gestured over to a younger man who brought them over. Lillian joined them, and she, Derek and Hatton were soon poring over the plans.
Joe took a deep breath, looking out at the small bank. He couldn’t see anything happening inside. The Denver County police didn’t have a sizable SWAT team, but it did appear like they had a couple of marksmen. He knew Derek and Lillian were both expert sharpshooters also.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Why were the hostage-takers here at this particular bank? Had they tried to rob it then got stuck so took hostages? Robbing a bank wasn’t a very smart move and didn’t have a high success rate, but people did desperate things sometimes.
There were kids inside. That upped the ante a lot. Joe’s natural inclination was to march up to the door right now, even without backup. But he knew to set wheels in motion before Derek and the team were ready could spell disaster for everyone.
“Derek, there are kids, man,” Joe said softly. He knew he didn’t have to remind his friend of that—with his pregnant wife, it would be in the forefront of Derek’s mind, too—but couldn’t help himself. “They’ve already been in there a long time. Let me know which direction you’ll be coming from if it goes south and I’ll get started. At least get the kids out.”
“There’s not a lot of good options with a bank this old that was built in the fifties,” Derek muttered, studying the plans more intently. “It looks like the roof will be our best bet. Probably a ventilation shaft. We might have to send Lillian through alone if it’s too small.”
Lillian alone would be plenty enough to put down two tangos. Joe nodded at her; she winked at him. Despite her beauty, he had never tried to make a move on her. He knew better than to hit on a woman who made a living shooting people.
“Okay,” Joe said. “What’s today’s go-signal?”
The team always had a phrase and action, both meant only to be used as a last resort, that Joe could use to signal SWAT that the situation inside was out of hand and they needed to use deadly force.
“Word is sunglasses.” Derek glanced up from the plans. “Action is putting your sunglasses on your head.”
Joe’s shades were in the pocket of his shirt. Unlike the other Omega members, all wearing full combat gear and bulletproof vests, Joe was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and casual brown boots. It was important that he seem as normal and nonthreatening as possible when he approached the hostage-takers.
“Be careful in there, Joe.” It was Jon who looked up from the building plans this time. “We’ve got a lot of blinds here. I know you’re good on the fly, but watch your six.”
Joe nodded, already beginning to walk toward the building. “Those kids and their mother will be coming out first. Be ready for them.”
He blew out a breath through gritted teeth, forcing his shoulders then jaw to relax. Coming in tense—or at least looking overly tense—never helped. There were two guys in there who needed to be heard. Joe wanted to do that. But even more he wanted to get the hostages out safely. Every one of them.
Joe walked up to the glass door of the bank and knocked, then held his hands up in a position of surrender so they could see he wasn’t armed. And he waited.
He was about to become best buddies with two potentially dangerous guys.
Just another day at the office for Joe Matarazzo.
Laura Birchwood should’ve sent her assistant to the bank to get these stupid papers signed.
But no, Laura had wanted to get out of the office, get some nice fresh air on this relatively warm, sunny April day in Colorado. It had been a long, cold winter and it had snowed even as late as a week and a half ago.
So when it had been in the upper 60s on a late Friday afternoon and her Colorado Springs law office—Coach, Birchwood and Winchley, LLP—had needed the signature of a bank manger here on the outskirts of Denver, Laura had offered to make the trip herself. Her assistant had Friday night plans; Laura didn’t. Laura decided she would have dinner in Denver while she was here. She’d be by herself, but that wasn’t anything unusual.
The two guys pacing frantically with big guns, stopping every once in a while to wave them around and scare the people sitting on the bank floor, were going to ruin her dinner plans.
As pathetic as the plans were.
Laura refused to let herself panic, even when the guys glanced over in her direction. Hysteria wasn’t going to help anything in this situation; as a matter of fact, she was pretty sure the hostage-takers would just feed off it and become more aggravated.
“I have to get them out of here,” Brooke, the young mother sitting next to Laura, whispered. “They’re going to get hungry soon. Get upset.”
She referred to the two girls the mom had with her, a baby maybe eight or nine months, not old enough yet to be crawling, thank goodness, and a five-year-old. Both had done remarkably well so far. Brooke herself had done great. She’d fed the baby a bottle and given the older girl, Samantha, a box of crayons and a coloring book she’d had in her diaper bag.
Most of all she’d stayed calm. Her daughters had picked up on their mother’s cues and had also stayed calm. Laura wasn’t even sure Samantha really understood what was happening.
“Police will be coming, Brooke,” Laura whispered to her. “I have a packet of peanut butter crackers in my purse for Samantha. That will buy us some time.”
“I need to make another bottle.” Brooke gestured to the baby currently sitting in her lap, playing with some teething toys. “And I know her diaper is wet. I’m going to have to talk to them.”
“No, I’ll talk to them—”
Laura flinched as one of the two men, the loud one, let out a loud string of obscenities. “Shut up over there!” he yelled, pacing more wildly.
Samantha looked up from her coloring. “He said a bad word,” she whispered to Laura.
He’d said a bunch of them. Laura wasn’t sure which one the girl meant.
“You’re not supposed to say shut up,” Samantha stated primly, then went back to her coloring.
Laura couldn’t help but smile. It was nice to meet a kid whose definition of foul language revolved around the words shut up.
She had to get Brooke and her two beautiful daughters out of here. She knew drawing the men’s attention to her by asking them to release Brooke and the girls could be dangerous. Laura had no idea what the men wanted. To be honest she wasn’t even sure these men knew exactly what they wanted.
The local police had tried calling the bank. The men had made the employees unplug all the phones and then had hit the assistant manager on the head with their gun. The man was conscious but still had blood oozing down the side of his face. They’d forced everyone to put their cell phones in a trash can and placed it in the middle of the room.
If the robbers decided to start killing hostages, Laura didn’t want to put herself at
