the day had gone so far, that wouldn’t surprise her.

  She scanned the lobby again. If Tor was here, she would have seen her by now. Surely she hadn’t changed so much that Sera wouldn’t recognize her at all. She’d just started to relax into the knowledge that, no matter what else happened, Tor was safe. That was when she noticed someone on the stairs.

  Tor stood there, three-quarters of the way toward the bottom, watching events unfold.

  *

  Tor activated the alarm button under her desk, then made her way to the stairs. She couldn’t hide in her office while her employees faced down a group of lunatics with guns. It just didn’t sit well with her definition of a leader. Her office sat on the second floor of the bank and overlooked the lobby. She took the stairs slowly, hoping to catch the attention of one of the robbers. The last thing she wanted was to startle an armed criminal while he was committing a crime. Sneaking up on someone with a gun was a good way to get shot. A quick count revealed three robbers in the lobby, two men and one woman. All wore masks. One kept time on his watch and glanced occasionally toward the vault.

  Tor slowed her pace even further, giving them an opportunity to realize she was there. The robbers, however, focused on their tasks. She watched as the woman pulled her gun and pointed it at Bart, the head of security. She spoke softly, but something about the tone seemed familiar to Tor. She couldn’t quite pin it down. Bart turned over a concealed firearm before the other two robbers joined them and hit Bart across the head with the butt of his weapon. He slumped to the ground. The woman reached out as if to stop the blow before it happened, and as soon as the other men walked away, she checked for a pulse.

  Tor’s employees, along with a few pre-lunch-rush customers, were facedown on the floor with their fingers laced together behind their heads. Edmund lay prone next to Minnie, but rather than holding his hands behind his head, he reached over and held Minnie’s hand instead. She was shaking slightly but otherwise looked calm. In the past, Minnie had bragged that after almost thirty years in the banking industry, she’d never been involved in a robbery. Her streak was broken today. If she was with them, Tor would hold Minnie’s hand, too. Astrid sat against the wooden half wall that formed the teller queue. She appeared strangely calm, as though she might be in shock.

  Edmund looked at Tor and held her gaze. She didn’t know how to interpret his eerily calm expression, which differed from the calm that Astrid displayed. Astrid looked as though none of this bothered her, like nothing unusual was happening. Edmund, on the other hand, looked resolved, like he’d made a hard decision when faced with a horrible situation and was okay with it. It was eerie. Eventually, he gave her a tight nod, then turned to stare at the gunmen.

  The bank employed two armed guards. The first, Bart, was unconscious, and the second was lying with the others, his holster empty. Three of her employees huddled next to Bart, crying, but trying not to. They were relatively new, and she wondered how long it would be before they tendered their resignations.

  Had anyone else in the bank had time to trigger the silent alarm, or had she been the only one to do so? They weren’t located at every teller station, which was both a blessing and a curse. She had mixed feelings about silent alarms in the first place. Yes, robbers were more likely to be caught when the police responded quickly. However, if the robbers were still inside when the police arrived—an eventuality that was looking more and more likely in this scenario—it also increased the odds that hostages would be taken. She preferred not to be a hostage. Ever.

  The big upside of not having buttons at every workstation was that it prevented false alarms. New employees tended to bump into them without realizing it. For the most part, they kept the seasoned employees at the stations with buttons, but sometimes that wasn’t possible. She had no idea who had been stationed at which location that morning. Between arriving late, the news about Beckford, and her broken heel, she hadn’t paid enough attention to the report Minnie gave on the way into the meeting. She scolded herself for being distracted. In a situation like this, the details could make the difference between living and dying.

  “Hello?” She spoke in a calm, easy tone. The four years she’d spent in Toastmasters paid off in that moment. “How can I help you today?” She couldn’t have sounded more foolish, but what else could she say? “Hello, I’ll be your victim today. How can I assist you through the robbery process?” sounded even worse in her mind. No way would she say those words aloud.

  Everyone in the room turned their collective attention on her, and a split second later, the female robber said, “Oh, shit.”

  Tor experienced one of those wild, out-of-body experiences where everything sped up yet slowed down at the same time. With two inelegant spoken words she was jolted into the past, but she was also clearly right here in the present, standing in her bank and being held at gunpoint by a woman she’d yearned to see again. Clearly, the stress of being robbed was affecting her brain. No way could the person standin
g before her be the same woman she remembered from over a decade ago.

  She shook her head to clear her mind, then said, “Sera?”

  *

  Fifteen Years Earlier

  The campus library was scheduled to close in less than an hour, and Tor was nowhere near finished with her research. She had to turn this paper in before she left for the Thanksgiving holiday, and if she didn’t catch a break soon, she’d be spending the break right here finishing the damn thing. She should have started it two weeks ago, but she had three other assignments due before this one. She’d scrambled in a panic-driven, domino-cascade rush to get them done in order and by their respective deadlines.

  “I know you. You’re in Zimmerman’s eight AM with me. Only you’re usually awake, unlike me.” The cute girl from Tor’s freshman lit class—she couldn’t remember her name—hitched her bag up on her shoulder and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She had long blond hair with streaks of pink and blue, and bangs that fell into her eyes. She pushed them out of the way and smiled in a way that told Tor she hadn’t picked her table randomly. “Can I sit here?”

  “Sure.” Tor drew her books in closer to her and even closed up a couple and set them on the floor next to her. She’d pictured her freshman year as one wild party. Instead, her girlfriend had broken up with her two weeks into the first semester, and she’d spent the majority of her time studying. If a cute girl who she was pretty sure was a lesbian wanted to sit next to her, she was definitely up for it. She nudged the chair closest to her with her foot, pushing it away from the table. “Sit.”

  “Thank God.” The girl let her bag slip off her shoulder, and it landed on the floor with a muffled thump, followed by a series of quieter noises as her books shifted and settled against the floor. “I swear, they should issue back braces with the admission letter. ‘Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into our institution for higher education. Be prepared to work hard, have fun, and visit the chiropractor often during the next four years.’”