The Girls I've Been(8)
“Maybe I can . . .” She takes them from me and tries to stick them down the neck of her dress, where I know her underwear is, well, kind of delightfully complicated. Vintage lingerie is extensive, and Iris likes authenticity. But she can’t find a way to get the scissors to lie flat, even with whatever antique thingamabob she’s got on today.
“Let me.” I take them from her when she offers, and push them into the waistband of my baggy jeans, letting my flannel drape over the handle that’s peeking out from beneath my belt. I swish back and forth for a second as Iris watches. “Can you see the outline?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay. Good.”
Asset #3: Scissors
“Anything else?”
I pull open the last drawer, but it’s empty.
“Nothing.”
Our eyes meet, a clash of her brown with my blue, and in that second, we both let the panic creep in. It’s not enough. We don’t have nearly enough.
And then she licks her lips and I square my shoulders and we snap to it.
“We need information,” Iris says.
“I know,” I answer, but I’m staring at the girl. “Where’s her grown-up?” I ask suddenly.
“What?”
“She didn’t go to any of the adults when they put us all together in the lobby,” I say as I think back. “And none of them freaked out when they put her in here with us. Wouldn’t you, being separated from your kid?”
Iris’s head tilts, her eyebrows knitting together. And then without another word, she walks over to Wes and the girl, a gentle smile on her face as she bends down.
“Hey, honey,” she says. “I’m Iris. What’s your name?”
“Casey,” the girl says. “Casey Frayn.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach. The bank manager’s last name. “You’re here waiting for your dad, aren’t you?” and my voice shakes because I know the answer even before she nods.
“He’s the manager?”
She nods again.
I look up at Iris and Wes, and my face has got to be a mirror of theirs right now. All Oh holy fuck, we’re even more screwed.
Problem #1: Bank robbery goes wrong because of missing bank manager.
Problem #2: Bank robbers have the ultimate leverage over the missing bank manager . . . They just don’t know it.
I give her my best bullshit smile. “Casey, will you check that second drawer of the desk for me, the one with all the files? I’m worried I missed something.”
“Okay.”
She goes over to the desk, and Wes says, “They wanted the bank manager,” as soon as she’s out of earshot.
“And they haven’t tried to get the teller to give them any money. They haven’t even mentioned the vault. Just the basement and the bank manager,” Iris adds. “Something strange is going on. This isn’t a normal grab the cash and go kind of robbery.”
“What are we going to do?” Wes asks.
I look over my shoulder at Casey, bent down next to the desk, rummaging through the files.
“We need to learn more. They need the manager for something other than the vault if they keep asking for him.”
“I don’t think the bank robbers are gonna tell us their whole plan, Nora,” Wes says, and the frustration that’s been simmering in him since the parking lot leaches into his voice so fast it makes my cheeks heat.
Right. He’s still pissed at me. Like, really, really, really pissed.
And he has good reason to be. Walking in on your former girlfriend making out with the girl you’re both friends with is basically a fish-slap in the face when it comes to ex encounters. Even worse than that, I’d broken a promise about not lying to him anymore. He and I don’t break promises to each other, not after I broke us and then we managed to painfully assemble the parts back together. Franken-friends, he likes to joke, and it always makes me laugh, because it’s true . . . and it’s edged in a dark twist of humor that the new us—the Franken-friends—needs to exist.
But there’s no humor in him right now, and if my entire adrenaline system wasn’t firing at the speed of light, it’d scare me. But considering I don’t know if we’re going to last the next five minutes, I have to put it aside. Focus.
How do you hide a girl in plain sight?
They’ll want our names, eventually, if they haven’t gotten them off of our IDs already. Shit. Her ID.
“Casey, did you have an ID with you?”
She looks up from the desk and shakes her head. “I left my bag at my mom’s. She was mad because she didn’t have time to go back and get it, she had a meeting. My phone was in there, too.”
“Good,” I say, and she frowns.
“Listen, if either of them out there asks, do not tell them your real name,” I say. “Do not mention who your dad is. Tell them your last name is Moulton. You’re Iris’s cousin, okay?”
Her frown deepens. She doesn’t get it, and there’s not enough time to explain, because I hear the scraping outside the door. One of them is coming back.
“Casey, tell me you’re on board.” I’m throwing her headfirst into this, and her eyes are wide and she doesn’t get it, because deception wasn’t built into her blood and brain like it’s been in mine.