Part 22 (2/2)

Jill stared up at her.

”Just do this for me, Jill. Close your eyes.”

”I'm not going-”

”Please. Author to author. Friend to friend. Captor to hostage. Close your eyes.”

Jill kept her eyes open, and Susan pushed the muzzle of the shotgun against the back of her skull, forcing her head back down.

”Close enough. Okay, you're in the bank one day. You need to make a withdrawal because you left your ATM card at home. A lunatic comes in, bolts the doors, weapons drawn. You're a smart girl. You know what this means. You and everyone in there are hostages. Do you remember seeing something like that on the news, Jill?”

Susan waited for a response. When she got none, she pushed the muzzle of the shotgun even harder against Jill's head, prodding her.

”That was in Sacramento, wasn't it?” Jill said, paraphrasing the script from the day she spun a similar scenario for Susan.

”Atta girl,” Susan said, and gave the back of Jill's head a teeth-rattling love tap with the gun barrel. ”Some poor security guard tries to save the day and gets a shotgun blast for his trouble. It happens everywhere, Jill. All over the country, all the time. Only this time, it's your bank, and you're in there with the lunatic. She's just killed two people in front of thirty witnesses. You're all side by side, facedown on the floor.”

”She won't kill us, will she?” Jill asked.

Far off, Jill could hear sirens, the throb of helicopter blades. Men's voices shouting outside. Somewhere inside the bank, a phone was ringing. Over and over. Ringing. An amplified voice outside, saying pick up the phone.

”Jill, to be honest, I have no idea. Either way, you've seen her face. You know who she is. It doesn't look good for you.”

Jill squirmed under the muzzle of the shotgun, trying to turn her head, to see Susan's face. To get a read on her.

”And then you hear it. Sirens, in the distance, growing louder. A silent alarm, perhaps, or someone heard the shots. Help is on the way. You allow yourself a glimmer of hope. The police have arrived. But your gunman friend grabs the man next to you, hoists him to his feet and drags him to the door.”

Jill sobbed, knowing what was coming next.

Susan grabbed the meek little bald man curled up in a tight ball on the floor and dragged him to his feet.

”No, Susan, please, no. Don't take him. Take me. Please, we're the ones you're mad at.”

”A police negotiator tries to initiate conversation, but your friend isn't listening. Instead, she shoots the man in the head and pitches him out into the street.”

Tears were streaming down Eddie Palmer's face as Susan forced him toward the door at gunpoint. In a way, he'd seen this coming his way from the moment he looked up and saw the two women come into the vestibule.

Jill, like Eddie, had resigned herself to a dark fate to be met on this day, but she just couldn't abide the thought of her doom affecting any more people. She just couldn't stand it.

With Susan's attention focused on getting the man to the door, Jill struggled to her feet, fighting the pain from her splintered rib. Her cuffed hands clawed for purchase as she pulled herself up on top of the tellers' cage barrier. She struggled to her feet once more, reawakening dormant pain from the old injury to her leg. She ignored her leg's protest, and leapt from the counter, her body on fire with pain. She landed on Susan's back. Jill got her cuffed hands over Susan's head and around her throat. She rode that b.i.t.c.h like a bucking bronco. Susan angled the shotgun back and fired, trying to shoot Jill off her back, but the explosion only put a hole in the ceiling and deafened them both. Jill worked her cuffs into Susan's neck, throttling her and yanking her from side to side.

Eddie watched the show, a possible reprieve from the blast that had been promised for his head. Her air supply cut off, the bad woman was losing steam, winding down. She collapsed. The shotgun clattered across the tile floor. Jill remained on Susan's back, straddling her, and with the handcuffs still under Susan's throat, she yanked back viciously.

Some of the hostages were standing up now and looking over the barrier of the tellers' cage. One or two cheered Jill on. Eddie spotted the shotgun and inched toward it, thinking he just might escape Ashley's poisonous influence yet. Some of the hostages watched him.

One girl urged him on, ”Get it! Pick it up!”

Susan was coughing, choking. Drawing on the last reserves of energy left inside her oxygen-starved body, she placed her hands against the floor and pushed herself up and onto her knees. Jill held on, using her cuffed hands as a garrote. Susan grabbed Jill's forearms and heaved forward, propelling Jill over her head and onto the floor. Jill landed on her back with a solid thud, in front of Susan.

Eddie picked up the shotgun. He had never touched a gun in his life, and really, he didn't even like violent movies. But he found the trigger easily enough. His finger just went there naturally. And he swung the Stevens in the direction of his captor. But Susan, her breathing harsh and ragged, was already on him. Her chest was against the twin bores of the weapon. He was not one for violence, but Eddie Palmer did something that neither his sister, his mother, nor his niece Ashley would have ever thought him capable. He squeezed the trigger. But the firing pin struck only an empty chamber. The Stevens double barrel had double triggers. The forward trigger, the one Eddie's finger just naturally found, had already discharged the right barrel. If there had been time, Eddie probably would have figured out that the rearward trigger would unleash holy h.e.l.l from the left barrel. But Eddie wasn't a sportsman. And time was too short. Susan grabbed the Stevens by the muzzle and forestock and shoved the weapon into Eddie's chest. She held on, and Eddie went down on his a.s.s, his visions of heroism dissipating.

All of this in a matter of seconds. Jill was already coming back for more. She was at Susan's back just as she was taking the Stevens away from Eddie. Susan knew Jill was there behind her, to take advantage of the skirmish. And as she shoved the shotgun forward to knock Eddie down, she yanked back viciously to keep the gun in her possession, and with that same backward pulling motion, she slammed the cut-off stock into Jill's face with a loud crack of the already-broken bone and cartilage in her nose. Jill collapsed. It was over for her. She had no fight left.

Susan swung the shotgun around and ordered the hostages in the tellers' cage back down on the floor. She took a minute to catch her breath, then dragged Jill, who was only barely conscious, over to a desk. She used her key to refasten Jill's cuffs around the desk leg. Susan grabbed the bothersome little bald man whose name she would never know and headed for the door. He was a weak man. Compliant. A little streak of bravery for a second there. Too bad for him he was too stupid to work the offset double triggers.

She unlocked the doors and threw them open. Outside was bright and she squinted against the setting sun. Officers had set up barriers to control the growing crowd and media presence, so Susan and Eddie had the sidewalk and street right outside the bank to themselves. Like a little stage.

She kept Eddie close in front of her. A human s.h.i.+eld. She had studied hostage situations and police response. She didn't believe that enough time had elapsed for the authorities to have a plan in place. Certainly the FBI wouldn't be on scene yet. There was no shoot-on-sight authorization. All they knew at this point was that there had been a silent alarm at the bank, communication could not be established, and the doors were locked. They didn't know who had taken the bank or why. She a.s.sumed Denton had found the deposit slip and the fingernail. So they knew what was likely going on inside, they could guess, but didn't actually know. They had no proof. She was ready to show her hand.

Susan brought the sawed-off shotgun out from behind her back.

From the street, beyond the perimeter, she heard an officer yell, ”Gun!”

But before that single syllable had escaped the deputy's mouth, Susan had pulled the rearward trigger on the Stevens, and Eddie Palmer's head vaporized.

She pitched the body in the street and ducked back in the bank before anybody could quite comprehend what had just happened.

Susan Weaver had played her hand.

Back inside the bank, Susan unlocked Jill from the desk and relocked the cuffs around her wrists. She yanked Jill to her feet.

”The lunatic returns. Only this time she pulls you up, holds you in front of her and presses the gun to your temple.”

Susan tossed the shotgun aside. The Stevens had been for crowd control. And to show the police she meant business. It would be too unwieldy for the close-up work she had planned next. She drew a snub nose .38 from her side and put the revolver to Jill's head.

Jill closed her eyes, waiting for the bullet.

”You won't be seeing it on the news this time around, because this time, you are the news. You're a human s.h.i.+eld for a subhuman animal. You're completely unaware that somewhere out there, out in the quiet and the dark, in a place you'll never see, a man waits. All he does is handle situations like this. In all this h.e.l.l you've been through, only he can make it right.”

Susan c.o.c.ked the gun. Jill winced in antic.i.p.ation.

”You think he's out there, Jill? I bet he is. Your guardian angel. And he can save you. With one shot. With one perfectly placed shot. Think he can do it now, with his precious pregnant wife in the way?”

”You're already dead, you just don't know it.”

”I've been dead since I was six years old,” she said and shoved Jill forward, toward the door, her fate.

CHAPTER 25.

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