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“Detective Malone.” He grabs me, much the same way the other guy tried, but I don’t fight my brother. I don’t shove him away.
Tim wears a beard, where I keep my face mostly clean, and he wears flannel more often than not.
He looks like a fuckin’ lumberjack with no brain in his head.
But he’s heir to a mafia family fortune, and guilty of more homicide than I’ve ever committed—tenfold.
“Come this way, Detective.” Voice firm and eyes hard, he drags me an easy twenty feet from the command van.
He waits for Fletch and Fifi to join us, then he spins on me, snarling and enraged. “What the fuck is going on?”
MINKA
“Don’t do it, Mayet.” Aubree wraps her hand around my wrist so tight, deep bands of bruising circle my arm and leave me in pain.
Aching.
Debilitating, so my wrist won’t bend.
But still, I keep my cool and watch the man we now know as Parker Slade pace the length of the teller counter.
The rest of us sit against the front of it in a single line: thirty-seven customers, eleven bank staff, their manager, and one security guard.
The other, Earl Eisenberg, lies on the floor by the bank manager’s desk and bleeds.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him.” Slade scrubs a hand across his eyes to mop up torrential tears. Pleading, he looks our way. “You all saw that, right? He shot himself.”
“Mr. Slade,” the bank manager chokes out. “He needs help.”
“He shouldn’t have tried to grab the gun!” He waves the weapon around and makes the majority of his hostages squeal in fear. “He tried to take it! It wasn’t my fault it went off.”
I inch forward, out of line, to get a better view of the fallen security guard.
“Minka,” Aubree hisses quietly. “Don’t.”
“Mr. Slade.” I raise my free hand and wince when the man swings my direction.
He moves gun-first, and locks on to my eyes when he finds me in the lineup.
“My name is Minka Mayet…” Carefully, I shake Aubree’s hand from my arm. But I stay down. Careful. Calm. “I’m a doctor. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” He peers desperately to the bank’s front doors as more and more cars screech to a stop outside. A helicopter hovers nearby, the whir of the blades loud enough to make the glass ceiling vibrate. “How can yousort ofbe a doctor?” He points his gun straight between my brows and growls, “Don’t you lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.” I push to my knees and show him my hands. Unarmed. Non-threatening. “I’m a medical examiner, so I work with people who are already dead.”
“Well, that’s not gonna help!” He laughs, but it’s a manic, man-over-the-edge cackle that makes ice skip through my veins. “You want the security guard to die before you touch him?”
“No.” I bring one foot up. “I want to help him. Because when you’re done in here, it matters to me that you haven’t killed anyone. It matters, because you didn’t mean for this to happen. It was an accident, and it happened only because he grabbed for your gun. The cops will be more inclined to listen to you if he’s still alive when they get in here. So…” I push to my second foot and slowly straighten my back. “If you let me help him, maybe we can get through this together.”
“I didn’t shoot him.” He sniffles and stands taller. Defiant. But beneath that act is a terrified boy who crossed a line he has no clue how to jump back over. “He did that to himself.”
“I know.” I take a step forward and again shake off Aubree’s hand when she reaches for my pant leg. “I saw. You were here for a loan. You were doing it the right way, and the bank wouldn’t hear you out.”
“That’s what happened!” he sobs. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“And then Earl tried to grab you. That’s how he got hurt.”
“He shouldn’t have tried to touch me,” he whimpers. “I told him not to.”
