The Job

by Jove Belle

  “What did you do to these guys to make them hate you so much?”

  As far as she knew, the only one who hated her was Marcus. The rest were just following orders. It was a distinction, however, that she didn’t need to make for Tor. “I underestimated them.”

  “That’s it? That’s your explanation for this? My friends are dead and all you have to say about it is you ‘underestimated them’? That’s not good enough.” The longer Tor spoke, the louder she got until she verged on yelling.

  “Shh.” She clamped her hand over Tor’s mouth and hoped Reg hadn’t heard her. She wasn’t anywhere close to ready. If he came in now and found them all untied, he might kill them all. In a choice between die now and die later, which is what they were all faced with at the moment, she chose later.

  The look Tor gave her was murderous, but Sera didn’t dare let go. An unchecked outburst like that could be disastrous. They’d made it through one undetected, it seemed. She couldn’t risk another. Eventually Tor nodded, but the anger still burned bright in her eyes. Sera pulled her hand away slowly.

  “Okay?”

  “Nothing about this is okay.” Tor whispered this time, but it still felt like a shout to Sera.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know, but it’s just not enough.”

  “No, but right now I have to focus on getting us out of here. I need to be ready to go when Beth brings in the helicopter.”

  “Helicopter? What? They’re actually giving in to his demands?”

  “Yes, sort of, just…I can’t explain right now. I have to hurry.”

  Sera looked away. The weight of Tor’s stare was too much. She needed a clear head in order to focus on the task at hand. It would take all of her mental presence to get them through this alive, and even then it was pretty unlikely. The guilt of Tor’s judgment would have to wait until later.

  She scanned the shelves a second and third time. It was pointless. It wasn’t like a hidden stash of shotgun shells and Bowie knives was going to magically appear, but she just couldn’t accept that she was about to do battle armed only with a pair of Fiskars orange-handled scissors.

  And rubber bands. How had she missed those? She grabbed a bag and handed them to Tor.

  *

  Sera had that determined look on her face that always made Tor want to believe in her, but it wasn’t easy to do, given Sera’s plan. If they were depending on rubber bands and a pair of scissors to save them…mercy.

  Tor shook her head to clear her thoughts and chase away the questions. The last thing they needed right now was a doubt-induced panic. Everything about this situation challenged her need for things to be neat and orderly. She saw no clearly identifiable way to categorize and process the events, no good way to predict the outcome as anything other than kaboom.

  Instead, she trusted that Sera, the only one who seemed to know what was going on, would somehow save them all. She didn’t know how, but if Sera’s grand plan called for a string of rubber bands, then she could dutifully loop them together as she was asked.

  Sera was on the phone again, talking quietly to Beth or maybe John. She expected the battery to die any second, so she didn’t want to waste time asking Sera who she was talking to. Not that Sera would tell her anytime soon. She’d made it clear that she was done talking about what was happening.

  “Okay, I just want to verify green. You’re absolutely sure?” Sera made another note on her hand that Tor couldn’t read. “Okay. Yes. Okay. I got it.” She disconnected the call.

  Tor looked away before Sera could notice she’d been staring, focusing intently on linking together rubber bands. She had a string at least ten feet long now.

  “That’s enough.” Sera placed her hand on top of Tor’s. Good timing, because the bag was just about empty.

  Tor dangled the bands from one finger and said, “What is this for, anyway?”

  “Let me show you.”

  She took one end and looped it around the base of the shelf. Then she stretched the other end across the room and tied it to the base of the opposite shelf. It created a long trip-wire of sorts a few feet from the door. As she worked, she talked to Tor in a quiet voice.

  “Tell me what’s behind the door they went through.”

  “It’s a service hall. It leads to the mechanical rooms.” Tor tried to picture the layout of the rooms. She didn’t spend much time in that portion of the building since it was technically not part of the bank proper. If there was an issue, she called maintenance and they took care of it. The most she had to do was provide access. With her key. “How’d they get in?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s normally locked. How did they get in?”

  “Who has a key?”

  “I do, of course.”

  Tor did a mental review. Her own set was lying in her desk drawer where anyone could access them if they wanted. She couldn’t remember if they’d been there this morning or not. In addition, the floor manager and the head of security both had a set. She glanced around the room. Astrid was huddled in the corner. She watched Tor and Sera with a keen, curious expression. Bart, the head of security, sat in the corner alone, pressing a hand to his head where he’d previously been hit with the stock end of Craig’s shotgun. Too bad he hadn’t made it out with the other hostages. That wound needed attention.

  Sera grabbed her shoulders. “Who else, Tor?”

  “No, it’s just not possible.” Tor couldn’t wrap her head around the likelihood that one of her own employees was a part of this. How could anyone come to work with them every day and plan to kill them all? It just didn’t make any sense. These were the people she did Secret Santa with every year, the people who shared the stories of their families, the people who showed her pictures of their children. They were people she loved.

  “You have to tell me.”

  “Okay, the head of security. He’s the one who got clubbed with the gun.”

  Sera glanced over at him and looked away. Apparently she didn’t count him as much of a threat. That made sense to Tor. Why would he bother pulling a gun on a group he was assisting? Of course, by that same logic, Sera’s actions today were even more confusing. She decided not to focus on that because her brain could only handle so many questions at one time, and she was tired of that one.

  “Who else?”

  “The floor manager.” Tor pointed to where Astrid had been sitting, but she wasn’t there. “Where’d she go?”

  “Astrid?” Someone by the door said Astrid’s name.

  Astrid stood with her hand on the door. She smiled as she twisted the handle and cracked the door open. Any doubt Tor had about who’d unlocked the door evaporated.

  Sera crossed the gap between them, her face blank of emotion. She didn’t hesitate for even a second, swinging her body around and catching Astrid in the temple with her fist. She punched her so hard her body slammed into the door, closing it with a sharp report that was far too loud to go unnoticed. Astrid slid to the floor, unconscious.

  “Scissors! Now.” Sera pulled Astrid clear of the door, but the movement cost her. Her face contorted in pain as she tugged the dead weight clear of the door. “Tor, please.”

  Tor couldn’t track what was happening; everything was moving far too fast. She heard swearing and undecipherable muttering from the man on the other side of the door. She pushed a pair of scissors across the floor to Sera as requested. Sera grabbed them and turned off the lights just as the door eased open.

  Sera crouched, the light glinting off the scissors as she clutched them like a knife in her right hand. In the sliver of light as the door cracked open, Sera was barely visible. The clear look of pain on Sera’s face transmuted to calm determination before her eyes.

  First a gun, then a hand appeared through the entrance of the door. The door swung open a little wider and Sera threw herself against the door, slamming the man’s arm in it. He dropped the weapon and cursed.

  Sera kicked the gun away and released the pressur
e from the door. The man stumbled inside, holding his arm and clearly disoriented from the pain. He pitched forward and tripped over the string of rubber bands. The door lay open, with the noise threatening to call the other men to their location at any moment.

  Tor ran for the door, stepping carefully over the rubber-band rope, and pushed it shut. She tried to move silently, forcing herself to ease the door closed rather than slamming it. Her body shook with adrenaline, and she cringed at how much noise the door made. When she flipped on the lights and turned around, the man lay facedown on the floor and Sera was on top of him. The scissors stuck out of the side of his neck, Sera’s fingers wrapped tight around the handles. The spray of blood coated Sera’s hand and pooled in a rapidly spreading arc around his body. He gurgled once, his hand scrabbling at the protruding handles. The struggle ended with him lying lifeless beneath Sera, his fingers still wrapped around Sera’s hand.

  *

  Sera’s stomach rolled violently and she retched over and over. She’d managed to make her way to the corner of the room, away from the pool of blood and lifeless body, before the remnants of her breakfast burrito spewed out. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen a dead body.

  It was, however, the first time she’d killed someone. For all the time she’d spent at the range, spent practicing hand-to-hand combat, and studied the psychological response to killing someone, she was totally unprepared. She’d hoped to tuck away the horror of it in some back part of her brain, where she could evaluate it in the future if necessary. Barring that, she’d hoped the pain of the broken rib would keep her focused on the physical dangers and keep her from getting caught up in the morality of taking a life.

  Instead, her body had reacted viscerally and she had no idea how to get it to stop.

  Smooth, cool hands rubbed small circles against her low back. The touch was comforting, calming. Then she heard Tor’s voice in her ears, low and sweet and seemingly mid-sentence. “…be okay. You are so brave. You saved us. You are going to be okay. I’m here for you.”

  Tor continued in a loop, repeating the same things about how brave Sera was, how she’d saved them, and how it was going to be okay. Slowly, the world around her came into focus. She couldn’t afford to spend any more time recovering.

  Sera took a deep breath and straightened up. She avoided looking at Reg as long as possible, but so much of the floor was stained red that it was impossible to avoid. Her hand was sticky with dried blood and she wiped it on her pant leg. It didn’t really help.

  “Has anyone else come to the door?” She liked to think she’d know if they had, but she’d been really out of it.

  Tor shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Astrid still lay unconscious against the wall, but who knew when she’d wake up. “We need to tie her up. Do you have anything?”

  Tor rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I left my handcuffs at home this morning.”

  Sera arched a brow, but didn’t ask if Tor really had a pair of handcuffs at home. She didn’t want to consider what it would mean if she said yes.

  “I didn’t,” the security guard said as he pulled a set from his utility belt. Sera gave him a curious look. A security guard at a bank, head of security or not, shouldn’t have handcuffs as part of his regular uniform. He shrugged. “Habit. Twenty years on the force.”

  Tor helped the guard drag Astrid to the nearest supply shelf and then cuffed her to the steel support leg.

  “Okay, talk to me. Tell me all the ways out of the bank.” She’d gone over this with Beth already, but it was reasonable to hope that Tor, the bank manager, would know the building better than Beth did.

  “Front doors, obviously.” Tor started with the easy answer.

  “Useless. What else?”

  “The elevator,” the guard said. He’d been very quiet prior to this point. Maybe the altercation with Reg had jolted him out of whatever stupor he’d been stuck in.

  “What about stairs? Or the service hall. Any exits there?” Surely there had to be more than two ways out of here.

  Tor shook her head. “The only stairs lead to my office on the second floor. It’s a bank, Sera. It’s meant to be secure.”

  “Okay, elevator it is.” If she was worried about Tor and the other hostages, she’d never be able to focus on finding and disarming the explosives. She needed to get them out of here before the noon deadline. “We’re going to need a distraction. Otherwise we’ll never get there.”

  She didn’t mention her plan to stay behind and search for the bombs. It would be easier to get everyone on board if they focused on one objective at a time. They’d succeeded earlier in getting half the people out. She had to believe they could do it again.

  “What do you propose? Do you have another trick you can perform with rubber bands?”

  Sera snorted. It was safe to say they needed something beyond the contents of the supply shelves. First, she needed to arm herself. “Where’s his gun?”

  “Over there.” Tor pointed toward the edge of the room, close to where Sera had recently expelled her breakfast. Reg’s MAC-11 lay on its side, the barrel pointed at the wall. Thank God his finger hadn’t been on the trigger when he tripped, or half the people in the room would have been hit with the spray of bullets.

  Sera retrieved the gun. She moved slower than usual, taking care not to jostle about too much. Her chest screamed at her with every step, and she suspected that she’d cracked another rib. Still, she was in better shape than Reg.

  “Ever use one of these?” She offered the weapon to the security guard. He was there and, though injured, had law-enforcement training. That made him a better candidate than Tor for carrying the fully automatic submachine gun.

  “Fired an UZI once. Seems about the same.”

  “That’ll do.” They were better armed than they were a few minutes ago, but Sera still wasn’t pleased. The MAC-11 was great for suppressive fire, and it looked really impressive when carried in a shoulder holster, but that was about it. For any kind of accuracy, which was what she needed in order to take out the remaining members of Marcus’s group, the AK-47 was a much better weapon—not as accurate as a sniper rifle, by any means, but a hundred times better than the MAC-11. Too bad Reg hadn’t been carrying one of those. Craig had one of the AKs. Maybe he’d loan it to her. Or not.

  “That hardly seems enough,” Tor said.

  “No.” Sera took a deep breath, then turned to evaluate Reg fully. He definitely had at least one other weapon on him. To get to it, she had to wade through the lake of blood surrounding him. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

  The tile floor was slick with blood, so she stepped carefully as she drew nearer to Reg. First thing she planned to do when she got out of here? Burn all her clothes, including the shoes.

  She didn’t want to roll him over but really didn’t have any other choice. She pushed with her foot but barely moved him. The intense pain in her chest almost brought her to her knees, and she took a moment to let it subside. There was no way she could roll him with her hands. Not with a broken rib, possibly two.

  “I need help.”

  Tor’s eyes flew open wide and her nostrils flared. She made a small gagging noise but didn’t move to help Sera. Sera looked toward the security guard. Even with his head injury, he was the next logical choice. He shook his head but climbed to his feet.

  “What’s your name?” Sera asked as they worked together to push Reg onto his back.

  “Bart.”

  Sera introduced herself conversationally, as much to take Bart’s mind off the work they were doing as herself. Nothing about rolling a dead body in a pool of congealing blood was pleasant.

  As she hoped, Reg had a handgun tucked into his belt, a .40 just like hers, only hers was the subcompact model, whereas his was the full-size version. She searched his pockets for extra clips and found two. She handed them to Bart and asked, “Can you clean the bullets?”

  “Sure thing.” He thumbed the bullets out of the cart
ridges and wiped them down, using the clean edge of his shirt.

  Sera hefted Reg’s handgun and practiced sighting with it. She preferred the feel of her own. This one was heavier, not as well balanced, but the longer barrel meant it should be slightly more accurate. Ultimately, though, she’d take an unfamiliar firearm over none at all. She wiped the gun on her shirt, smearing the blood more than actually cleaning it, then tucked it into her waistband. She still had her own gun in her holster, so she removed the magazine and gave it to Bart to load. They were still seriously outgunned, but she was starting to feel better about it. Bart finished cleaning the bullets and loaded the magazines, one for her gun and one extra for Reg’s. He handed them to her, his mouth cut in a grim smile.

  “Three guns? How many do they have?” Tor sounded almost hopeful.

  “A lot more than three.” Sera knew exactly how bad their odds were. She didn’t need anyone else, especially Tor, focused on that.

  “Okay, now what?”

  “Now we get everybody to the elevator.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sera peeked out the door for the second time. Bart joined her as she surveyed the scene. Due to the location of the storage room, they only had a partial view of the bank lobby. The men had dispersed to various stations, and Craig and another guy were guarding the elevators. The other two men were stationed at the doors. Marcus sat at a workstation with his feet kicked up. For the first time since they arrived, Craig wasn’t right next to Marcus, who held the detonator in his hand, his thumb traveling back and forth over the buttons. All the while, he carried on a quiet conversation via phone.

  The storage room they were being held in was at the back of the bank, behind the workstations and at an angle to the main lobby. The desks were arranged in easy-to-navigate rows, presumably to make it easy for the customers who visited those areas. Luckily, Marcus faced the opposite direction. It was the best possible scenario, allowing the desks to provide a consistent line of cover. They had a clear shot from the storage closet to the elevators. As long as they kept their heads down and didn’t knock anything over, they should be okay. Getting past the guards at the elevators was another issue.