Why the hell couldn’t I remember what I saw that night? I slapped my palm against the steering wheel as I sat in Friday night traffic. Why was everything still blank? If I could just remember, everybody would know I was innocent. Then again, maybe there was nothing to remember.
I thought about making something up. What did it matter? Would it look suspicious if all of a sudden, I remembered a hulking figure by the vault door? Probably. I’d look guiltier than ever if I pulled something like that out of my ass. Ricardo would see right through me—I wasn’t even a very good liar. I wished everybody knew that about me, how terrible I was at lying. They would know I was telling the truth.
I remembered driving to the bank. I remembered that much. Maybe if I put myself back in that scenario, traced my steps, it would jog my memory. I was already driving. What else had I done that night?
The parking lot was empty, just as it had been when I arrived during the robbery. There wasn’t a sign of disturbance anywhere—if there had been, I would’ve picked up on it. The lights were still on above the front door, and the only light inside the bank came from the security lights by the ceiling. Everything was the same.
So what had I done? I had fished through my purse for my access card. I held it in my hand and said a silent prayer as I swiped it across the sensor. The little light went from red to green, and a buzzing sound indicated the unlocking of the door. Thanks, George, I thought with a scowl. So predictable. I opened the door and stepped inside, grateful to get out of the cold. It had been cold that night, too. I had rubbed my hands together for warmth before walking across the floor.
The bank was quiet, empty. A little creepy. Even the most innocent, safe places could feel creepy after-hours. A store, a mall, a bank. Dark and quiet. I tried to shake off the feeling that there were things waiting for me in the darkness, unknown things waiting to pounce on me. My imagination was running wild.
I stopped, eyes closed, and took a deep breath. I was being ridiculous. There was nothing scary about the bank itself. It was just a building. I opened the door leading to the area behind the teller windows and went to my desk.
“Damn it!” I whispered, even though I didn’t need to whisper. I was so sure the wallet would be under the desk, but no luck. It hadn’t fallen into the waste basket. Nothing in my drawers but what was supposed to be there. I would have to call Marcus to be sure it didn’t fall out in his car before I started calling the credit card companies—that would be a hell of a hassle, one I didn’t feel like going through if the wallet was safe somewhere. Still, I wondered if going through the hassle might be easier than talking to Marcus.
That’s when I heard it. A footstep. I held my breath, freezing in place like a scared rabbit. That was how it happened that night, too. I’d heard a footstep. It all came rushing back in one fell swoop. I had been standing in front of my desk when I heard a footstep. I’d turned to find a figure dressed in black, including a ski mask, coming out of the vault. My knees had gone weak with terror when I realized I’d walked in on the middle of a robbery. What if they had a weapon? What if they tied me up or shot me? Everything had started to go fuzzy. I was about to faint…
Our eyes had met just before the world went black.
Blue eyes. Strikingly blue. Like the sky.
“Looking for this?” In the present, Peter held up my wallet. “I was wondering how long it would take before you noticed it was missing.”
Play it cool. “What are you still doing here?” I asked with a shaky laugh. “And why didn’t you tell me you found it? Could’ve saved me the trip instead of scaring me half to death.” I laughed again and hoped he’d think it was only because he’d startled me.
“I was waiting here for you. There’s something we need to talk over.”
“You could’ve just called, Pete. You know my number.” I held out my hand. “Can I have it, please? I’m sort of in a hurry.”
“Where are you hurrying to?” His voice was light, playful.
“For one thing, I was gonna order dinner earlier—which was when I realized my wallet was missing. I’m starving.” When he didn’t hand it over, I went to him and reached for it. He pulled it away. “Stop messing around. Come on. I want to get dinner.”
“Not just now. Like I said, we have to talk.” He perched on the edge of his desk. “I went to all the trouble to bring you here. The least you can do is talk to me.”
“What’s wrong?” I did everything I could to play it cool, even as I reminded myself what a crappy liar I was. My heart beat so fast and hard, I was sure he could hear it. Just stay calm. Be cool. It’s going to be okay.As I stood there, forcing myself to keep eye contact, the presence of cameras all around the room was reassuring. Oh, Marcus, please be watching.
“That detective was here today. That Montez guy.”
“Okay. He’s been here a lot.”
“Well, today he went in to see George. You were back there.” He pointed to the closed door of the security center. “Hanging out with your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I replied without thinking. My tone was sharp.
“Ooh, did you two have a fight after work? You seemed pretty chummy when you were leaving.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, waving a hand. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, I overheard them talking in George’s office. Looks like they’re pointing the finger at you for the whole robbery thing.”
“I didn’t do it,” I whispered.
“I know you didn’t. Still, I thought it was interesting that they think you did. And you know why they think you did?” I shook my head, pretending I hadn’t already spoken with Ricardo. “Because you don’t remember anything about that night. Something as simple as that. Not a single fingerprint, no footage. Nothing. All they need to be suspicious of you is your lack of memory.”
What could I do? I felt like he was backing me into a trap, and I had to work my way out of it. Like we were playing a game of chess, which I was never very good at no matter how hard I tried. I was always good at planning out my moves based on how I thought my opponent would react, but when it came time to put them in check, I could never seem to get my pieces in position quickly enough. That was what was happening with Peter and me. He was on the attack, and I had to pretend I didn’t know even as I worked out what I thought he was going to do.
Should I tell him I remembered, or should I pretend things were still a blank? How long could I stall him? Was Marcus watching? Or had Peter disabled the cameras again? No! The revelation dawned on me. He couldn’t have. He didn’t know Marcus had upgraded the system. He could watch from his laptop if he wanted to. It was all in the cloud. Unless Peter knew about that, which I highly doubted, he wouldn’t know how to disable the feed. Just the on-site recording.
No matter what happened, the truth would come out. That was almost a comforting thought as I stood there, face-to-face with the man who’d robbed the bank. The man who’d gone to the trouble of stealing my wallet just to lure me back to the scene of the crime.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, willing myself to keep my voice strong as I did. I couldn’t let him know how frightened I was just then. I couldn’t let him see I knew the truth.
“See, now that I’m sure you don’t remember and haven’t told the cops anything, I know it’s time to go through with the next step in my plan.”
“Your plan?” My heart sank. “Why would you have a plan?”
He smirked. “Come on. Don’t play dumb. I know you’re a smart girl, and I know you know it was me. Why else would I do this?” He handed the wallet over. “Here. I don’t need this anymore.”
“It was you?” I breathed.
“Of course, it was. Nobody else around here has what it takes to pull off what I pulled off. You don’t even know how long it took for me to put everything together, and the patience it took for me to hold back until the time was just right. Or what I had to do to find the right people to help
me.” He stood up, smiling. I took a step away from him.
“You had help? From inside the bank?”
“No, of course not. You think I would trust any of these idiots?” He waved a hand around. “Besides, I couldn’t have ties to whoever I worked with. It had to be strangers, people I couldn’t be connected to later on. They got their cut for hacking into the security feed.”
So that was how he did it. The fact that they were strangers and he was probably too careful to contact them again told me they wouldn’t have clued him in to Marcus’s modifications. He was in the dark.
“What do I have to do with this? Why are we here? If you wanted to silence me, why bring me here?”
“Come on. I couldn’t just waltz into your apartment building. I couldn’t risk witnesses.”
“But you are trying to silence me. That’s your plan, right?”
At least he looked sorrowful when he nodded. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. I couldn’t risk you running to the cops once your memory came back. I knew you recognized me that night before you passed out. I didn’t want it to be this way.” He shook his head.
Marcus, Marcus, please. Be watching.
Chapter Twenty-One – Marcus
“It could be a wallet,” Zeke suggested after watching the footage over and over.
“No matter what it is, I still think you should call Ricardo and tell him. This is the first thing you’ve seen in days that points to anybody in the bank but her.” Tricia looked down at me, expectant.
“I don’t know. What if he dropped something on his own? What if his own wallet fell out of his pocket when he bent down?” I shook my head, staring at the screen. “I can’t jump to conclusions.”
“Then I will, damn it.” Tricia reached for my phone, sitting beside me on the desk. I grabbed her wrist.
“You don’t understand.”
They both stared blankly at me. “What don’t we understand?” she asked.
I couldn’t tell her I didn’t want to look like I was manufacturing evidence to help Lauren. That it was all too convenient for me to suddenly find something to cast doubt on Peter, not even an hour after the blowout at her apartment. “I don’t know that he takes me too seriously right now,” I finally explained. “There was a thing with her, earlier tonight. It’s a long story.”
“What, that you two are banging?” Zeke chuckled.
I jumped to my feet. “Excuse me?”
“Now, now, boys. Settle down.” Tricia wedged herself between us and looked up at me. “There’s been a rumor. Nothing nasty or mean. But we all sort of know the two of you have been…you know…”
“Fuck me,” I groaned.
“Exactly,” Zeke smirked.
“Shut up!” Tricia barked at him. “You’re not helping.”
We jumped when my phone rang. Just in time for Zeke, too. I was about to put his smirking face through a wall. “It’s Ricardo,” I muttered before answering.
“She’s at the bank,” he barked before I had the chance to say a word.
“What?” Why would she go there? My heart sank. She was guilty. She had to be.
“She used her key card fifteen minutes ago. We’re on our way over but traffic is a fucking nightmare—even with the siren, there’s no cutting through.”
“Son of a bitch.” I minimized the footage screen and pulled up the live feed from the bank. “I can get into the security feed from here.”
“Good. I wanna see what she’s doing. What the hell would she go back there for if she wasn’t guilty, Marcus? Doesn’t she know what this looks like?”
I typed in my credentials to open the program and remembered what happened before Zeke pissed me off. “I’m here with Tricia and Zeke, and it looks like Peter stole something from her purse earlier today. She might’ve gone back for that.”
“He stole something?”
“It looks that way, but I wasn’t sure enough to call you on it,” I said. The program opened, and I flipped from one feed to the next until I saw her. She wasn’t alone. “He’s there! He’s with her!”
“Peter and Lauren? You mean they were working together?”
“I don’t think so.” I put him on speaker and left the phone sitting on the desk for us all to hear him.
“She looks terrified,” Tricia said. “See the way she’s backing up? And he’s following her.”
“Shit!” I picked up the laptop and the phone. “I’m going over there.”
“No, you’re not!” Ricardo bellowed through the phone. “This is police business, Marcus.”
“I’m not gonna sit here and watch him hurt her!” I ran up the stairs and out to my car. I didn’t realize Tricia had followed me until she pushed past me to get behind the wheel.
“I’ll drive. You watch the feed.” I handed the keys over and climbed in beside her, laptop balanced on my thighs.
“What’s happening now?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. There’s no sound. They’re talking.”
“Why would they be there together?” he asked. “You said he stole something?”
“Yeah, we watched maybe thirty times but couldn’t make out what it was. You were in George’s office, she was with me. He bent down behind her desk to pick something up—and he slid something into his pocket as he was standing. Her purse was there, under the desk. She always leaves it there.”
“He lured her,” Ricardo muttered.
“It’s him, man. It’s gotta be.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She ran a hand through her hair, and even at a distance I could tell she was shaking. They were both in profile, facing each other between their desks. Only she kept backing up closer to hers, and he matched her step for step.
“He must’ve overheard us talking in the office. He sits right outside the door,” he said.
“What were you saying that he overheard?” I asked.
“Just what we talked about at her place tonight. That she doesn’t remember anything, and how guilty it makes her look. That was when George decided to have her stay out of the bank until the case closed.”
“He knew he had to make his move,” Tricia said. “If it was him, he had to do something about her before she remembered.”
“Right! Up to this point, he was never quite sure. I remember him asking her once while I was standing nearby if her memory had cleared up at all. That fucking snake!” I punched the dash until my fists ached, but it wasn’t enough.
“Careful or you’ll end up breaking something.” Tricia said as we swung a hard left turn through a light that had just turned red. “We’ll get there before anything happens. Don’t you worry.”
“Just hurry up, okay?”
“I’m trying not to get us killed while I’m at it.” She gritted her teeth and floored it to get us through another just-turning-red light. “Or anybody else, for that matter.”
“How far away are you?” Ricardo asked.
“Ten minutes, maybe.” Ten minutes too long. I stared at the screen, wondering what they were saying. He must’ve told her to sit down at her desk. She did, hands-on the surface, palms down. “What the hell is he having her do?”
“Describe it to me,” he ordered.
“She’s sitting down, hands-on the desk. He’s walking back and forth behind her. They’re talking. She’s probably trying to stall.” There was a fist around my heart, squeezing hard. I could barely breathe. She was all alone there. She didn’t know I was watching. For all she knew, nobody even cared. Why was I so cruel? Would my last words to her be my last words to her? I would do everything in my power to make sure that wasn’t the case, but I wasn’t calling the shots just then. He was. Standing over her, talking to her. Maybe taunting her.
She chewed her bottom lip and glanced up at the camera facing them while he was standing behind her. “We’re coming,” I whispered. “We’ll be there soon.”
“Marcus. I have three more cars on the way. They should get there around the time you arrive,” Ricardo said. “Just h
old on, okay? We’ll get to her in time.”
“We’d better,” I muttered. I would never forgive myself if we didn’t. As I watched, Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun. “He’s armed. He has a gun.”
“Fuck.” I heard him report this over the radio in his car. “Suspect is armed. Repeat, suspect is armed. One hostage in the building.”
“A hostage?” I asked.
“We have to treat it as a hostage situation now,” he said. “We’ll take every precaution with her. She’ll be all right.”
“She’d better be. Damn it, we should’ve believed her.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Tricia said. “It’s a waste of time.”
“She’s right,” Ricardo added.
“Yeah, that’s easy for you to say. Will that make you feel less guilty if she ends up dead?”
“She won’t. Once he knows we’re outside, there’s no way he’ll do anything to her.” I didn’t bother replying. The guy was desperate. He might do anything.
Chapter Twenty-Two – Lauren
A single tear rolled down my cheek. What was taking them so long? Was nobody going to come for me? No, he wasn’t watching. He was probably at home, hanging out. Or at the office. Forgetting I existed. Trying to shut me out of his life. Meanwhile, I was sitting at my desk with a crazy person walking back and forth behind me.
I looked up at the camera when Peter couldn’t see me. Marcus, please. Please, call the police. Something.
I searched desperately for something to stall him with. “What did you do with the money?” I asked.
“Oh, that.” He chuckled. “I have several overseas accounts which I set up a six months ago, in preparation for this.”
“You planned it for six months?” I murmured. I couldn’t help but marvel at how long he’d been working toward his goal.
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