Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

People scream and panic—but obey.

Nick barks at the young, dumb security guard: “That means everybody!”

The kid must be barely out of high school— just a few years older than Alex was, I can’t help but think. The way his baggy uniform hangs off his rail-thin frame, he looks like a child playing dress-up with his daddy’s clothes. He flashes Nick a filthy look but meekly raises his hands.

So far, so good.

“Start emptying your drawers,” Stevie orders the three tellers. J.D. tosses each of them a burlap sack.

Then my brother turns to the stunned branch manager, a sweaty middle-aged Hispanic man in a cheap tan suit and bolo tie. “ We’re gonna go open the vault.”

Stevie accentuates his point with a pump of his shotgun.

“Not a problem,” the manager gulps, then adds with a shaky smile, “Mr. President.” He and Stevie disappear into the back office.

J.D. watches over the tellers hurriedly stuffing cash into the brown bags.

Me and Nick keep our guns on everyone else, all frozen like statues reaching toward the sky. I realize the pimply-faced security guard’s pistol is sitting in its holster.…

But it’s the patrons I’m worried about more. After all, this is Texas. I’d bet a few are packing concealed heat.

Last thing we need is for one of them to decide to use it.

Through the eye slits of my hot, sticky rubber Lincoln mask, I keep scanning these fifteen or so unlucky folks. The older African-American married couple, the man whispering comforting words to his whimpering wife. The trashy-beautiful young white girl, maybe a cocktail waitress, maybe a stripper, still wearing her stilettos from the night before, holding the wad of one-dollar bills she was planning on depositing. The sixty-something balding fat man with the suspicious bulge under his leather jacket, and the darting eyes of a military veteran.

Any one of these people could mean trouble. (The sight of any mothers with children in the bank would be the kind of trouble I don’t know if I could handle.) I keep scanning the group, looking for the tiniest hint of it. Praying I don’t see it.

Then two more police sirens echo in the distance.

“Did one of y’all hit your panic button?!” J.D. angrily asks the tellers.

The bankers shake their heads. Yet they and the customers look hopeful as a cop car whizzes by outside…but keeps driving. J.D. smirks.

“’Course one of you did. Probably all of you. But it don’t matter. Plainview PD’s a little tied up right now.”

Still, I steal a glance at my watch. Since we left the car, it’s been three minutes, twenty-six seconds. In and out in four, tops—that was how we practiced it. Distracted across town or not, the law is going to show up eventually.

And if they do, God help us.

What in the hell is taking Stevie so long in the vault?

My breathing starts to pick up. The sweat on my brow I can’t wipe away stings my eyes. This plan— my plan—was supposed to be foolproof.…

“Let’s roll!” I hear my older brother shout.

Finally.

Still holding the manager at gunpoint, Stevie emerges from the back office. A small black duffel bag, bulging with bills, is slung over his shoulder.

“Pass ’em over, come on!” J.D. commands the tellers, quickly collecting the burlap sacks.

Nick and I give the cowering patrons and jittery security guard one final look.

Then the presidential bandits head for the entrance.

Holy shit, I think. We pulled off step one!

Outside, the coast looks clear. Hank is just rolling up in the black Taurus.

The vehicle that was supposed to be my son’s first ride… is now our getaway car.

I push open the bank’s door.…We’re so close.…

When I hear behind us a trembling voice—and the chambering of a bullet.

“Don’t move or, or…I’ll shoot!”

15 seconds

I stop in my tracks and glance back. We all do.

Goddamnit.

That scrawny security guard had decided to play hero.

“Bad move, son,” says Stevie, real low, turning slowly around.

“I said don’t…don’t move! I swear I…I’ll shoot all of y’all!”

It’s five against one. Not likely. But the black SIG Sauer in the guard’s freckled hands is shaking so much, I’m worried he might drop it—and God knows who a stray round might hit or what might happen next.

I hate to admit it, but part of me feels almost bad for this young man. Maybe it’s my maternal instincts. Maybe it’s how close in age he is to Alex. I know he’s standing in our way to freedom. I know he could ruin everything. But still…

“Put…put down your weapons!” he stammers.

Stevie raises his voice. “Gonna give you one more chance to let us walk.”

But the guard doesn’t blink. “No, see, I’m gonna give you one more chance—”

“We ain’t got time for this shit!” J.D. snaps.

He’s right. Every second we waste…

And Stevie knows it. So he acts fast.

In a flash, he drops to his knees and takes aim at the guard over his duffel bag.

The guard panics and shoots—clear over Stevie’s head—shattering one of the glass doors behind us.

Stevie fires a single shotgun blast into the bank’s wooden floor—intentionally strafing the kid’s right foot.

The guard groans and hunches over. His pistol clatters to the floor.

“You just got shot for bank money,” Stevie says. “Sorry about that.”

Then the four of us book it like hell.

We pile into the black Taurus. I’ve barely shut the door before we’re burning rubber.

We did it! I think, ripping off my hot, slimy Lincoln mask, adrenaline still coursing through my veins.

And all told, it was easier than I thought.

Now comes the hard part.

5 minutes, 5 seconds

“Goddamn, these are some tricky sons of bitches.”

Special Agent Mason Randolph barely nods at the observation—because he’d reached that same conclusion hours before he even stepped foot inside the bank.

He came to it before his team boarded the Bureau-owned Gulfstream bound for Plainview. Before he even took his cowboy-booted feet off his desk on the third floor of the FBI’s El Paso field office.

As he told his colleagues as they sped toward the local airfield, sirens blaring, Mason was aware they were dealing with some smart-as-hell bank robbers the moment he heard about the simultaneous bomb scare on the other side of the city.

But that didn’t worry him. In fact, he was looking forward to the challenge.

Mason had built his meteoric eighteen-year career at the FBI by cracking the Southwest’s toughest cases. Serial killers. Kidnappings. Drug trafficking. Human trafficking. Both bank robberies and potential terrorist threats—though never a deliberately fake one, and never together in the same case.

Mason knew the region better than anybody in the Bureau. The land, the people, the culture, the criminals. And he knew how to use all that to his advantage.

He also knew just how much he’d sacrificed throughout his life to get where he was today. At forty-one, tall and handsome, with a full head of thick, wavy brown hair, he’d had plenty of girlfriends, but none of them turned into a wife.

He’d had plenty of “kids,” too— crime victims, that is. Countless innocent people, both living and dead, toward whom he’d felt sympathetic, protective, almost fatherly.

It wasn’t the same as having a family of his own. Not even close. He knew that. But solving the trickiest crimes, putting away the worst of the worst—it was worth it to him. That’s just who Mason was.