Page 1 of Risk of a Lifetime
Chapter One
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Marcy Bradley said, loud enough to get the attention of everyone in the First Missouri Capitol Bank of Crayton.
All five of them. Six, if you counted the robber, Leon Ferguson, a bully from her fourth-grade class twenty years ago. These days, he clocked in at well over six feet, two-hundred-fifty pounds of sweaty stink mixed with a stale odor of wood smoke. He’d gotten their attention when he slammed the bank president to the floor. Even more when he’d shot the exit sign. Now his mud-crusted boots made a path in front of the teller windows, back and forth, back and forth.
Any other Friday morning, Marcy would be composing poetry in her mind as she waited in line to make the weekly deposit from her counseling business. Instead, she lay cheek down on the shiny, cold marble floor of the eighty-two-year-old building as Leon continued to hold everyone hostage. When this was over, she’d drop a note in the suggestion box about cleaning the baseboards.
For the past twenty minutes, Leon yelled about the “cost of gettin’ by” and bragged about the last time he went fishing. From all appearances, his tolerance level for whatever drug he was high on today had long since passed. His mean side had flashed when he’d cold-cocked the janitor with his fist for not getting down on the floor fast enough. That explained Leon’s wife’s many “accidents” the woman had told her about during their one-on-one counseling sessions. No wonder the woman ran away.
The stock market ticker tape flicked across the ceiling-mounted television. Scrolling words flashed on the screen. An antiquated fan in the opposite corner fluffed Marcy’s hair with each back-and-forth rotation.
A few alternatives to lying on the floor skimmed through her mind. Run. She could run for the door and… A gunshot wound didn’t rank very high up on her agenda for life experiences. She also decided this wasn’t the time to make one of her sarcastic remarks about how Leon had flipped her skirt up in junior high and squirted her hot-pink panties with a water pistol.
This wasn’t the time for anything except figuring out a way to keep breathing and make it to her thirtieth birthday two months away.
“Excuse me.” She really didn’t need to go to the bathroom. But, if that’s what it took to get out of the situation, so be it. Anything beat being held hostage. Almost anything.
The robber glanced around.
She waved her fingers from the floor. “It’s me. Marcy.”
By now, Leon would have usually blacked out if he was only drunk. Today was different, though. Today his demeanor reeked of disorientation and violence. Today he might blow her away before he realized he’d picked up a real gun instead of a toy.
She’d been around enough guns to know this was a Glock, a Luger, or something like that. Big and dangerous in the wrong hands. Leon’s were definitely the wrong hands.
Rule number…one…four? Didn’t matter what number. One of the law enforcement rules she learned from drop-dead-gorgeous JB, her almost-used-to-be husband and one heck of an FBI agent, was “don’t upset the perp. Be his friend.” She could do that. Be a friend…kind of…maybe.
She sorted through everything she’d learned in her psychology Master’s program. With a little luck, she could talk Leon down. After all, she was a marriage counselor. Even had a seventy/thirty rate of success. Of course, the seventy percent had ended in divorce.
Eyelids pinched to slits, he waved the gun in her direction. “Did you say something?”
“I said I’ve got to go pee.” She inched to a left-elbow lean. Smiled sweetly. “Please.”
A few feet away, Joanie Reynolds gave her ayou’re-nutslook from where she’d fallen on a deposit from the previous evening’s receipts at Joanie’s Pizza, Pub, and Pool Room. Marcy had seen the bag of money disappear beneath her friend’s well-endowed body and knew there was no way Joanie would give up the stash without a fight.
“Nope. Go where you are.” He turned back toward the teller window.
“What do you mean ‘nope’? This is the first day I’ve worn these brand new, skinny-leg jeans. And they weren’t cheap, let me tell you.”
He turned back around, his gaze scanning her legs.
She eased to a sitting position. “You’re right about everything being so expensive nowadays. Do you know how high gas is? I mean—who can afford to drive anymore? My car’s gas mileage is a joke. What about yours?”
“Eighteen miles a gallon. You got to know how to keep your vehicle running good.” He leaned back, smiling his gap-toothed grin. Decay pitted the teeth that remained. “I got me aChilton’s Guide to Automotivesand a set of wrenches from Sears.”
She wished she hadn’t eaten those blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They weren’t exactly sitting right in the pit of her stomach. Besides which, it was time to use his momentary camaraderie to her advantage. She rolled onto her hands and knees, then crawled past Joanie toward a chair next to the counter.
He stepped over her friend and kept pace with Marcy’s slow movement. “Where you think you’re going?”
Using the seat for leverage, she pushed herself up enough to sit down in it. Her hand plucked at lint on her denim pants, and she sighed. “There, that’s better now. I think I need the next size up in these jeans. They were beginning to bind down there on the floor. Okay if I sit here?”
“Long as you don’t move around no more. Shut up, too. I got to have some quiet to think what I want to do with this here opportunity.” Brow furrowed, lips pursed to a scowl, he paced between the front door and the counter.
Marcy wished she’d paid closer attention to robber personality types in her college behavioral classes. She’d been more focused on marriage counseling—and revenge-killing profiles. Her dad had been killed by a hate-filled man with a vendetta against any FBI special agent that stepped in front of his gun. Her dad had been the first agent out the front door of the Bureau’s Regional Office building that day. She’d turned eight years old the week before he died.
Of course, she knew how Leon’s thought process worked from the few times he’d shown up at her office for court-appointed counseling. That should at least give her an edge up on the situation. Except his thinking wasn’t always great on a good day, and this was a bad day. A real bad day so far.
The new-as-of-two-weeks-ago president of the bank cowered in the corner where Leon had told him to sit. The teller on the early morning shift stood stone-still behind the counter. Except for the fact her eyes were wide open and rounded like silver dollars, she’d have looked like she was waiting for the next customer.
