True Blend (2 page)

“George!” Nate yells, his voice muffled through the nylon. “Just do it, man. Put on the sweatshirt and cover your face. It’ll be okay. All you have to do is stand beside the truck, right against the gun port. That’s it. If they see you walking away and messing this up, they won’t like it. I told them you were game.”

A motion catches George’s eye. When a uniformed man steps out of the armored truck and walks to the door of the bank, it’s clear that innocent people are connecting the dots of some crime about to happen. Some strange bullet’s already been discharged and he’s not sure he can stop it. He feels oddly cold and glances down at his shirt. It is soaked through.

And then it just happens, his legs begin backing away, his hand held up signaling he will not listen any longer. “Leave with me, Nate. Come on. Those guards will never give up that truck. They’ll use their weapons before they turn it over. You know that, don’t you?”

Nate leans across the seat, looking up at him through the open passenger door. “Not with the right bait, they won’t.”

“Bait?” They are moments away from some godforsaken act and George has no clear way out. He has to take a chance and walk. Maybe his brother will come to his senses and follow him, tag along like he used to, a step behind always. Start the car and pull up beside him to leave together. He turns, zips his light jacket and heads across the sloping parking lot toward the sidewalk up along the street as though he is nothing more than a passing pedestrian. Except there is no way a pedestrian hears his own heart beat the way he does.

“Just do it,” Nate calls quietly. George turns as his brother releases the safety on the semiautomatic gun in his lap. “Come on. It’s time,” Nate insists, lurching with the force of the words. “Are you in?”

How many times has he heard that line? How many times has Nate called him to put together a poker night?
Are you in?
How many times has his brother dealt the cards, waiting for his call?
You in?
George looks back to the bank. A woman and her young daughter walk toward the door. His eyes drop closed for a moment when he whispers, “No, no.”

If he leaves the scene and calls the police, is there time enough to stop what will happen in the parking lot? Because it’s happening already, he’s just not sure how. But it’s all unfolding. So does he owe that woman and her child fair warning? Or is he wrong? Maybe they won’t be a part of it. Maybe the worst thing he can do is yell and wave his arms at them to hide, to go inside the bank and stay there, to run, damn it.

His whole life comes down to this one moment, weighing the odds of surviving the crime as he helps the others right now, against the odds of leaving quietly and staying alive, calling for help once he’s safely away from the scene. One moment, one decision.

*  *  *

When she’s handed her deposit receipt and money, the teller asks Amy to count it. “Just to be sure,” she says. So Amy quickly fingers through the bills, all the while hearing Julie make easy small talk with Grace sitting at her desk, squiggling a pencil across blank paper.

“Say bye-bye now,” Amy says, looking over to her daughter as she puts away her money.

“She’s such a good girl,” Julie tells her with a smile. “You come and visit me anytime, Gracie. Next week, I’ll have a lollipop for you.”

An armored truck worker says hello to Grace as he walks past them on his way outside. He holds the door but Amy waves him off, stopping first at the self-service table and taking a handful of deposit slips. She opens her purse and neatly tucks them in beside the envelope of cash. Grace stands near her, touching her leg, holding her pencil drawing. They always touch, somehow. If not one, the other.

When they leave the bank, it is into a suffusion of clear morning sunlight. Amy pauses, letting its soft warmth rest on her face until Grace shifts beside her. Her fingers clasp tightly the small hand of her daughter. The child must still sense the loss of her father and shadows her constantly. Amy checks the time on her gold watch, the one Mark had given her for their first anniversary, having no idea those hands of time would count down a limited number of hours of their life together.

“Come on, Grace.” Looking down at their daughter, Amy sees the rays of morning sun touch her honey-blonde ponytails. The light dances delicately through the fine wisps of her two-year-old tresses and Amy lets that light reach her own heart. “Let’s go to the playground,” she says as they walk off the curb. The step down is steep for Grace’s legs. Amy carefully looks past the red armored truck parked there to be sure no cars approach in their path. Grace lags a step behind, her little legs working fast to keep up, so Amy slows and turns only to see a blur, a dark shadow sweeping toward her and pulling her daughter from her hand. There is sudden commotion, pressing unexpectedly close. Grace’s pencil drawing flutters to the pavement.

Two

ARE YOU HURT?” THE DRIVER asks.

Amy shakes her head, watching the street where the armored truck drove off. “My God, they took her. They just grabbed her from me!” She is shaking and wraps her arms around herself. Arms that feel hollow and empty without Grace. She looks down at those arms and sees her gold watch. Three minutes have passed since she walked out of the bank holding her daughter’s hand. Three minutes.

“Quick, let’s get you inside,” the other man from the truck says, taking her elbow to lead her to the bank. “Your legs are all cut, you sure you’re okay?”

“Wait!” Amy cries. “I’ve got to get Grace.” She digs into her handbag searching for car keys. “We’ll follow them,” she insists as her vision blurs behind tears. “If I can just find my keys.” The purse drops to the ground and she crouches, desperately rummaging around her wallet and tissue and hand lotion and pens and her banking receipts, until the two armored truck workers take her by the arms and help her to stand.

“It’s too late, they’re gone already. They’re gone! We’ve got to call for help right away.” The uniformed man saying this pulls his cell phone from his pocket.

The driver, wearing only a dark T-shirt with his uniform pants, is insisting nonstop, “The police, call the police. Get the cops here.” Perspiring and visibly shaken, he turns back to Amy. “Hurry now!”

“No, no.” She takes a deep, shaking breath with tears lining her face. “No police.”

“What?” both men ask at the same time.

“We have to wait,” she explains, a hand pressing back a sob over her mouth. “They told me,” she continues then, looking from one defeated face to the other. “The man with my daughter told me I had to wait an hour. One hour with no police contact,” she barely says, her words choked back with crying. “One hour for my daughter.”

“What? Jesus, that’s too long! Your little girl—”

“Please,” Amy pleads. “We have to listen to them.”

“Take a deep breath and let’s get inside where you can sit down,” one of the men tells her, and she forces herself to breathe in. Her lungs can’t seem to get enough oxygen though. The inhale is ragged and strained.

The men lead her into the bank, through the lobby to a small office where she sits, then promptly stands and circles the room. The bank manager rushes in behind them. “What’s going on?” He looks at Amy and stops in his tracks. “What happened?”

“They have my daughter.”

“Who has your daughter? Is she okay?” He looks out the window and when he does, Amy does too. In her mind, it is still happening, even though the parking lot is empty now. But to her, the man holding Grace is there still, his feet always moving, shifting his weight back and forth, back and forth, turning, jostling Grace in his grip, her ponytails swinging as he moves in shadow closer to the armored truck.

“What’s going on?” the manager asks.

“They stole the truck!” the driver explains. “Didn’t you see?”

“What? No. The truck’s been stolen? You gave it to them?”

The driver nods rapidly. “Jesus, they took her girl to do it. They took her! Kidnapped her, right in broad daylight.”

“What do you mean, they took her? You couldn’t stop them?”

“No. Shit, it all happened so fast,” the other guard says. “I was opening the back door on the truck and the next thing, someone’s got me by the neck with a gun to my head, pushing me right inside. My God, I never saw him coming.”

“I did what they said,” the driver says, still shaking. “Man, they’d kill him otherwise. And the girl, they had her. So I did it, I called the dispatcher, just did what they said.”

Amy turns to the bank manager. She holds out her arms, her right hand scraped raw, her fingers shaking. “They took Grace,” she whispers. The bank goes silent, and with a few employees clustered in the doorway, listening, she explains. “He just grabbed her, and his feet, his feet, well they kept shifting.”
A breath
, she thinks.
Breathe
. “Grace, her hair, her face. She was so afraid. And I couldn’t see, in the sunlight.” She closes her eyes against all the visuals that won’t line up. “He kept moving closer to the truck. With my daughter.” Finally, when she can only cry, the two armored truck guards fill in their details. Amy, her hand over her mouth, listens closely to each mention of a tone of voice, or type of weapon trained on them, or order given. They followed those orders; the driver lied and notified their dispatcher that they were leaving for their next scheduled stop for only one reason. It was all because Grace was in that man’s arms.

“You couldn’t use your weapons?” the bank manager asks, shaking his head no, like he already knows the answer. They all do.

“The girl. My God, if we did anything, they’d hurt her little girl. And as soon as they got her on the truck, that was it. We were out and they took off. They did it, man, they took her. They took everything—the truck, the girl, even my uniform shirt, man. Jesus.”

“But there’s a camera on the truck, right? Surveillance video? And GPS they can track?”

“GPS? You kidding me, man? That klunker’s seven years old, we’re lucky to have a working radio on it.”

“But you called the police?” the bank manager asks.

“No, we can’t yet,” the driver explains.

“What? Jesus Christ.” The manager lunges for a desk phone. “Christ, we need the cops, right now!”

“No!” Amy calls out. “No, we can’t. Because he told me,” she adds.

“Who told you?” the bank manager interrupts while picking up the phone.

“The man who took Grace. Oh God,” she says, taking a long breath, remembering how he told her not to talk and to listen carefully. Remembering his one arm wrapped tight around Grace’s torso and the contrast of his dark clothes against her pink jeans and blonde ponytails as he hoisted her up and shifted her weight. “He said they needed one hour. One hour with no police. And then I’d get my daughter back.”

“So they took her hostage? Just so they could get away?”

Amy only nods, still crying.

“That’s crazy,” the manager says. “That’s just crazy. We need the police here, right away.”

“Please,” Amy cries. “They said not to, and I’m too afraid they’ll hurt her. Please don’t call yet.”

A quiet second passes. “All right,” the manager finally relents as he sets the phone down. A lock of hair falls in his face; beads of perspiration line his forehead. “I don’t like it, I really don’t, but I’m not sure what to do. They say every minute counts. One hour for your daughter, I guess. That’s it, though. I mean, that’s
it
. And I’ll keep the bank open so we don’t raise any suspicions. But just an hour. Really.”

Amy can’t talk. An office window draws her closer to the outside and she moves to it, looking out at the street. Maybe they’ve dropped Grace off and she is wandering alone. They might do something like that. She could be walking in the road and a car might hit her. She can be cowering in a doorway.

The muted voices of the truck workers behind her repeat fresh details of the robbery. So she knows now. While she fell to her knees, while she squinted through glaring sunshine and harsh shadows, watching Grace hang limp—one ponytail askew, the powder blue hair ribbon flitting loose—another side of the crime played out on the armored truck, with weapons drawn, with lives threatened. All in three minutes time.

Now sixty more minutes must pass without Grace. Sixty minutes are the ransom for her daughter’s life. No calls will come. They want no money from Amy. Sixty minutes to escape, in exchange for Grace.

Her only defense will be memory. So for the next hour, she must hear, see, touch, know every small detail that she can remember. The sweatshirt hoods and horrible hosiery masks, the two men outside the truck and the two others who overpowered the driver and deliveryman. Behind her closed eyes, she replays parts of the crime. She sees the man holding Grace turn abruptly to run onto the truck. As he turned sharply, Grace’s legs swung with the jolt and a shoe flew off her foot. The small pink and white saddle shoe skitted across the parking lot. Amy cried out before lunging for the shoe, for all she could have of her child. There was a race, suddenly, against mere seconds as a fourth man, a lone gunman who’d been standing beside the truck, swooped down at the same time. Her legs burned and stumbled, sliding her onto her knees while falling forward, the pavement gouging her skin, her eyes on the shoe. She grasped it and winced when the man’s hand, a mere shadow behind, pressed firmly on top of hers.

“Let me have it,” she pleaded. A prickling sensation grew on the back of her hand, beneath the breadth of his strong grip. Every bit of his calloused palm, the apprehension of his hold, the knot of a scar, pressed against her, skin to skin. The curve of his grasp, the ruby ring on his finger, all branded her deeply. She will never forget those etched details. Pure physical touch, her one human connection with the crime, became the focal point of the entire battle of wills. “Please,” she insisted when he didn’t relinquish his hold.

He shook his head no and that’s when her gaze lifted to his. He wore a hood, and hosiery had been pulled over his face. Dark eyebrows splayed disparately beneath it, his nose pulled to the side beneath the hosiery strain, and his eyelids were shadowed slits from which he watched her. She recoiled from his startling appearance and recoils again now as well, quickly opening her eyes to the bright view outside the bank window.