Ria's Bank Job (Ria Miller and the Monsters)

by Nigel Henry

  “Well then it sounds like you saved his life,” Mom tells Shelly. “That was very brave of you.”

  Shelly removes the ice pack from her face, showing us her swollen jaw and puffy, purple bottom lip. “All the good it did me. The fucker grabs me by the leg, punches me in the face and pulls out another knife. He was going to kill me, I was sure of it.”

  “But he didn’t,” Dad says. “What happened?”

  Shelly hesitates. Mom puts a hand on her shoulder and works her patented calming charm. “You can tell us, Shelly.”

  Shelly looks to the floor for a moment. Then she meets Mom’s eyes. “Well, that’s when it got weird. The bird—the one on his shoulder earlier—it flew down between us. And—I swear to God—it told him not to hurt me.”

  Whoa. That is NOT what I was expecting. Monsters don’t usually go out of their way to not kill humans. The news looks like it took Mom and Dad by surprise as well because Dad pauses his writing.

  “Look, I know how it sounds,” Shelly says. “But I swear that’s what happened.”

  “It okay,” Mom says. “We believe you. What happened then?”

  “Well, Frank knocked the guy over the head with a stick. I thought he was going to arrest him. But the guy … he …”

  “What?” Dad asks.

  “He turned into a fucking bird, and the two of them flew out the door, okay?”

  Dad looks up from his notepad. “When you say he turned into a bird—”

  “I mean one second he was standing over me, the next he’s small and he’s got feathers.”

  “Did it do anything before it flew away?”

  “I don’t know,” Shelly exhales. “Listen, I’m tired and you probably think I’m crazy, but I know what I saw.”

  “Thank you, Shelly,” Mom says. “You’ve been really helpful.” She pulls a card from her back pocket and hands it to her. “You call us if you remember anything else.”

  Shelly nods and heads toward the back while the rest of us huddle.

  “You sure you haven’t heard of this before?” Perkins says.

  Dad shakes his head. “I can check the usual sources and see if there’s anything written up about talking bird-humans, but we haven’t dealt with them.”

  “Well, check quickly. If I know anything about bank robbers, it’s that they don’t stop after just one. If we don’t catch them soon, someone’s going to get killed.”

  THREE

  “KEEP YOUR HANDS UP!”

  Mom’s on me in a flash, sending a left hook and a right cross toward my face. I block both before moving inside and aiming a fist to her exposed ribs. I’m fast, but she’s still faster, twisting her body out of the way and sweeping my legs out from under me. I tumble, head over heels, and collapse on my back onto the blue training mat.

  “Also, protect your feet,” Mom says, relaxing from her fighting stance and offering me a wrapped hand. I take it and she pulls me to my feet.

  “You know,” I say as I brush the dust off my gray sweatpants, “one day I’m going to beat you, and I’ll be the queen of this basement.”

  “I’m looking forward to that day, sweetie,” Mom says. “That’s the day your father and I get to retire.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “It feels like I’m retired NOW.”

  It’s been a week since the bank robbery and there hasn’t been one peep from our bird-men. No banks knocked over, no old ladies shoved. No one’s even stolen cookies from a jar anywhere. So instead all I can do on this too-calm Saturday afternoon is study for the SAT and train with Mom in our basement gym. I prefer training; at least I know the butt kicking’s coming.

  “Quiet isn’t bad,” Mom says. “Quiet is normal.”

  “Normal is lame,” I counter.

  “Well, you could use the time to try to talk to Ariana.”

  I groan. Ariana is … was … my friend from school. I met her and my other friend, Will, while trying to solve the spider case. They learned about my secret when one of the spiders tried to kill them. I killed it first, obviously.

  Will was cool with having a monster hunter for a friend, but Ariana hasn’t spoken to me since.

  “I’ve tried,” I say. “She won’t give me the time of day. It’s been almost two months.”

  “Has Will had any luck getting through?”

  I shake my head. “I mean, they’re fine and Will and I are cool. But she walks away the moment I go near her.”

  “Well, keep trying. Friendship isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being able to apologize when you mess up and forgive when you’ve been wronged. She’s mad at you now, but keep at it, and I’m sure she’ll come around.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Mothers are always right about the future. For example, in one minute I’m going to trip you again and put you in an arm bar.”

  “Game on.”

  We return to our fighting stances when the upstairs phone rings three times before stopping. That halts our training: three rings is code. Dad’s telling us to call him from a hunter phone.

  “I’ll get it,” Mom says as she heads toward the stairs.

  “Finally, some action! I’ll get the weapons ready.”

  “We don’t know if we’ll need weapons.”

  “We don’t know that we won’t need weapons,” I counter.

  While Mom stops off at the living room, I keep climbing up to the attic, where we keep our weapons and gear. I love it up here. I know most families keep dusty boxes of old photos in their attics, but ours is filled with enough weapons to singlehandedly stop the zombie apocalypse.

  I’m not exactly sure what we’ll need, so I grab a bit of everything: knives, holy water, slingshot and salt-balls, crowbars, collapsible batons. The works.

  “Put all that back,” Mom’s voice sounds from the doorway. “Another bank got hit. It’s just another recon mission.”

  I groan. “I was looking forward to stabbing something.”

  Mom walks over and puts a hand on my cheek. “How can something so sweet and innocent be so filled with violence? Anyway, get dressed. It’s time to go to work.”

  THERE’S squad cars everywhere when we show up to the Bank of New York branch on 8th Street and University Place in Manhattan, not too far from the site of the last robbery. The whole area around the bank, usually filled with drunk college students moving just slow enough to make you want to murder them, has been roped off with yellow police tape. And just like last time, there’s a red Sterling Security armored car parked out front.

  Mom jerks her head toward the car. “What do you want to bet that’s not a coincidence?”

  “I’ll bet…wait, I don’t actually know any gambling references.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  There’s no ambulances out front this time, but we’re too far away to see if there’s any blood anywhere. A crowd’s gathered just outside the police line, filled with gawkers and TV reporters. Dad texts that he’s a block south, at the rear of the building.

  “What happened?” Mom asks as we meet up with him.

  “Eyewitnesses said it was a similar story: three people walked in during the security drop off. Attacked a couple of guards and made off with the cash. I won’t know more until we find Perkins.”

  He pulls out his phone and taps out a message. A few minutes later Perkins appears from the bank’s rear exit. And, shit man, he looks pale. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

  “Please tell me you’ve got something we can use,” Dad says as they shake hands.

  “I do,” Perkins replies, pulling out his phone. “They hit about an hour ago. Same deal, but this time they made it to the roof, and, well, see for yourselves.”

  He passes Dad the phone and Mom and I look over his shoulders. It looks like Inspector Perkins recorded the security camera footage with his cell phone. How bootleg of you, Inspector.

  On the screen we see our three robbers burst through the emergency stairwell up to the roof. One of them, the biggest one
, stares over the edge of the building. Then they gather in a circle and—

  They turn into birds. They freaking shape-shift into birds.

  “Listen,” Perkins stresses, “if you’ve got any idea how to catch these guys, I’m all ears. They’re not going to stop hurting people and I can’t exactly ask the department to equip my cops with bird nets.”

  “There’s got to be some reason they keep targeting armored cars,” Mom says. “It can’t just be random.”

  I snap my fingers. “It’s an inside job! I knew it!”

  “That’s the theory my guys are working on,” Perkins says. “We think they might have help inside Sterling Security. I’ve got the CEO on his way down here now.”

  “What do your detectives make of the security footage?” Dad asks. “I’m curious about how they plan to stop bank robbing bird-men.”

  Perkins scoffs. “Are you kidding me? They don’t believe a frame of it. They think someone hacked the security cameras.”

  I roll my eyes. Typical. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you put in front of people, they’ll go out of their way to convince themselves monsters aren’t real. Which is why it’s up to us to catch these assholes.

  But how? How do you catch birds? It’s not like you put a bag of money inside a bird cage and…

  Wait.

  Couldn’t you?

  “We could lure them into a trap,” I say.

  Perkins’ eyes arch up. “What?”

  “They’re hitting up banks in this area, right? One with drop-offs from armored cars. So lure them to one particular bank. Make every other bank look as secure as hell. Put cops on out front of them all. Give them shotguns and shields and armor and stuff so they look super-intimidating. Leave one bank unguarded, but put us inside. Then when they come in to rob the bank, we can step in and take them down.”

  Perkins looks at me like I just insulted his mother. “You didn’t seriously suggest I make a bank a target for thieves who can change their shape, did you?”

  “Technically, I suggested you make us a target for the thieves.”

  “What makes you think they’d even show up? What if they decided to take the day off?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I dunno, make it attractive. Put money or diamonds or Beyoncé’s next album inside the armored car and get the company to make a big deal out of it.”

  “Oh, so now I’m risking an armored car and the lives of innocent drivers and security staff?”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” Dad chimes in. “They might just fall for it. I mean, look at what we’ve seen from them so far. They can shape-shift into birds, but they’ll do it in front of cameras. They don’t need to get into fights, but they do. They don’t take their time getting out of the places they’ve hit. They’re sloppy, but they think they’re clever. Super powers or not, we’re dealing with amateurs. We can use that.”

  Perkins looks unconvinced, but Dad presses on. “Think of it as a way more expensive Operation Lucky Bag.”

  I cock my head to the side “Operation Lucky Bag?”

  “It’s an NYPD ticketing sting where they leave a bag lying around a subway station to see if anyone will take it. If anyone does, the cops swoop in and ticket them.”

  “That’s messed up!” I exclaim, “What happened to the law of finders-keepers?”

  “That’s not a real law,” Perkins hisses. He takes a deep breath and exhales before looking back to the bank. “Let’s say I was on board. How would we take them down?”

  “Like Ria said, put us on the inside,” Dad says. “We can work as tellers, and when they hit the bank, we’ll be there to catch them.”

  Perkins pauses for a moment. Then he shakes his head. “I’ll talk to the CEO. I’m definitely not saying I agree with this, but it’s not like I’ve got a better idea.”

  “It can work,” Dad stresses as Perkins ducks under the police tape and back into the bank.

  “You think he’ll go for it?” Mom asks.

  “I think so,” Dad says. “He’s already under a ton of pressure to stop the robberies, and that’s without anyone believing the bird part.”

  “And how exactly are we going to stop something we haven’t dealt with before?”

  “Well, that’s what we’ve got tonight to figure out.”

  FOUR

  CAL HUDDLED in the corner of the warehouse, his feet tingling against the cold concrete floor. It was dark, with the only visible light coming from cracks in the boarded up windows high above him. His stomach grumbled. It was late afternoon and he was hungry, but Cal buried the thought. Instead, he tried to stay out of the way, keeping to the shadows as the others moved about the warehouse.

  Bryan and Rachel sat on opposite ends of a brown leather sofa thirty feet away. A bundle of money sits between them, the bills rolled in stacks several inches thick. They took turns flicking through and counting the money.

  Dale was nowhere to be seen. Cal could feel his presence in one of the rooms along the upper catwalk, though, which is why he was staying out of the way.

  “Shit, we’re almost there!” Rachel said, her eyes wide and a grin on her face. Cal watched as she fanned herself with several bills. “Just a bit more and those fucking vampires can go fuck themselves for the rest of forever.”

  Dale’s voice sounded above them “Almost doesn’t mean shit.”

  Cal spotted him as he emerged from a side room and walked down the catwalk, furiously tapping away at his phone. “Almost just means we don’t actually have enough. We could have had enough, but someone got in the way.”

  He looked at Cal as he spoke, and Cal covered his eyes with his wings. Dale still hadn’t forgiven him for interfering last week. It didn’t matter that tonight’s job went off without a hitch; that Cal perfectly warned them before the police arrived. Dale didn’t like failure, and he certainly didn’t like Cal.

  “All right, so we do one more job,” Bryan said, stuffing the money into a bag. “How much time do we have left?”

  “Four days,” Dale answered.

  “Shit.” Rachel said. “The cops are going to be all over every bank in the city for the next few days.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We can’t wait.” He tapped on his phone again. “Eric says everyone at Sterling just got word about a high-value, high-security shipment going tomorrow afternoon. We hit that one. Be ready.”

  Dale started toward the catwalk, leaving Bryan and Rachel staring, dumbfounded. Bryan got up and sprinted toward Dale.

  “Whoa, just like that? Don’t you think that’s a bit of a rush? You don’t want to case the place or anything—”

  Before he could finish, Dale swept Bryan’s feet out from under him, dropping him on his back. Dale then lowered a knee into Bryan’s chest and wrapped a hand around his throat.

  Rachel made a move toward them, but Dale waved his free hand at her. “Don’t be fucking stupid.” He turned his attention back to Bryan. “We don’t have the fucking time to take it easy. We lost the time to case the place when that shit-stain of a shifter over there got in my way last week. Now, maybe you’d like to fuck this up and see what the vampires do when you don’t pay them back. But me, I’d very much like to stay alive. So we’re doing this. Tomorrow. Deal with it.”

  Dale shoved Bryan back against the concrete and stepped off him. He moved toward the couch, and Rachel hastily backed out of his way. He shoved the rest of the cash into the bag before throwing it over his shoulder and heading back toward the catwalk.

  He paused before the first step and looked at Cal, who shivered under the glare of the pack leader.

  “One more thing, Cal,” he said, the words like ice. “If you so much as breathe wrong tomorrow, I’ll rip your legs off and leave you for the vampires.”

  FIVE

  FOUR HOURS after our visit to the bank, Inspector Perkins calls to tell us we’re on. The Sterling Security CEO even agreed to provide the armored car and the cash. Turns out that being the victim of a string of robberies isn’t act
ually good for a security company’s reputation. Man, it’s funny the things you can get people to agree to just to avoid a bit of negative newspaper coverage.

  They even found a bank crazy enough to play the role of bait. Of course, Perkins had to keep our involvement in the sting quiet, because I don’t think anyone would’ve approved the mission if he mentioned that his special agents for this off-the-books mission weren’t cops.

  With the plan a go, we spend the rest of the day researching ways to defeat weird human-bird hybrid things. I suggested doing the normal thing and stabbing them through the heart, but Dad’s all like: “No, Ria, we can’t just kill them. We’re not murderers.”

  Spoilsport.

  So Sunday rolls around and Inspector Perkins arrives at our house early in the morning to take us to the bank and give us details about the job.

  “So who agreed to let their bank be the site of a potential robbery?” Dad asks as we pile into Perkins’ personal vehicle.

  “West Village Credit Union. It’s this small place on Carmine and Bedford. They’re the only bank in the area open on a Sunday.”

  “And they were okay with the plan?” Mom asks.

  “Oh yeah. Word of the bank robberies is spreading like wildfire within the community. Branch managers are offering me their children to help stop it.”

  “So what’s the official play?” Dad asks.

  “There is no official play. The Sterling CEO doesn’t want this in the news or in the records. So it’s just between us.”

  “Okay, so what’s the unofficial play?”

  “It’s not far from what you suggested. We’re bringing in an armored car with a load of cash near closing time. Sterling had their people mark it as high-value, so if our thieves do have help on the inside, they’ve got to know about it. You folks will be in the bank the whole time dressed as tellers or security. If our perps show their faces, grab them. Alive.”

  He says that last word while looking at me through the rearview mirror.