not from cigarettes. He smelled more like he’d been to a barbecue recently. Or standing too close to a fire pit. It was an odd thought that pushed its way into Alyssa’s head when she really should have focused on how his eyes narrowed even farther.
“Yeah, righ—”
“She just swallowed her ring!”
Alyssa and the gunman in front of her turned to look at the other gunman by the door. He was pointing to someone behind them both. Alyssa turned back around just in time to hear Missy cough.
“Did you really just swallow your ring?” the bigger gunman roared. He swung his gun over to point at her.
“You’re damn right I swallowed my ring,” she yelled back, fire in her eyes. “That ring was my mama’s and her mama’s before then. So unless you plan to wait it out, it’s staying with me.”
Alyssa felt a flash of pride for the woman—Southern ladies take their heirlooms seriously—however, it was short-lived. The gunman struck out with the butt of his gun and hit Missy across the head so fast that she didn’t even have time to yell. But Alyssa did.
She crawled over to the woman just as she fell back against the tile. Blood burst from her cheek.
“Did I say you could move?” the gunman yelled at Alyssa. She froze next to Missy, knees against the floor and hands in the air.
She didn’t respond to him. Nothing she said would have made the situation better when he was so obviously itching for some violence. Just like his woman partner. Robbie bleeding a few feet from them on the floor was a good indication of that.
“Get the rest of their stuff,” said his partner, a reminder that he’d forgotten his original task. The gunman sneered down at Alyssa, just long enough to have his dark eyes imprinted in her memory for the rest of her life—whether or not she wanted it—and moved on to the last two people in their group.
Alyssa dropped her hands and felt her adrenaline spike. Moving so her back was to the gunman near the door, she reached out and helped Missy sit up. The woman’s fire moments before had been doused. She was in pain. But she was going to have to forget that for a moment.
“Are you okay?” Alyssa whispered. With one hand she touched the open gash on her cheek and with the other she grabbed one of Missy’s hands. “It’ll be okay,” she said before Missy could answer her question. The woman looked confused as Alyssa pulled her hand to her lap. From anyone else’s point of view, Alyssa hoped it looked like she was just trying to console the woman.
When in reality she just wanted the woman to feel her cell phone, tucked out of sight in the raised waist of her skirt.
“Now, everyone keep their mouths shut! You make a move, you die,” yelled the taller gunman. He took the hat full of their goods and gave it to the other gunman. They whispered a moment before the bigger man went to the back.
The bank patrons and employees were alone with the man who, Alyssa guessed, was the most observant of the three. She wasn’t going to be able to use her phone while he was there. This realization inspired another risk on her part. One Alyssa hoped wouldn’t get her or anyone else killed.
Still holding Missy’s hand, she slipped her fingers into her skirt and pulled out her cell phone. Missy, bless her, didn’t flinch as Alyssa put the phone against her palm. When she felt the woman’s grip tighten around it, Alyssa put her hand back in Missy’s lap and patted it twice.
Then Alyssa turned, heartbeat hammering in her chest.
“Can I go over to him?” Alyssa asked, nodding over to Robbie. “Someone needs to put pressure on his wound to try to stop the bleeding.”
The man seemed, thankfully, less angry than his partners. Still, he was resistant. “I don’t think so. You stay right there.”
“But look at all that blood,” she tried again, her voice near breaking. “Please, all I’m going to do is put my hands on it. Nothing else. Please.”
The man cast a quick look at the group as a whole and then adjusted his gun’s aim to the young woman in front. She flinched back into Ted’s arms. The gunman looked at Alyssa.
“If you try anything, and I mean anything, I’ll shoot her in the face. Got it?”
Alyssa nodded, amending her idea that this man was any less violent than his friends. She got up slowly, giving Missy time to hide the cell phone, hopefully, and walked with her hands held high over to Robbie’s prone body.
She hadn’t been lying. There was a lot of blood. Since she had never been a part of the medical field in her life, she had no idea if putting pressure on a gunshot wound even worked. All she had to go by was TV shows and movies she’d seen. Still, she did as she said and dropped to the guard’s side. Alyssa put one hand and then the other on top of the wound and pressed down. Warm blood squeezed out between her fingers. Robbie was still breathing, although the breaths were shallow.
The sound of rain and thunder continued in chorus for several minutes. Alyssa kept her eyes off Missy, since the gunman seemed to be looking in her direction every few seconds, but she prayed the woman had made the call to the cops. After another few minutes, Alyssa came to the conclusion that she hadn’t.
But then Alyssa spied movement on the other side of the glass doors and several things happened all at once.
The gunman had started to turn toward the doors when she found herself speaking up again.
“He really needs a doctor soon,” she said, drawing his attention toward her.
He opened his mouth to talk just as his partners came back into the lobby.
“Cops,” the woman yelled.
The gunman at the door didn’t hesitate. He whirled around.
Then the gunfire and screaming started.
All Alyssa had time to do was throw herself over Robbie and hope she’d live long enough to tell her sister that, for once, she’d had her cell phone right when she needed it.
Caleb Foster cursed something awful.
“How do you even function out here in this?”
Deputy Dante Mills let out a laugh.
“You get used to it,” he said. “Just one of those things.”
Caleb, a man who’d spent the majority of his career—and life—in Portland, Oregon, might have been okay with the blanket heat that the small town of Carpenter, Alabama, was throwing at him, but its humidity was another problem altogether.
It was one thing to be stuck in the heat. It was another to feel like you were drowning in it.
“I don’t want to get used to this,” he said sourly. He didn’t care if Dante heard him. Ever since his transfer to the Riker County Sheriff’s Department had been approved one month ago, he hadn’t been making it a secret he was unhappy. Not that he’d had much of an alternative option, though. “I want some air that doesn’t make me feel like I’m swimming standing up.”
Dante chuckled. “You city boys sure do complain a lot.”
Caleb was about to ask what his partner’s definition of “city boy” was when they came to a stop in the parking lot. He decided he’d ask that question later. Right now he was concerned about why the sheriff had called him in minutes after their shift started. He might not have wanted the Alabama weather, but he did want his job.
The Riker County Sheriff’s Department stood between the local television station and the county courthouse, all three in the very heart of the town. With two stories and faded brick and concrete, the department faced one of Carpenter’s main streets and was subsequently always busy. This was a familiar sight for Caleb, and while he wouldn’t