Page 38 of The Thief
From the corner of my eye, I could see the men rushing, getting ready to make their escape with the cash.
“What about the hostages?” was asked in panic as they stalked out of the office.
“We’ll take these two,” Number One said, referring to the two bank workers that were still cowering under the desks. “And the old lady. But leave the man. He’s no use to us. He needs medical help.”
“And the woman and girl?” I heard another ask.
My heart stopped.
My mouth went dry.
My eyes were fixed on Tyler, who was shaking his head as if to tell me over his dead body would they take us, but my ears were alert, listening, praying they would leave, and leave us alone.
“Leave them,” Number One insisted, and despite the horror of the moment, relief trickled through my system. “We have enough with these three, and we don’t fuck with kids. At least, we didn’t... until today.”
I stayed as still as I could, holding Ava close to me as the men dragged the whimpering hostages with them out the back, talking about the getaway van and how they’d push the hostages out first to provide cover from any police fire.
I sat there frozen to the spot, barely able to breathe as the racket of the police forcing their way into the bank echoed offthe walls around us.
Tyler pushed himself to a sitting position and asked me again, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I will be,” I replied, and he smiled weakly back at me.
“I know you will.”
Moments later, armed police burst in, guns at the ready, but they were too late. We were the only ones left.
I prayed that the police surrounding the building, and the ones in the helicopter, would be more successful at stopping the gunmen. Or maybe they wouldn’t, and the human shields the cowards were using would help them to escape. I didn’t know, but the relief I’d felt at seeing the police burst in to save us was short-lived as they turned their guns on Tyler and started to shout at him to, “Get down.”
Tyler did as they asked, lying on his stomach despite having his hands tied. But he shouted, “Help the hostages, for God’s sake. That old man has been shot in the leg. He needs help. He’s bleeding out. And the little girl and her mum over there, you need to get them out of here.”
They ignored him, circling him with their guns out. One of them knelt, holding him down as more police poured in. They ran towards the back office, but when they found it empty, they shouted, “Clear.”
The men they were searching for were long gone. But from the look of it, they thought they’d hit the jackpot finding Tyler.
“This guy’s dead,” one of the policemen announced, after checking Number Two’s pulse.
“There’s another dead man over here,” a policeman called out from behind the desk where the young guy with the mobile phone had been shot at the beginning of the ordeal.
“But we’ve got this one,” another policeman stated, and then he started to read Tyler his rights as he took his handcuffs out to cuff Tyler’s already bound and bloodied wrists.
“He isn’t one of them,” I shouted. “He didn’t do anything.”
But they ignored me. They didn’t care. They wanted to make an arrest today, and Tyler was theirs for the taking.
“They made us all wear the same boiler suit,” I screeched as Ava sobbed. “He might look like one of them, but he’s not. Look at his wrists. He was held just like us. He didn’t do anything.”
One of the policemen standing over Tyler turned his head and said to me, “We know who he is. He’s got form. If he’s innocent, he’ll have no problem answering our questions down at the station. But he’s not walking out of here scott-free today. He’s coming with us.”
“It’s fine,” Tyler gasped, but when he tried to turn his head to look at me, they wouldn’t let him, and restrained him harder so he couldn’t move.
“What’s happening, Mummy?” Ava cried, and I whispered, “It’s okay. The bad men have gone.”
“But what about Tyler?” she asked, peeking to watch the police as they manhandled Tyler, yanking him up from the floor to stand.
“Don’t worry about me,” Tyler called out, but one of the policemen told him to, “Shut up,” as he dragged him out of the bank, away from us.
“Tyler’s okay. He’s going to help the police now,” I told her, trying to play it off as if it was all innocent.
