Thigh High (27 page)

“I wonder what's going on up there?” The driver of Mac's town car craned his neck. “Looks like something's going on at the bank.”

Mac looked up from the alarm schematics Gabriel had given him. “At the bank? Like what?”

“I don't know. There're cops and an ambulance. They've got the street cordoned off. Probably somebody looked at their mortgage interest rates and had a heart attack.” The guy laughed, caught himself, and coughed.

“That must be it.” Mac bundled the papers into his briefcase. “Drop me off here.”

Yellow police tape cordoned off the street. It didn't even slow Mac down.

“Hey!” one of the officers yelled, before recognizing him. “Mr. MacNaught, you got here almost as fast as we did.”

“How about that?” He examined the area.

The tellers were standing on the street, crying. The customers were being interviewed by the police.

His heart began to pound.

Robbery? Maybe. More copycat Beaded Bandits. Maybe the return of Ryan Wright.

But where was Nessa?

He caught sight of Georgia. Yelled her name.

She hurried to him, talking as she walked. “That scumbag who pulled off the other two robberies came in with a semiautomatic pistol, knocked out your security guard, and took Nessa hostage.”

His heart started pounding harder.

Ryan Wright was the human element Gabriel had been talking about. The guy so desperate he didn't care what happened, and he was determined to get his way.

“She got him to release the tellers and customers. The perp and Nessa are in there by themselves. We're lining up the SWAT team.” Georgia used the cop voice, the authoritative one they'd trained her to use with excitable family members. “As soon as we can get a clear shot—”

“No.” His blood cooled as he thought the situation through, made his plans. “We can't wait for that.” Catching Georgia's arm, he asked, “Can you get me on the roof?”

“On the roof? Look, MacNaught, there's nothing being on the roof can gain you.”

Mac looked Georgia right in the eye and in slow, precise tones said, “Mr. Vycor would disagree.”

It took Georgia only a second to digest that. Another second to make the necessary leaps of logic. “I'll come with you.”

“No.”

“Mr. MacNaught.”

“No. And I need a pistol.”

“All right!” She grabbed his sleeve and started with him toward the fire chief, who was standing by. “But I missed capturing the Beaded Bandits, and I'm making a big sacrifice here.”

“Get in position. Keep your eye on Nessa. If you catch a glimpse of the son of a bitch who's got her—shoot to kill.”

 

When the last person was out the door, Ryan waved the pistol at Nessa. “Now lock it behind them.”

She took a breath. If she didn't lock it, if she gave it a push and ran outside instead, she could probably get out. She looked at the semiautomatic in his hand. Although probably not alive.

She looked outside, saw a cordoned-off area with police cars, fire engines, and flashing lights.

Good. The cops were here.

One uniform bobbed into view and gave her a thumbs-up.

Georgia.

The sight put heart in Nessa. These were her cops, her friends. They weren't going to let her get killed.

And in a darker, secret part of her mind, she knew that somewhere out there, Mac MacNaught walked the streets. He believed she was his, and he would not let her die.

With a decisive click, she locked the door. Locked herself inside with a world-class nutcase.

But this was Nessa's bank, and she knew its secrets.

“What are you doing?” Ryan asked as she strolled toward the vault.

“I figured you wanted the bank to fund your getaway, so I'm going to open the vault for you.”

“Don't bother.” Ryan limped after her, keeping away from the door and close to the wall. “I'm not interested.”

She punched her code into the electronic panel. Turned and stared at him as the door opened. “You're not interested? You were interested enough last week when you knocked off one bank and shot up another. There's a lot of money in there.”

“I'm not going to go in and get it and let you shut me in, and I'm not going to let you go and shut yourself in, so you might as well get over to the middle of the floor, where your boyfriend can see you, and stay there.” His voice rose with every word until he was yelling, half-hysterical with fury.

“All right.” Nessa lifted her hands again. She walked to the middle of the floor, then glanced around. “Do you mind if I use my office chair? The floor's hard, and that's tough in heels. But I guess you know about that.”

“Are you being funny?” The way his fingers tightened on that gun…

“No. I don't think so. I'm not feeling really humorous right now.” She walked to her desk.

“Don't touch anything but the chair.” Ryan sank into a seat along the wall facing the teller counter.

“No problem. It's not like I have my own pistol hanging around in a drawer. That's against bank policy. We would shoot the manager.” As she talked, she glanced at her desk, seeking a weapon. Any kind of weapon.

The best she could do was the roll of quarters, which would be great if she had the arm of a professional pitcher. Actually, years of softball in school had taught her one thing—she threw like a girl. Last week was the only time she'd even come close to knocking someone silly, and those hail stones were a lot lighter than a roll of quarters…. The realization struck her. She looked up at Ryan. “Hey. In that alley. That was you who tried to hold MacNaught and me up!”

Ryan sneered. “Aren't you smart?”

“Why would you do that?”

“It was impulse. I saw that bastard. He was wearing an expensive suit. He had an executive haircut. He was with you. And I wanted to kill him just for the hell of it.” Ryan projected a breathtaking hatred for MacNaught.

“Oh.” Picking up the roll of quarters, she put it in the seat of her chair and started toward the middle of the bank. The wheels squeaked as they rolled across the marble.

“Right there,” Ryan said, “where he can see you as soon as he comes through the door.”

“Aren't you expecting a lot of MacNaught?” She seated herself on her chair, making sure she was easily visible from the vault. “What with being in the swamp, you may have missed the news flash, but I was a little upset when I found out he'd been lying to me about being an insurance investigator.”

“Like that's the worst thing he ever did.”

“I want to know a guy's real name before I sleep with him. Did he lie to you about his name before he slept with you?”

“Before he came along, you didn't used to be a bitch,” Ryan said resentfully.

“I admit, he did release my inner bitchiness. But having you use me as a hostage is working it up, too.” She rolled the chair back and forth, back and forth, working herself slowly closer to one of the customer-service centers stocked with pens and deposit and withdrawal slips. The marble block was antique, solid all the way to the floor. In case of gunfire—and unless she did some fancy talking, gunfire was inevitable—the service center would do as a barricade. “So I'm guessing you coming to New Orleans and robbing MacNaught's banks wasn't mere coincidence. You must have put a lot of planning behind it.”

“I like to keep up with what's happening to MacNaught, so when I read about the Beaded Bandits, I thought,
Now, that's a plan I can get behind.
” For the first time, Ryan smiled in his familiar, smirky-guy way.

That's right, Nessa, keep him happy.
“Where did you read about it?”

“On the Internet, in the
New Orleans Times-Picayune.
”

“I didn't realize you'd been here that long.” He was shaking his head even before she finished speaking. “Why were you reading the
Times-Picayune
?”

“I did a Google search for MacNaught's name and found the story, and us guys in prison have a lot of time to read.” He chortled at the look on her face, and said, “Assault and battery with intent to commit murder.”

“What?” Even to herself, she sounded stupid.

“Isn't that what you were going to ask? Why was I in prison?”

“Yes. That was what I was going to ask.” And suddenly she comprehended, where she hadn't before, the seriousness of the situation. Not that having a guy hold a semiautomatic pistol on her wasn't serious, but before, she'd been facing Ryan Wright, part-time street musician and full-time loser. Now she knew he understood violence, and if that grin on his face was anything to go by, enjoyed it. “You said you didn't kill innocent people. Are you going to kill me?”

“You're not innocent. You've been fucking Mac MacNaught.”

No answer for that. “You're a repeat offender. You're going to go back to prison, maybe to death row.”

“No. I am not going back to prison. And if you want to blame somebody, blame little Jeremiah, because this whole goddamn mess is his fault.”

She twirled her chair in a circle, picked up the roll of quarters. “What
did
MacNaught do to you?”

“Him and his father. What a pair they were.” Ryan's brief smile was gone. “And his mother. God, was she ever a whore. My dad used to say she got what she deserved, sleeping with that son of a bitch.”

“You mean Nathan Manly?”

“Nathan Manly.” He rested the pistol on his knee, pointed at her, and used his other hand to rub his leg. “Do you know where I'm from?”

“Somewhere up North.”

“From Weathertop, Pennsylvania, home of Manly Industries.”

Nessa was starting to understand. Deftly, she plucked at the paper rolled around the quarters.

“And do you know where Mac MacNaught is from?”

“Weathertop, Pennsylvania, home of Manly Industries?” She got one side of the roll free, and started on the other.

“Right you are. My dad was a good man. My mom always said so. He worked hard, for goddamn Manly Industries, and he drank hard, and he…” The pistol shook as if jolted by an earthquake.

“He hit hard?” Nessa guessed.

“All us kids would catch it every once in a while. A couple of bruises. No big deal.”

No big deal, except Nessa felt sorry for the man holding her hostage.

And her aunts would want to know why was she listening to Ryan Wright and she wouldn't listen to Mac MacNaught.

Listen, God. I understand. This is a lesson. I recognize that. I'm learning.

“Everybody got a few smacks from their old man except the little prince, Jeremiah MacNaught.
His
father didn't live with him, because
his
father was married to someone else and had another kid with
her
. You know, I used to envy him? His father would show up once or twice a year and give him presents and take him through the plant. He never beat him. He wasn't around long enough for sweet little Jeremiah to get on his nerves.” Ryan snorted.

“Then Manly Industries crumpled, the whole organization, and your father was out of a job.”

“They didn't crumple. Nathan Manly stole the money, all of the money in that business, and it was a huge business, and left us destitute. Left the whole town and everybody in it on the breadline, not to mention a whole bunch of stockholders. So don't feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for poor little Prince Jeremiah.”

“Because his father abandoned him.” She'd been so eaten up with anger, she hadn't thought that MacNaught might have issues about people who steal, then walk away and never pay the price.

“No.” Ryan couldn't have made his contempt more clear. “Because everybody in that town hated his father, and his father was gone.”

“So everybody in that town took it out on him.” The scars on MacNaught's face and chest took on new meaning.
Assault and battery with intent to commit murder.
“What did you do to him?”

“I didn't do it,” Ryan denied swiftly. Then he grinned. “But I helped my father get a hold of him. It was so easy. All the time, even after his father left, he was nice to me because he thought I had it rougher than him. That piece of shit felt sorry for me. So that day…it was in December, freezing rain falling—man, it was miserable! That day I ran up to him—he was with his mother doing Christmas shopping—and told him I needed help. And he told his mama to stay where she was, and came like a lamb to the slaughter.”

“How old was he?”

“Thirteen. Big for his age.”

“How many guys did your dad have with him?”

“Seven.”

“So seven adult men beat up on a thirteen-year-old?” She slathered on the sarcasm. “Wow. Your dad was a hero!”

“He was! It was what everybody in town wanted to do. He would have gotten away with it, too, but the little prince's mother followed him, and when she saw what was happening, she ran and got the cops.” Ryan showed his scummy brown teeth. “They arrested my dad, and because of Jeremiah and his goddamn mother, my dad got killed in prison.”

Ryan's dad abused him when he was a kid, beat up on a thirteen-year-old, and Ryan was angry about his father's death. Blamed MacNaught for it. She didn't understand. She never would.

Picking her words carefully, she said, “If you're looking for revenge, this seems a precarious plan. MacNaught's going to leave this to the professionals.”

“No, he's not.”

“He's not a hostage negotiator.”

“He's in love with you.”

“Really, he's not. No guy in love would treat me the way he has.”

“You're as dumb as any woman. He'll treat you however he needs to treat you to get you.” Ryan's expression showed grim conviction. “I've watched you guys. I've watched him look at you. He adores you, and he's the kind of jerk who would do anything to protect his woman.”