Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(11)
Cory said nothing but put his worn leather wallet into the bag. His watch and cell phone followed.
“That’s all you got?” The glee in the Frankie’s eyes dimmed. The voice behind the mask turned ugly in the space of a heartbeat. “You gotta face that makes me think violent thoughts, you know that? Watch yourself, *.”
Then he cackled again, a loose, unhinged sound that set my teeth on edge, and moved down the line.
Dracula stepped back into the hallway, his plain face passive. “Bad news, ladies and gentlemen. It seems the powers that be aren’t going to let us stroll out the front door with hundreds of thousands of their dollars. Imagine that. That means there’s a price on your heads. It means that they don’t think you’re as valuable as their precious money. It’s possible we’ll have to make an example out of one or more of you to show them the foolishness of their ways.”
A ripple of panic surged up and down the hallway and Frankie cocked his weapon. “Shut the f*ck up!”
“Sad but true,” Dracula continued as if without interruption. “But the more cooperative you are, the better your chances of making it out of here in one piece.”
Another masked man—a zombie— approached and muttered something to Dracula who nodded and said, “Okay, let’s break them up. Get Frankie, Wolfman, and Swampy to babysit, you get with the others on the frontlines. Where are we on our exit strategy?”
“Dan—uh, Mummy is working on it.”
“Keep me posted.” To the three that were to guard us, he said, “Move’em now. Anyone gets out of line, make’em bleed but no shooting. Not until we have to.”
Not until we have to.
Not unless. Until.
I squeezed Cory’s hand. It was either that or scream.
Chapter Five
Alex
The three of us were ushered into a small meeting room along with five other people: a younger woman—probably no older than twenty—two older men, and two women of middle years. The eight of us were made to sit against the back wall on the floor, on the thin, commercial carpet. The front wall had a long window showing the hallway we’d come from. Men in monster masks stomped back and forth, while the other bank customers were broken up and ushered into other rooms or offices.
My stomach lurched to see that the blood-smattered junky in the Frankenstein mask was assigned to be our guard. Dracula oozed a frightening, calm danger. Like a snake basking in the sun, about to strike. Frankie was like a ticking time bomb, ready to blow at any second.
Frankie smashed the computer on the desk, then the phone, cutting off all communications, and then shuffled and danced in front of us, chuckling as if he knew some private joke we didn’t, until Wolfman came by and told him to stand guard outside the door. Then Frankie stuck out his wormy, yellowed tongue through a breathing hole in the mask, and paced outside the closed door in an exaggerated fashion, like a Russian Cossack.
The eight hostages breathed easier without him staring at us, but we eyed each other uncertainly. One man—a big bald-headed man with a bristly mustache and a rumpled-but-expensive suit—scowled and leveled his finger at each of us.
“Let’s get something straight right now,” he hissed in a stage whisper. “Don’t any of you do anything stupid to get us all killed. I’ve read about these situations and the squeaky wheel does not get the grease. It gets a bullet between the eyes.”
The youngest woman in the group moaned softly at this and the other man with a high widow’s peak and glasses—shook his head mournfully.
“Hey,” Cory said. “Let’s quit with that kind of talk, all right?”
The bald man snorted. “What, and pretend like everything’s sunshine and roses?”
“No, I agree with you. We all need to play it cool and do what they say. But we don’t—”
“We don’t need you barking orders at us,” a sour-faced woman of middle years on Cory’s right said to the bald man. She inclined her head at Frankie, pacing outside the closed door. “We’ve got our hands full with that one.”
“Don’t lump me in with them! That’s how it starts.”
“Let’s all calm down,” I interjected. While the others argued, I had used yoga breathing to corral the fear that had been squeezing my chest. I felt better now. More in control. I used my best trial voice; the one I relied on when a witness was becoming too emotional and in danger of making the jury uncomfortable.
“We’re all in this together for however long it takes for the powers that be to get us out of here. And they will get us out,” I added, mostly for the benefit of the youngest among us—a Latina who was sniffling against the back of her hand in the corner to my left. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves?” I looked to the bald man. “Sir?”
The man grudgingly appreciated the respect and said, “Roy Jefferson Morganstern. Hedge funds and wealth management.”
The middle-aged woman beside him was tall and lithe and wore billowy clothes. “I’m Tanya Stinson and I work for a craft services company in Burbank.”
“I-I’m Sylvie Flores,” said the sniffling woman in the corner. “I’m a…a nanny.”
I introduced myself, then Cory, then the Indian-American woman who had been on my left before but had chosen to sit on Cory’s right, putting him between us.