manager returned with a 7Up. Bran cracked it open and handed it to Lina. “Drink. The sugar will steady you.”
After a moment, she nodded. The door closed quietly behind Ms. Dailey.
Lina took a swallow, but her hand was shaking, so he took the can from her and set it on the desk. “I need your full name,” he said, wincing at how stiffly that came out.
He read the desperation in her eyes. “I wasn’t imagining things, was I? Maya is dead.”
“I’m afraid so. Maya...?”
“Lee. She is...she was a loan officer. And my best friend,” she whispered, desolate.
Battling the need to draw her into his arms, he said, “I’m sorry for your loss, and that you had to see something so terrible.”
She sucked in a breath. “Jurick.” She spelled it. “That’s my last name. I’m Alina Jurick.”
“You live locally, I take it.” He couldn’t help the wryness in his tone.
Her eyes slid away before meeting his again. “Yes. I live in Clear Creek and teach at the middle school.”
“What do you teach, Lina?”
“Social studies.”
Bran only vaguely recalled his long-ago middle school classes. Social studies had been a mishmash of history and government, maybe a little anthropology and archaeology thrown in. He’d have liked to ask more, like why she had chosen to work with kids that age, but made himself stay on topic.
“Okay. You came to do some banking.”
She shook her head. “No, Maya and I were going to have lunch. I talked to her about fifteen minutes before I arrived. I parked on the street instead of in the lot, because her boss doesn’t even let employees park there, never mind friends.”
He heard about her perplexity when she found the doors locked in the middle of the day, and resisted asking why the hell she hadn’t called the cops right then.
“It was the sign,” she said.
“Sign?”
“It was taped to one of the doors.” She told him what it said.
“It’s not there anymore. Which means they grabbed it on the way out.”
“I think there was another one at the head of the drive-through. If they were in a hurry, they might have left that one.”
“Good,” he said. “Give me a second.”
Charlie answered immediately and promised to send someone out to check.
Bran returned his phone to his belt.
“It did seem strange,” Lina said. “But...normal strange. You know what I mean? I sort of knew something was wrong. But, um, there’s this feeling of unreality. Who expects something like...” She wobbled to a stop, then clapped her hand over her mouth.
Bran lunged out of his chair and grabbed the wastebasket, putting it in front of her. She bent over and retched. When she seemed done, he found tissues on a credenza and gave her a handful, then urged her to sip more of the soda. At some point in there, he’d come to be crouched beside her, rubbing her back.
The look she gave him held such misery, he said, “Oh, hell, Lina,” and rose, pulling her to her feet and into his arms. For a moment she stood stiff. He was about to release her when she made a muffled sound, leaned on him and seemed to go boneless. They stood like that for a long time. Inhaling her scent, he cradled the back of her head with one hand while he held her up with his other arm.
The hard mound of her belly felt odd wedged between them. It was like a purse or a—no, not a basketball—a soccer ball. Maybe one of those kid-size ones. Then he had the dazed thought that what he felt between them wasn’t kid-size—it was a kid. A whole, complete person in the making.
That this particular baby might be his was something he couldn’t let himself think about, not yet.
Once he would have sworn her belly quivered, but probably all of her had.
Finally, she sighed and didn’t so much ease back as collapse onto the chair. “I’m sorry. You must have more important things to do than wait while I freak out. I guess you need to hear what I saw, don’t you?”
“I do, but you don’t have anything to be sorry for. Anybody would have been shaken up.”
He didn’t recall ever being reluctant to push a witness to tell her story like this before. Bran hoped he was a compassionate man, but softer emotions weren’t in his repertoire.
“I couldn’t see anyone else. There had to be tellers in there.”
She didn’t want to ask whether they were dead, too, he guessed.
Bran resumed his seat. “Two tellers, two customers. The robbers made them sit on the floor behind the counter, hands on their heads, facing away from the confrontation you saw. They’re shaken up, but not hurt.”
She gave a jerky nod, then continued, telling him she hadn’t really looked at one of the two men, but she knew he’d worn a ski mask. “So I couldn’t have seen his face anyway. I think he was shorter than the other robber. Mr. Floyd—that’s the bank manager—isn’t tall. Like five foot eight? They were about the same height. He was thin. He had a gun, too.”
This he, Bran supposed, was bank robber number two, not Mr. Floyd. “Was he facing you?”
“No, he was mostly turned away. I think he was threatening Mr. Floyd, who was refusing to do something.” Her beautiful eyes widened. “Mr. Floyd...was he hurt?”
“I don’t have identities yet, but a man was killed as well as your friend.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. Her knuckles showed white as she wrung her hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling helpless. “Saying no to armed men threatening him wasn’t very smart.”
“No.” Lina was quiet for a minute. “Maya didn’t like him. I don’t think any of the employees did. He was really full of himself, and sanctimonious. You know? It would be just like him to think he could stand up to those men because he was important and principled and of course they’d back down.”
In other words, the guy was both a prick and an idiot.
He watched Lina collect herself. “The other one, he had the barrel of his gun pressed to Maya’s temple. She looked so scared.” She swallowed. “Maya saw me.”
“What?”
“I think she kind of jerked and—” Lina did some deep breathing “—he shot her. Her head just...”
Bran covered her writhing hands with one of his. “Try to step back, as if it was a movie and not real. Did the guy pull the trigger because he was startled? Or do you think he’d been ordered to kill her?”
She stared at him, but he could tell she was replaying what she’d seen. “I think Mr. Floyd had been told that if he didn’t cooperate, they’d kill Maya. And he wouldn’t, so they did.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Bran said gently. “Her seeing you had nothing to do with her death.”
“Yes, but—” She gulped. “He shot her and then he turned. He saw me.”
Bran’s blood ran cold.
She shuddered. “And...and I saw him.”
“He wasn’t wearing a mask?”
She shook her head. “Why would he let anyone see his face?” she begged.
He didn’t know. They must have known law enforcement would be watching the robbery within half an hour. Banks all had cameras.
“He couldn’t