PROLOGUE
Taylor
“This is 9-1-1. Please state your emergency.”
The voice on the other end of the line was calm and cool, no indication at all that whoever they were would be bothered by the panic that surely waited on the other end of line.
On my end of the line.
But I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I was scared, I was shaking… and I was afraid they would hear me.
“9-1-1, please state your emergency,” the voice said again.
If I just sat here, if I just put the phone down where no one would see, could I be traced? Would the operator know to send help to this address? I was using my cell phone. Could a cell phone be traced like that?
My stomach churned because I honestly didn’t know.
How stupid could I be? How could I have never taken the time to learn this? How could I be crouching here, under my counter, with sweat dampening my silk shirt and prayer whispering from my lips?
“I said down on the floor, now!” an angry voice demanded.
The cries and screams of people behind me echoed through my head. The sound bounced around in my brain, refusing to fade away and threatening to take what little bit of grip I had on my sanity.
I couldn’t just sit here.
I couldn’t just watch my life flash before my eyes. I couldn’t just let this happen.
I had to do something.
“I’m at Shaw Trust on Sunderland Avenue,” I whispered. “There is a bank robbery in progress.”
“Are you inside the bank, ma’am?” the dispatcher asked. I could hear her fingers flying over her keyboard and I prayed that meant she was sending help.
“Yes,” I whispered, clutching the phone.
One of the robbers was yelling at Brandy, one of my fellow tellers, to open the safe, and she was crying loudly.
“How many intruders are in the bank?”
I wasn’t sure. They charged inside in a flurry of furious movement, and I ducked low, hiding myself behind my counter. “Too many,” I breathed out.
“I’m dispatching several units to the scene, ma’am,” the operator informed me.
My stomach twisted painfully as the man continued to shout at Brandy. He was threatening her now and it seemed to make her more hysterical. Anger burned up through my esophagus. Anger at the robbers, anger at the woman on the other end of the phone. How could she be so calm? Did she not hear the commotion going on in the background? Did she not know that our lives were in danger?
A shot rang out and Brandy screamed. I peeked out to see plaster from the ceiling rain down over Brandy’s head. She threw her arms up around her for protection, and the man with the gun—the man who shot into the ceiling—grabbed her by the back of her head and slammed her into the safe. “Open it!” he roared.
“Ma’am, were those shots fired?” the operator asked.
“Yes,” I hissed, my voice shaky. “Please hurry.”
I could hear the people from the lobby sobbing, and my thoughts went immediately to the man just on the other side of my counter. I didn’t know him, but the thought of him being hurt made my stomach churn even more.
“What the hell is this?” someone snarled above me, and I quivered.
The phone was snatched away from my ear and I whimpered as a man in tattered jeans, with a wide chest and a very lethal-looking gun in his hand, snarled at me. He pressed the phone to his ear and I could hear the voice of the operator asking me if I was all right.
Yeah, now she was concerned.
With a loud roar, he threw the phone down onto the shiny tile floor and it broke apart, shattering instantly. The sound of scattering pieces was nearly as loud as the gunshot just moments before.
“We got a snitch!” he yelled, reaching down. I pressed myself against the back of the counter until I felt the wood dig into the bones in my back. I slapped away his hands, but really it was useless. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. And he had a gun. My greatest weapon at the moment was my fingernails.
His hands were rough as he grabbed my wrist, twisting the flesh covering the bone and wrenching me out of my hiding spot. I cried out when he jerked my arm around my back, pulling so forcefully that it felt as if my shoulder were dislocated from its socket.
I didn’t have time to really assess if it was or not because he jammed the nozzle of the gun into my throat. I could feel my hammering pulse thump rapidly against the cold, hard metal of the weapon.
“You call the police, bitch?” he whispered in my ear. Little dots of spit from his putrid mouth sprayed the side of my head.
I didn’t say anything because my answer would only make things worse.
The heavy footfalls of someone approaching from behind made me even more nervous, and I whispered another prayer in the back of my mind. We spun, and I was sandwiched between the guy threatening me with a gun and another thief staring at me with angry dark eyes.
“You called the cops?” He said it like it was hard to believe.
“Last time I checked, robbing a bank and holding a gun on a person was a crime,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t, but not being able to keep the words in. I was scared, but I was also very angry.
He smacked me across the face. Hard.
His palm literally slammed into the side of my face, making my entire head fly sideways and right into the gun at my neck. The hard steel was unforgiving and it jammed into my flesh, making me cry out.
That was going to leave a mark.
“Hey,” said a rough voice from off to the side. “I thought you were here for the money and not to hit women.”
Part of me wanted to thank the man behind my counter for trying to defend me; the other part of me was horrified he would be punished.
Just as I feared, the man who slapped me leveled his gun at him. What was his name again? I tried to remember what it said on his ID when he showed it to me to make his withdrawal, but it was hard to think when half your face was stinging fiercely and the other half was being threatened with a bullet.
This was the worst day in the history of bad days.
“Hey! We came here for the cash!” another man behind us yelled.
I was shoved roughly forward. “Open the safe.”
I wasn’t going to open that safe.
I glanced at Brandy, who was huddled against the wall, crying. She didn’t appear to be physically harmed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I said open it!” He yanked the gun away from my neck, but I couldn’t enjoy the safety because he slapped his large, sweaty palm in between my shoulder blades and thrust me forward so forcefully that I slammed into the metal door of the safe and bounced back, falling onto my ass on the floor.