The Agent
Chapter 4

Camila had redlined on adrenaline and it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning. For a split second, her brain couldn’t make sense of anything in front of her. Not the gorgeous, broody FBI agent who’d squashed her ego like a bug last year. Not the startled cries of the other bank patrons, all of whom were wild-eyed and stunned into place like statues. Not the man standing in the main entryway of the bank, his face entirely covered by a black tactical mask but his voice still clear and loud as it pushed past the fabric barrier.

“Nobody move! This is a robbery.”

Just like that, running into Kai Roman wasn’t the worst part of her day.

The man was flanked by two others, all three of them decked out in black combat gear, and moving through the bank with near-military precision. Camila’s pulse ricocheted, pressing so hard and so fast at her throat that oxygen was suddenly at a premium. The leader stopped in the center of the lobby—oh, God, they were all carrying assault rifles, and shit, was that body armor?—raising his weapon high enough for everyone to get a good, terrifying look.

“Hands where we can see them. Nice and high. Now, lace them around the back of your heads, thank you,” the man said as both of his accomplices fanned out, lightning-fast, to gather the bank managers and customers who had been on the opposite side of the space. “The security cameras and silent alarms have been disabled,” the leader said to the two tellers behind the bullet-resistant barrier. “Your cell phones have been jammed and the rear exit has been blocked. You can try testing the limits of that glass, if you like.” He shrugged, glancing down at the high-powered weapon in his grasp. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Oh, God. This isn’t happening.”

Camila realized two things belatedly. One was that she’d actually spoken the words out loud, albeit in a panicked whisper, and two was that Roman had, at some point in the last five seconds, shifted to put his body in front of hers. He dropped his voice to a barely audible murmur that slid from the corner of his mouth.

“You’re going to be okay, Camila. Just breathe.”

His words penetrated the fear that had been keeping rational thoughts from forming. Camila forced herself to take a breath, although her throat was still knotted and the hands she’d laced behind her head had to be visibly trembling. It was enough, though. She’d worked in a middle school for three years now. Yeah, it might be her fifth—and probably not last—career path, but she’d done active shooter training in a dozen different scenarios. She was smart. Qualified. Prepared. She knew the key to survival was staying calm.

And she was going to survive.

Taking another breath, Camila tried to focus, to see what was in front of her like a drawing. The other two men, one hulking and the other smaller and lean, had forced everyone from the opposite side of the lobby into the space where she and Roman were standing, in front of the tellers’ counter. She counted five people—two bank employees, one middle-aged man, and a woman clutching the hand of a terrified-looking preteen. The sight of the young girl bolstered Camila’s resolve to stay calm so they could all get out of this situation unharmed, and she forced her hands to stop shaking so she could think. Roman remained perfectly quiet in front of her, but his muscles had tightened ever so slightly. Camila clocked his line of sight and realized he must have seen the crying preteen.

The girl was clearly terrified, her steps shaky and small, and the woman with her wasn’t faring much better as they stuttered into place on Roman’s other side. Camila heard his voice, too low for her to catch the words but not for her to miss the calm certainty in his tone, and the woman nodded almost imperceptibly.

The two robbers didn’t waste so much as a millisecond after bringing everyone to the counter, moving toward the security door to bring the pair of tellers to the lobby with everyone else—God, they were so fast—and before Camila could register another thing, the leader pointed his gun at the security guard, who looked even more dazed than the rest of them.

“We’re going to need that weapon.”

The guard, whose hands were already up and pressed against the back of his head, didn’t protest as the muscle-bound robber stripped him of the handgun on his h*p. Slipping the weapon into the utility belt slung over his h**s, the robber grabbed the guard by the back of his shirt, shoving him toward the cluster of patrons so roughly that the man stumbled and fell to his knees.

The leader’s head whipped toward his accomplice, but his only words were to the guard. “Stay there.”

Oh, God. Oh, God, the man was unarmed. Would they hurt him anyway? And what could she possibly do if they did?

Wait. Wait. Roman was an FBI agent. Maybe he had a weapon. Or, at least, a plan.

Camila’s eyes zeroed in on Roman’s torso, her heart thundering in her ears, but she didn’t see a holster or a service weapon beneath his suit jacket as he stood in front of her with his fingers laced behind his head. She’d been around her brother and everyone in the Intelligence Unit enough to know that most cops didn’t run their errands armed, so it made sense that Roman didn’t seem to be.

It was the only thing that made sense right now, and as weird as it was, Camila clung to the fact that Roman was beside her like a freaking lifeline. If staying calm was part of his plan, she had to make it part of hers.

She had to make it out of this alive.

Past the mouth covering on his tactical mask, the leader said, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We have several goals for the next few minutes. They don’t include hurting any of you unless you give us good reason to. Don’t do anything stupid, and you’ll all walk out of here.”

The tension in Roman’s shoulders relaxed at that, if only by a tiny fraction, and okay, that must be a good sign. Camila might not have any love lost for the guy, but he was a freaking FBI agent. He’d stared down buckets full of danger on the case he’d worked with the Intelligence Unit last year that had saved her best friend Delia’s life.

Of course, the tension came winging right back when the leader added, “But if you do, you’ll be carried out in a body bag. Your choice.”

He pointed his gun at the female bank manager, whose face was drawn and very, very pale. “We’ll be needing your services in the back, Rosalie. Everyone else”—the other two robbers held their weapons at the ready—“Face-down, on the ground.”

He waved his gun in a way that motivated them all to move quickly. Everyone other than the bank manager, anyway.

“Me?” she gasped, her breath shallow and tight, her forehead dotted with sweat. The muscle-bound robber took a menacing step toward the woman, and Camila’s mouth moved to instinctively tell him to stop.

But Roman spoke first. “I’ll go.”

All the air in the room seemed to vanish as the three robbers turned their weapons toward him in unison. Camila’s heart vaulted against her sternum, beating so hard she could barely hear anything other than its insistent slamming against her eardrums. Yet Roman remained ridiculously cool. He knelt beside her, immovably still except for his eyes, which he trained on the leader.

The man didn’t even seem to think twice. “No.” He looked at the bank manager. “Now, Rosalie. I don’t have time to waste. The rest of you”—his stare landed back on Roman, his tone brooking no argument—“on the ground. Now.”

Rosalie choked down a breath, looking even more pale than she had less than a minute ago. She complied, though, stepping toward the accomplices as everyone else followed the leader’s demand. Getting to the floor with her hands laced behind her head wasn’t easy, and the move brought Camila close enough to Roman that their elbows touched. The leader positioned himself directly between the group and the counter, giving himself a clear line of sight to both as he kept his attention on the group of them now prone on the marble floor.

“Go,” he said, sending a micro-glance at his watch. “Twenty behind.”

The muscle-bound robber jerked his chin, shoving Rosalie toward the door leading behind the counter and stabbing a finger at the access panel. Rosalie punched in her security code with trembling hands, her chest hitching as she gulped for air. Camila bit down on the urge to protest—the woman looked like she could barely stand—her belly filling with dread when both accomplices propped the door open and pushed Rosalie over the threshold and out of sight. The preteen, who was on Roman’s other side, began to cry again. Camila’s heart lurched, her panic beginning to rekindle.

But, once again, the low timbre of Roman’s voice, notched barely above a whisper, threaded past her fear. His face was turned toward the girl, whose cries subsided after a few seconds, and Camila took a deep breath, her resolve set.

They would all get out of this alive. They would.

They had to.

Wanting to keep her wits about her, Camila furtively turned her attention to the leader, who stood about ten paces away. Although it was a little difficult to tell from her vantage point on the floor, he looked to be about average height for a man—six feet, but no more. Like the other two robbers, he was dressed in all black, including gloves. The tactical mask covered his whole face, leaving only the smallest openings for his eyes, so there was no guessing what he looked like, even in a general sense. She studied him carefully, her fingers itching for the sketchbook and pencils that were in her bag even though the regular details, like hair and skin and eye color weren’t available to draw. Still, she could get him on the page. The line of his shoulders pulled tight beneath his gear. The texture of the mask over his face. The knot of his hands, firm over the weapon in his grasp.

He stood at perfect attention, carefully dividing his stare between the door the others had gone through and the group of patrons on the floor. Where the larger robber had a menacing, almost impulsive air about him, the leader had been perfectly calm this whole time. Which was kind of weird, actually, since he was robbing a bank at freaking gunpoint. Shouldn’t he be chock-full of adrenaline, like the rest of them?

Camila’s mind snagged on that thought in the same instant she realized the man was looking right back at her, and a fresh wave of fear burst through her chest. But in that same moment, the smaller robber rushed back in from behind the counter, whispering to the leader in harsh bursts. His body language was nine kinds of agitated, as if something were very wrong, and worry unfolded in Camila’s gut.

That worry became a pop of terror as the leader walked over to her. “Get up. Just you,” he added, his hand steady on his weapon to send the point home.

Panic logjammed in her throat, but she swallowed past it. She could do this. She might not be a badass detective like her older brother, or even an icy FBI agent like Roman, but she could stay calm and do whatever it took to get these robbers out the door before they hurt anyone.

Camila shifted, slowly moving one hand to the floor to push herself to kneeling. Roman, who had turned his head in her direction at the sound of the leader’s voice so close by, hissed out a protest.

“I’m stronger than she is,” he said, and weird how that one stung. “She won’t be as much help to you as I will, and you’re already behind. Send me instead.”

The leader didn’t budge. “No. You’ll stay where I can see you.”

“But—”

Camila cut Roman off before the leader could get any ideas on how to shut him up a different way. “It’s fine. I can do it.”

She found her feet as quickly as she could, but the leader stood in her path. “What’s your name?”

Of all the things he could have asked her, she’d expected that the least. “Camila,” she said, trying to infuse her voice with confidence she was one hundred percent faking.

“Camila what?”

Confusion replaced her fear for a fraction of a second. “Camila Garza.”

“Do exactly what’s asked of you, Camila Garza, or you won’t get the happy ending you’re hoping for.”

Camila blocked out the half dozen images the man’s words had conjured up—don’t think about bullets, don’t think about bodies or b***d—and followed the smaller robber to the door leading to the back of the bank. They moved down a hallway, through another door with keypad access that had been propped open, heading further into the depths of the building before they reached an open vault door.

“Holy shit,” Camila breathed. She’d never seen a God’s-honest bank vault before. The interior space was smaller than she’d expected, but the massive door—and all the intricate mechanisms that normally held it closed—might as well have been torn straight out of a movie. Dread pooled in Camila’s stomach as she registered the sight of Rosalie slumped against the near wall, her hands zip-tied in front of her and her breath arriving in ragged, sawed-off gasps. Oh, my God, had they shot her? Wait, no. Surely, they would have heard a gunshot, and, okay, yeah, the woman wasn’t bleeding. But there was definitely something wrong with her. Not that the larger robber seemed to really notice. He stood a few feet away, busily stuffing money into a duffel bag. At the sound of her arrival, he turned to thrust his gun at Camila, gesturing her into the vault.

“You,” the man grunted, his voice a perfect match for his rough demeanor. “Pack.”

Camila saw the additional pair of duffel bags, still empty, at his feet. The survival center in her brain told her feet to move and her hands to comply. The sooner these criminals got what they’d come for, the faster this would be over, with everyone safe and sound. But Rosalie was half-conscious at best, which had clearly messed with their plan to have her help pack the extra bag after she’d opened the vault. She let out a weak cough, dry as sand, followed by a series of rapid wheezes, and realization clicked into place in Camila’s mind.

“I think Rosalie is having an asthma attack,” she said, her stomach dipping when Rosalie nodded. Well, that explained why the poor woman couldn’t breathe.

The robber snorted, his hands not slowing. “I don’t give a f**k. Pack.”

The smaller robber sprang to action, opening one of the empty bags and starting to stuff it with the stacks of cash lining the shelf in front of them.

But Camila saw the stark terror in Rosalie’s eyes, and she didn’t think. Just said, “You’ll give a f**k if she dies, right?”

The larger man stepped toward her, sending her heart crashing against her rib cage. “I’ll help you,” Camila blurted, holding her hands up in a show of good faith. “But this whole thing will be less messy for you without a body. Let me help her first.”

The man’s body language screamed “no”, but the smaller robber huffed in frustration, making the big guy say, “You have twenty seconds, and I am counting. F**k around and I’ll kill you both.”

He nodded to the smaller robber, who turned to keep his eyes on Camila. She knelt down next to Rosalie, squeezing her hand in what she hoped was reassurance.

“It’s going to be okay. Do you have an inhaler?”

Rosalie nodded weakly, her eyes dropping to the pocket of her suit jacket. Thank God. “Okay, that’s great. I’m just going to—”

Camila’s hand was halfway to Rosalie’s pocket before the smaller robber had grabbed her wrist to still her. He thrust a finger in the air, a nonverbal stop, reaching into Rosalie’s pocket himself. He rummaged for only a second before coming up with the inhaler and shoving it into Camila’s palm. Their gazes locked for a fraction of a second, and Camila recognized something not-quite-right about the man’s eyes. She stared—what was that?—but then the larger man’s voice yelling at her to hurry up made her heart smash against her rib cage.

“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking as badly as her hands. But Rosalie needed her help. As a guidance counselor, her office was next to the nurse’s, and she’d done extensive first aid training just in case it was ever needed. Camila had seen enough kids use inhalers to know the basics, so she uncapped the inhaler and lifted it to Rosalie’s mouth, giving her two successive puffs. Rosalie’s breaths slowed a little, a tiny bit of the panic leaving her face, and it would have to be good enough for now.

Camila tucked the inhaler into the woman’s bound hands and turned toward the robbers, ready to make good on her word, if only to get them all out of there alive. She loaded the money in front of her into the bag at her feet, and having a task to focus on, albeit an utterly illegal one, strengthened her resolve.

“I’m done,” she said once the bag was full. The smaller robber hefted the bag from the floor with a soft grunt, nodding at the larger man. Camila’s heart raced. They were so close to getting out of here now that all the bags were full.

But before she could check on Rosalie, before she could so much as say a single word, the muscle-bound robber lunged. Something cold and hard smashed against Camila’s skull, pain exploding in a starburst from her temple outward, and her vision shrank until the only thing left was darkness.