Even with the mask on, I can tell Harris rolls his eyes. He reaches for the bottom of the mask and turns on his voice modulator so his next words come out sharp and robotic. “Sure. Your precious brother will be safe. Now come the fuck on.”
Time’s up. There’s nothing more I can do to stall, and as I grab the too-heavy gun and follow the two Volto masks out of the van, I’m left praying that I’ve delayed enough for most of the morning rush to have left the store. Harris leads the way from the alley where we parked the van to the street in front of our target, a high-end jewelry store called Crowns. No one can get inside without a membership keycard, an employee badge, or being granted access by someone already inside.
This is where I come in. All four of us hug the wall on the approach to the door, then Harris jerks his head at me and snaps his fingers. I move past the Volto man standing between us and pass Harris until I’m at the door.
Time freezes.
Beyond the glass, my co-worker Jenni is smiling happily at a customer while showing off a sparkling necklace, Mike is listening intently to a heavily pregnant woman as she waves her hands around while she speaks, and Midge for once isn’t wasting the day away in the bathroom and is focused on polishing some of the displays. A handful of customers fill the floor, and the sight of all of them makes my heart freeze in my chest.
My friends are in there, good people who have listened to my countless complaints about my deadbeat brother and rolled their eyes at my justification for his idiotic actions because he’s the only family I have left.
They can never know I’m betraying them.
Any doubt I have about opening the door fades in a snap when the barrel of Harris’s gun presses tight up against the small of my back and he growls darkly in my ear.
“Stop fucking wasting time!”
My fingers shake so badly, it takes three attempts for me to swipe my employee ID over the access panel, and the door unlocks with a soft hiss. Harris shoves me aside and barges right into the store without hesitation, then he raises his gun and fires multiple shots up into the ceiling.
Chaos erupts.
Midge screams and crumples to the floor alongside several of the other customers. Mike dives under his desk, leaving the poor pregnant woman to scream and clutch at her belly while the two Volto masks sprint into the store and I bring up the rear. One Volto leaps over the counter and shoves the barrel of his gun into Jenni’s shoulder, forcing her away from the counter and down onto the floor out of sight. The other Volto heads for thepregnant woman, but just as he reaches her, another customer steps forward and blocks the path.
A man.
He’s taller than all of us and so broad-shouldered that just the sight of him makes the store feel several inches too small. With short, black hair that’s tightly waved and fluffed across his head, gray eyes that twinkle in the bright lights, and a shadow of hair across his square jaw, there’s a single moment where I fear he’s about to break the Volto in two. He looks like he could do it from the size of his hands and the bulge of muscle under his blue shirt.
But he doesn’t do anything. He simply turns to the pregnant woman, his wife, presumably, and takes her hand. Then, through gentle guidance, he helps her down onto the floor as Harris yells.
“We’ll make it simple!” His robot voice is so sharp it’s a wonder the glass displays don’t shatter. “We’re here for one thing. Give us that one thing and you all get to go home to your families!” He points his gun at each person in turn while the first Volto from behind the counter runs through everyone, snatching all phone and electronic devices. “You try and get in the way? I’ll shoot you. Call the cops? I’ll shoot you. Trigger an alarm? I’ll shoot all of you. Make this difficult in any way, then guess what!” Harris spins around and presses his gun to the forehead of a blonde woman who whimpers in utter terror.
“Y-You’ll shoot us,” she gasps out.
Harris laughs. “Easy enough for you all to understand, right?”
As he steps away from the woman, she crumples to the floor in floods of tears and curls up into a ball. My heart goes out to her and I want to approach her, but it’s taken all my focus to keep myknees from knocking together. Harris approaches me and pulls the submachine gun from his back, then shoves it into my empty hand.
“Crowd control,” he barks. “They move, you shoot.” Even through the mask, the intensity of his glare is warning enough. If anything goes wrong here, I’ll never see my brother alive again.
I shove the handgun awkwardly into my pocket and wrap both hands around the machine gun. No one ever showed me how to fire this one, so I’m unsure of where to place my hands. Copying what I’ve seen in movies seems to do well enough as I accidentally aim it at a man on the floor near me and he throws up both hands in fright.
“Please,” he begs. “I have children. I don’t want any trouble, I don’t want to die!”
The panic in his voice sickens me and nausea pulls through my gut with a rush of heat that sends a sickening flush of shivers up and down my arms. Swallowing hard around the phantom grip of Harris’s hand on my throat, I move my aim to another person, then another.
“Just stay down!” I yell, thankful for the voice modulator hiding the rough wobble of my voice. “Stay down. Stay quiet. No one gets hurt.”
Harris and one of the Volto masks rush off through the back. Their goal is the diamonds. The other Volto remains with me and starts using the butt of his gun to smash the display cases and steal the jewelry. It’s all shoved into his bag, along with the phones he stole from the customers. He moves quickly, but each smash sends a ripple of fear through the crowd pinned to the floor under the threat of my gun. One particularly violent smashof glass draws a squealing sob from the pregnant woman, and her burly husband moves closer to her.
Despite the sheer fucked nature of the situation, I’m almost jealous of his protective display. To care for someone so much that you’ll put yourself in danger just to soothe them? I tell myself Peter would do this for me, but as I watch the large man comfort his wife, I’m struck by a sudden seed of doubt in the back of my mind.
This isn’t the first terrible situation I’ve found myself in because of my brother. Will it be the last?
Will iteverbe the last?
“The fuck do you think you are doing?” The Volto behind me suddenly yells, and I spin around, glimpsing his gun smashing into Jenni’s face and sending her crashing over the counter.
She lands in a heap, sobbing, and scrambles away from the counter until she ends up underneath one of the display cases.
