Free A Matter of Time 05.5 - Just Jory (MM) by Mary Calmes

We had been waiting for three hours as the negotiations continued. My ass was numb since I was sitting, along with everyone else, on the cold marble floor. I had my hands on my knees and those PlastiCuffs on my wrists, waiting to hear what the next wave of demands was going to be.
    “I’m so dead,” I grumbled, letting my head roll back and clunk against the side of the desk I was close to.
    When a couple of people gasped, I understood my mistake.
    “No one is going to die,” the gunman, bank robber; whatever he was, however he should have been classified, corrected me.
    “Oh, not you,” I shook my head, giving him a dismissive wave even though my hands were both inseparable from one another. “My partner’s outside.”
    It took a minute for the wave of surprise to recede so he could talk to me. He even pushed up the ski mask when he did it, rolled it up so I could see his face.
    “Oh crap,” I moaned.
    “Oh crap what?”
    “Are you gonna kill us now?”
    “What?” He seemed startled by my question.
    “Sam says that the only time guys show their faces to hostages is if they plan to kill you.”
    Instantly there was whimpering, crying and breath-catching from all over the room.
    “No-no-no,” he soothed me as well as everyone else. “Let’s all just settle down. We don’t plan to hurt anyone as long as the cops outside cooperate with us.”
    I squinted at him and he noticed.
    “You don’t believe me?”
    “No, I just…Sam said and…” I shrugged. “I mean he knows about this kind of stuff.”
    “Sam? Who’s Sam?”
    “My partner.”
    “The one who’s gonna kill you.” He clarified.
    I nodded.
    Snort of laughter from him. “Lemme get this straight. You’re more scared of your little boyfriend outside than of me, here, in front of you, with a gun?”
    “Oh hell yeah,” I almost whined. Just imagining Sam Kage pacing outside in the street was making my stomach flip over. “And he’s so not little.”
    There was nothing else to do. The guy in charge, who was standing right in front of me, had asked for some food and a bus to take us all to the airport with him and his partner. It was the same bullshit that all bank robbers did to waste time in real life as well as in the movies. So it was understandable, since we were in a holding pattern with nothing else to do, that he knelt down on one knee, huge ass automatic rifle pointed at my head, and asked me why I was so scared.
    “Okay,” I said, scooching up because my ass was falling asleep, wiggling until I was a little more comfortable on the floor of the First Community Bank downtown off Pearson. “See, I was only supposed to be using the ATM outside to make a deposit, but there were no envelopes so I had to come in here to get one and––”
    “That’s not what I ask––”
    “But the whole time we were driving over here from lunch, Sam was like, ‘Why do you have to do this now, why can’t you just wait until we’re closer to home, why do you have to be so OCD about this kind of crap, why can’t you just––’”
    “I still don’t––”
    “But I wanted the check in there,” I cut him off. “I need it in case Dylan puts through an order for some printing that we had done and––”
    “I want to know why you’re more scared of him than––”
    “So,” I interrupted again, glaring that time, “we get here and he’s already annoyed and I promised to be right back out, and since I wasn’t and then the alarm went off and I got stuck in here…dude, I’m so dead, you have no idea.”
    “And how does that––”
    “I mean, it’s not like he’s gonna shoot me or anything but––”
    “Shoot you?”
    “Well, yeah,” I squinted at him. “I mean he could if he wanted. He’s a U.S. Marshall and he has this 10mm Smith&Wesson that’ll blow a hole through you as big as a dinner plate.”
    His eyes fluttered and I figured he was bored, but I was really worried about the house arrest I was going to have to