The Girls I've Been(42)

“You . . .” Gray Cap spits, and the gun’s back on me, away from both of them, thank God. When I meet his eyes, I see the burn of humiliation on his cheeks.

What happened? What did he find out? Who did he hurt across the hall?

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me.

The one in red isn’t behind him. Is he downstairs in the basement now that they have the welding machine? Does that mean we’re dealing only with Gray Cap?

“Answer me!”

I have a choice. I can cringe and cry and hope he thinks that one blow is enough to put me in my place. Or I can go with my gut, because it’s telling me that he’s never going to believe anything I say or do again, so I might as well lean into it.

I let the blood dribble out of my mouth and down my chin. “Bleeding,” I answer.

He snatches me up off the floor so hard my shoulder joints scrape in protest. “You’re going to bleed a lot more when I’m done with you.”

It’s a bad line, and I would tell him so, but I know what it looks like when a man wants to kill you and just needs one little push toward it.

“Don’t touch her!” Wes shouts as Gray Cap tosses me into the hall. I bounce against the other wall, the picture above me rattling at the impact. I scramble down the hall on my butt as he drags the table in front of the office door to block Wes and Iris in, but he catches up with me in seconds. He scoops me up again, fingers digging painfully into my armpit, and drags me down the hall.

Back in the lobby we go. Red Cap’s nowhere to be seen. He’s gotta be downstairs; is it even going to matter in a few seconds? Is this it? Am I dead? He doesn’t throw me on the ground this time. He keeps me close.

It scarier this time, because of that. He has a knife somewhere. That much blood on his shirt means he has a knife and he probably used it on one of the hostages across the hall. The knife scares me more than the gun right now.

What’s he planning? How do I get out of it?

“You little bitch,” he says in my face with such force I can feel the flecks of spit against my cheeks.

“Did you hurt the kid?” I ask, because I’m not supposed to know for sure that he’s taken her out of the bank. Lee honked. That means Casey is safe. I have that, at least.

It’s not enough. It’s not even close. It’s one speck of good in a whole world of bad. Wes and Iris are back there, and that means this can’t be it.

I have to keep spinning.

Did he put the guard out of his misery? Is the scared teller dead? The older lady?

“No, I traded the kid,” he says. “Just like you said.” He lets out a huff of breath. It’s not a laugh. It’s not a growl. But it spreads anger and a bitterness in the air.

“Why would you hurt one of them when you got what you wanted?” I hate how bewildered I sound. He got what he wanted. Lee wouldn’t have honked the horn otherwise.

“You think I wanted to give Frayn’s kid up?” he asks, and oh, shit.

One of the adults. They must’ve blabbed without realizing they were blabbing. Had the teller asked about Casey? I couldn’t blame her, but she couldn’t have kept her mouth shut about the kid being related to the bank manager?

Still, I try not to feel too hostile, because if it was the teller who spilled, she’s probably the hurt one.

I can’t think the dead one. Not yet. Not without proof. Wishful thinking? Absolutely. I’m hanging on to it.

“Yeah, I figured it out,” he says.

Denying it will make him angrier. I don’t want that. I need to bring him down and then build him up. His ego’s not just bruised; I battered it. He wants to take that out on me.

“If I say too little, too late, are you gonna hit me again?” I put just enough shake into my voice to make his mouth twitch.

“You conned me.”

“I was very clear who I am.”

His hand rises, and I jerk; it’s not fake or practiced. It’s one hundred percent real, and my mouth throbs at the idea of more damage. My cheek is swelling up, but luckily he got me in my lower jaw, so my vision isn’t messed up. Yet.

“Who did you hurt?” I ask again.

“Why does it matter?”

I bite the inside of my swollen cheek to keep from screaming, the pain more than a little mind clearing. If he’s just attacking people to blow off steam, we are so fucked. If he starts shooting, the deputies will find a way in. Or Lee will tear the bricks apart with her bare hands to get to me.

“Why do you care so much?” he persists.

“I’d like to get out of here before anyone important shows up.”

“You care,” he says, with the kind of stubborn awe that tells me I am fucked. “You’re smooth. You didn’t even try to get me to hand you over to the cops. You could have. But you protected the kid.”

“She’s a kid.”

“Stone-cold bitch like you shouldn’t mind that. You left a mess in Florida, but you got free. Why aren’t you trying to get free now?”

He’s skirting too close to the truth. I want to wrench away from him—he’s still gripping my arm, holding me too close, and now I know why: He wants to look into my eyes. He thinks they’ll tell him something.

“I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire, is that so weird? It’s not like the deputies out there get a ton of storm the bank training around here between traffic stops and busting pot grows. And your friend is trigger-happy.”