angle, she could only see one teller window, with no one behind it.
Presumably, IT people were working frantically. Maybe everyone else was gratefully having a cup of coffee, or Mr. Floyd had decided to hold an impromptu staff meeting to be sure nobody was allowed to waste time. Sounded like him.
Still, Maya was entitled to her lunch break. She would surely have called or at least texted to say she was delayed. And, would they really lock the doors instead of letting customers come in for an explanation of the problem?
As Lina backed away from the doors, pondering, she took out her phone. No messages, no texts.
Darn it, people had to be inside. Driving past the parking lot, she’d noticed Mr. Floyd’s dark gray BMW in its place of honor as well as a couple of other cars. Although those might belong to the IT people rather than customers.
Call Maya, she decided.
But her friend didn’t answer her cell phone. Lina didn’t leave a message.
Increasingly uneasy, she tried to decide what to do. She could wait in her car for a few minutes and then try again. Go to Walgreens and assume Maya would call when she was ready to leave. But the weirdness of this had her alarmed.
The back door was not only always kept locked, it was also steel and windowless. The only other place she could really see into the bank was the drive-through window, assuming they hadn’t pulled down the shade. No cars had gone in or come out since she’d arrived. Why couldn’t she use it as a walk-through to bring somebody to talk to her even if only to say, “Yes, we really are closed.”
She went back the way she’d come and circled the corner of the building. Feeling almost as though she ought to be tiptoeing, she approached the double drive-through with the center island. Then she saw the explanation for the lack of traffic: a sandwich board blocked the entrance to the drive-through. She presumed the same sign was tacked to the other side.
Not understanding her trepidation, Lina inched up to the window.
The shades hadn’t been pulled, but she still couldn’t see anyone. Aliens had beamed everyone in the bank up to their spaceship. IT guys had taken employees hostage until they fully understood the hideous mistake someone had made that had frozen up the bank’s computers.
Only...shouldn’t someone be laboring on one of the computers? Unless the problem was off-site, but if that was so, why wasn’t Maya answering her phone and where was everybody?
Lina’s skin prickled. She shifted a few feet to the left and with a rush of relief saw four people standing in a cluster. Mr. Floyd and Maya and two men. Okay, she’d been silly—except...one of the men held a gun to Maya’s temple.
Oh, God, oh, God. This was a bank robbery, happening right in front of her. Without taking her eyes off the scene inside, Lina fumbled for her phone at the bottom of her purse.
The bank manager shook his head. He looked scared but mulish. At the same time, Maya saw Lina with her face pressed to the glass. Her eyes widened, the terror on her face changing to something else.
The next second, her head blew up.
And then the man who’d shot Lina’s best friend turned and saw her.
* * *
LEANING BACK IN his desk chair, Bran unwrapped the sandwich he’d just picked up from the deli. He didn’t love eating at his desk, but he was trying to cram some work in so he could leave early. He had an appointment to talk to a woman who had been a neighbor of his family when he was a kid. She and her husband had lived right across the street when Bran’s little sister, Sheila, was murdered. Apparently Mr. Greaver had died a few years back, but his widow had stayed put. Bran and his brother, Zach, both cops, were trying to get in touch with everyone who’d lived nearby then. Sheila’s killer had never been arrested. Despite having no jurisdiction, they intended to accomplish what the investigators at the time had failed to do.
So far, they’d only hit dead ends, but there’d been something in Mrs. Greaver’s voice when Bran had talked to her yesterday—
The door behind him burst open.
“Murphy,” his lieutenant snapped. “Warring. Where the hell is Warring?”
Bran spun in his desk chair, surprised by the edge in his boss’s usually rock-steady voice. “Break room, to get a drink from the machine. What’s wrong?”
“Armed robbery at Snoqualmie Community Bank. First responders are on the way. I want you and Warring on it. The caller says she saw a loan officer shot in the head. If they’re still in there...”
Bran tossed the sandwich on the desk and jumped to his feet. “How did somebody manage to call out?”
“She didn’t. She couldn’t understand why the doors were locked midday, so she looked in the drive-through window.”
“Where is she now?”
“The Walgreens across the street.”
“We’re on our way.”
He caught Charlie Warring just as he emerged from the break room carrying a can of Pepsi. Seconds later, they jumped into an unmarked sheriff’s car and rocketed out of the parking lot, Charlie still groping for the seat belt as he tried to keep from spilling his drink.
“What the hell?”
Bran told him what he knew. During the drive, they both listened to the chatter on the radio. By the time they screeched to a halt outside the bank, they knew that the robbers had been gone when the first deputies arrived. An ambulance rolled up behind them. Two patrol cars with flashing lights were outside.
Charlie and Bran walked in to find the expected chaos. The uniforms had corralled customers and employees in one area, where two women sobbed and everyone else appeared distraught. One of the deputies saw Bran and jerked his head toward the counter that normally separated tellers from customers.
He stopped at a swinging half door. On the other side, two bodies sprawled on the carpeted floor. It wasn’t instantly obvious how the man in the suit had been killed, although blood soaked the carpet to one side of him. The woman’s body was another story. Blood, brains and bits of bone spattered the wall beyond her. The information had been accurate; no question, somebody had shot her in the head, and from close range.
“Jesus,” Charlie murmured. “I bank here. I think she’s the loan officer. Pretty.”
She wasn’t pretty anymore.
Bran pointed to the pile of cell phones, which suggested the robbers had had some foresight. They’d made sure no one texted out or snapped a photo of them.
Another uniform approached. Despite his attempt at stoicism, he appeared shaken. “My partner and I were the first responders. I hope the lady who called this in saw something, because nobody else did. They all agree that two masked men shoved through the doors yelling and waving guns. Customers and tellers were herded behind the counter and made to sit on the floor, facing the far wall—” he nodded in that direction “—and told to clasp their hands on their heads. They could hear what went on, but didn’t see anything. I didn’t even ask questions, and they started to babble. They tried to be helpful, but they all had different estimates of height, weight, race...”
