Overwhelming Force. Janie Crouch

“We’ve got a lot of blinds here. I know you’re good on the fly, but watch your six.”

      Joe nodded, already beginning to walk toward the building. “Those kids and their mother will be coming out first. Be ready for them.”

      He blew out a breath through gritted teeth, forcing his shoulders then jaw to relax. Coming in tense—or at least looking overly tense—never helped. There were two guys in there who needed to be heard. Joe wanted to do that. But even more he wanted to get the hostages out safely. Every one of them.

      Joe walked up to the glass door of the bank and knocked, then held his hands up in a position of surrender so they could see he wasn’t armed. And he waited.

      He was about to become best buddies with two potentially dangerous guys.

      Just another day at the office for Joe Matarazzo.

Chapter Two

      Laura Birchwood should’ve sent her assistant to the bank to get these stupid papers signed.

      But no, Laura had wanted to get out of the office, get some nice fresh air on this relatively warm, sunny April day in Colorado. It had been a long, cold winter and it had snowed even as late as a week and a half ago.

      So when it had been in the upper 60s on a late Friday afternoon and her Colorado Springs law office—Coach, Birchwood and Winchley, LLP—had needed the signature of a bank manger here on the outskirts of Denver, Laura had offered to make the trip herself. Her assistant had Friday night plans; Laura didn’t. Laura decided she would have dinner in Denver while she was here. She’d be by herself, but that wasn’t anything unusual.

      The two guys pacing frantically with big guns, stopping every once in a while to wave them around and scare the people sitting on the bank floor, were going to ruin her dinner plans.

      As pathetic as the plans were.

      Laura refused to let herself panic, even when the guys glanced over in her direction. Hysteria wasn’t going to help anything in this situation; as a matter of fact, she was pretty sure the hostage-takers would just feed off it and become more aggravated.

      “I have to get them out of here,” Brooke, the young mother sitting next to Laura, whispered. “They’re going to get hungry soon. Get upset.”

      She referred to the two girls the mom had with her, a baby maybe eight or nine months, not old enough yet to be crawling, thank goodness, and a five-year-old. Both had done remarkably well so far. Brooke herself had done great. She’d fed the baby a bottle and given the older girl, Samantha, a box of crayons and a coloring book she’d had in her diaper bag.

      Most of all she’d stayed calm. Her daughters had picked up on their mother’s cues and had also stayed calm. Laura wasn’t even sure Samantha really understood what was happening.

      “Police will be coming, Brooke,” Laura whispered to her. “I have a packet of peanut butter crackers in my purse for Samantha. That will buy us some time.”

      “I need to make another bottle.” Brooke gestured to the baby currently sitting in her lap, playing with some teething toys. “And I know her diaper is wet. I’m going to have to talk to them.”

      “No, I’ll talk to them—”

      Laura flinched as one of the two men, the loud one, let out a loud string of obscenities. “Shut up over there!” he yelled, pacing more wildly.

      Samantha looked up from her coloring. “He said a bad word,” she whispered to Laura.

      He’d said a bunch of them. Laura wasn’t sure which one the girl meant.

      “You’re not supposed to say shut up,” Samantha stated primly, then went back to her coloring.

      Laura couldn’t help but smile. It was nice to meet a kid whose definition of foul language revolved around the words shut up.

      She had to get Brooke and her two beautiful daughters out of here. She knew drawing the men’s attention to her by asking them to release Brooke and the girls could be dangerous. Laura had no idea what the men wanted. To be honest she wasn’t even sure these men knew exactly what they wanted.

      The local police had tried calling the bank. The men had made the employees unplug all the phones and then had hit the assistant manager on the head with their gun. The man was conscious but still had blood oozing down the side of his face. They’d forced everyone to put their cell phones in a trash can and placed it in the middle of the room.

      If the robbers decided to start killing hostages, Laura didn’t want to put herself at the front of the line. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to let Brooke do it. And now that there was no way the police could contact the men to see what they wanted, Laura didn’t know how the police could help.

      She reached over and squeezed Brooke’s hand.

      “Laura, wait, don’t—”

      Laura was standing up when a knock on the bank’s front door suddenly drew everyone’s attention. She didn’t have a good angle to take in the whole scene but could see the upheld arms of a man standing there. She quickly sat back down.

      The robbers went ballistic.

      “Who are you? What do you want?” one screamed at the person at the door, voice shrill.

      “We’ll kill everyone in here. Every last one of them. Get away!”

      The man outside didn’t move except to gesture to them to unlock the door.

      The two men began frantically talking between themselves. Laura couldn’t hear all of it, but knew one of the men at least understood that the man at the door was a hostage negotiator.

      Hopefully the guy was a good one.

      Finally the two men broke apart from their huddle. The negotiator was still standing arms upstretched by the entrance. Laura still couldn’t see his face.

      “You.” One of the hostage-takers pointed over to the bank manager. “Get over here and open the door.”

      The manager got shakily to his feet and walked to the door gathering a large ring of keys from his pocket. The robber got behind him, using the man as a human shield, and put the gun directly to the manager’s temple.

      The baby started fussing and Laura reached over to hold her so Brooke could get out another bottle. Plus, if bullets started flying Brooke could grab Samantha and Laura could try to protect the baby.

      “You better pray that this guy doesn’t try anything. Because you’ll be dead before you hit the floor if he does. Open it just a crack,” the man holding the manager said.

      The manager nodded as he put the key in the door. Rivers of sweat rolled down his face. The room remained silent.

      “P-please don’t do anything,” the manager said to the man outside. “He’ll kill me if you do anything.”

      “Nah, no plans to do anything to make anybody nervous.” The negotiator’s voice was clear and friendly. And oddly familiar to Laura. “I swear to you all, I am unarmed and just here to talk. To see what we can work out. To find a solution where all of us get out of here without getting hurt.”

      “How do I know you’re not armed?” the robber yelled from behind the manager, keeping his head down.

      “I’m going to reach down now and lift up my shirt and turn around. You’ll see. No weapon at all. No earpiece. Nothing.”

      She still couldn’t see his face, but Laura and the rest of the bank were treated to the sight of rock-solid abs as the man lifted his shirt and turned around slowly. Under any other circumstances Laura would’ve just enjoyed the view.

      “You could have a gun in your pants,” the other man said. “An ankle holster or something. We’re not stupid.”

      “No,