Page 35 of Protected By West (San Antonio S.W.A.T. #1)

TRACY

Tracy knew enough to know this wasn't going to go his way.

First, the likelihood of him getting a 'stack' of money was a pipe dream.

They'd already closed down the drawers except for the one at the main teller station.

Sure, she could open it, but she'd have to go get her keys to open it.

There was less than a few thousand in the drawer. If there had been more, she would have received an alert to take out excess money from the drawer and put it in the safe.

Everything in the safe required two keys to withdraw money or take anything out of the safe deposit boxes and she was the ONLY one in the credit union at the moment.

The others were all in the rooms with solid doors.

They knew better to open the doors before getting clearance from law enforcement or the code word from her and she would do nothing of the kind.

It wasn't that she was interested in being a hero.

It was just a numbers thing.

And she was enough of a Star Trek fan and had a halfway decent recall of basic Civics to remember Classical Republicanism's 'The good of the many outweigh the needs of the few.'

So she wouldn't be giving the code word unless they were actually safe to come out of the rooms.

She just couldn't imagine letting any of her employees and friends end up in danger.

If the gunman was willing to shoot her, he'd be just as happy to shoot the others, so that line was drawn.

"Hey, you."

She blinked a few times and started to look in his direction.

"Yeah, you."

She nodded, slowly.

"Give me the cash out of the drawers."

She nodded and gestured to her office. "I need to get my keys." Before he could argue, she explained. "There's just one drawer left out. This is our slow day, and we go down to one drawer in the late afternoon."

"Figures," he grumbled.

"You can have anything in the drawer," she gestured again toward her office. "I just need my keys."

He looked like he was going to start walking with her and then he turned his head to look at Estes. "You. On the floor. Get up."

Estes managed to get her hands on the ground at her sides, but the instant she lifted her head up she started to retch.

"What the fuck?"

He started toward Estes and Tracy got between them, earning her a crack to the temple with the barrel of the gun.

While she saw stars and had to hold back her own dry heave, she blinked, trying to clear her vision. "She hit her head on the ground. She might vomit if you make her get up."

She tried to put extra emphasis on the word 'vomit' to get the feeling across.

The man's face twisted a little as if he was imagining it.

"She's not going anywhere right now. She's in no condition to climb over the car and there's no way out that doesn't involve her running for a door."

He looked at her face and Tracy tried to give him her best 'believe me or don’t’ expression that seemed to work with people, even the most frustrating people that came in the door.

"I'm warning you and warning you once," he lifted his chin in her direction, and she saw pain pull lightly at his features. He was definitely hurting somehow. "You pull some shit, or she makes a run for it. I'm putting a bullet in you."

She nodded and almost managed not to taste the bile on the back of her tongue. "That's the last thing I want."

He smiled at her, the rat bastard.

"Good. Let's go get those fucking keys."

WEST

He looked at Fox. "I don't know if I want to kick her ass, but I'm leaning heavily in that direction."

Fox shrugged. "I know you don't want her alone with him, but right now she's got him busy thinking of cash.

"The computer system we're patched into says that the countermeasures in the drawer are in working order and there's less than two thousand dollars in the drawer."

Weston nodded. "So what, enough for a tank of gas and some snacks at Texaco?"

Fox nodded. "Or some of those pulled pork sandwiches at Buc-ees."

The humor was tense, but it wasn't enough to keep them both from punching something.

Getting back to the heart of the matter, they heard from Dally.

"Myles and Jack can get the window panel down with Oxy's help in the breakroom."

Weston and Fox leaned in to look at one of the screens where they had a schematic up.

Everyone could access it from their work phones and iPads. They watched as Dally set up the plan he'd come up with.

"They can get the staffers out of that room and get in to use that door to enter the main lobby."

They watched as the plan developed on the screen.

"I can go with Duval and come in through the back door. I got the code to get in from Jack."

Weston nodded. "Blue? Can you be ready to cover from the balcony?"

"It's dark enough with the setting sun and the ambient shade to start setting up now." The normal cadence of his voice had sped up just a hair. Instead of the relaxed cowboy Weston knew from breaks in training, this was Blue instead of James.

"Good. I'll leave it up to you."

"Yes, sir."

"Jack?" "Boss."

Weston smiled as her answer stepped on the end of his mono-syllabic question.

"I'll have the window open in a minute. I'll go in with the blond and Oxy can help the staffers out. That'll cut down on our prep time."

"Have Oxy go in with you. Make sure the staff keeps out of the line of sight."

"Got it."

Fox gave him the thumbs up. "Tracy will have him distracted with the money. They'll give us the time we need to breach the building."

Weston felt a moment of unease at the thought.

"Do we know which drawer they're going to?"

"I can see it on one of the cameras." Jack explained. "Middle drawer of the counter. "There's only one drawer still in place."

Weston opened his mouth to give instructions.

"I have a feeling that Tracy will get on the far side of the drawer and give us room to work." Jack sounded like she was smiling. "If not, I can pull her back while we take him down."

"Or," Duval's deep tone seemed to rumble through the com, "do we want to wait while they're heading for the door and come at them from both directions?"

"Once the money's in his hands, I think we're going to lose the surprise factor." Jack again.

"Alright. How long will it take you to get in the breakroom-"

"We're going in now."

Weston could see Fox's raised eyebrows of surprise. He was feeling the same way himself.

"Okay. Check in?" Weston spoke into the com. "Duval?"

"Ready."

"Jack?"

"Ready."

"Blue?"

"Ready."

Fox leaned in a little toward the screen. "They're crossing the main room."

"Be ready to go on three." Weston watched as Tracy walked the man across the main room of the credit union. He kept his gaze off of Estes for a moment. She was safe where she was.

Hopefully.

They could hear the two talking with the feed from the parabolic microphone.

"I know you have those tracer things in your drawers. You try to put one of those in the bag and I'll put a bullet-"

"I'll show you everything going in the bag so there's no surprises."

Her voice was almost level.

Weston had a feeling she would find a way to get a tracker in the bag.

"Sounds like you've been through this before."

He followed behind her as she stepped through the break in the counter and headed for the drawer.

"There's got to be a couple of thousand in this drawer-"

"That's it?"

She shrugged and Weston gave her credit for staying as calm as she was.

He just didn't like her turning her back to the man, but there wasn't a lot she could do without crab-walking to the drawer.

She stood in front of the drawer for a second and put her key in the lock.

As soon as she turned her wrist, she stepped back from the drawer toward the back of the room.

Jack's voice came through the com. "That's our mom."

Yeah , Weston smiled at the pride in Jack's voice, but he added a couple of words. That's my baby.

Tracy

Tracy didn't really believe in ESP but there were moments when things happened out of the blue that seemed almost too good to be true.

If she'd lived in Vegas, they'd call it luck.

Living in San Antonio... it was what it was.

After she opened the drawer, she stepped to the side.

There wasn't a reason for it.

When they used the drawers, they always stood in front of them, square to the counter, but there was a different kind of energy in the room.

Maybe it was just the timing, a delayed reaction to the car that had come close to bowling her over?

Whatever it was she stepped to the side as she reached in for the cash.

She was well aware of what was sitting under the stack of ten-dollar bills, and she had to avoid it until she could figure out a way to slip the tracker into the bag.

The man snatched the reusable shopping bag out of her hands, and she bit the inside of her cheek so as not to mutter, 'You're welcome, asshat.'

It was one of her favorite shopping bags from the Center City Trader Joe's that she'd visited, but it was also the only bag she had in her office, and he'd needed one.

She supposed she couldn't exactly fault him for not planning ahead to rob someone of cash.

She started with the ones, pulling out half the stack. "Do you want me to go through them one by one, so you see there's nothing hidden in them and-"

"Ones? Like I care about those! Where are the hundreds?"

She drew in a breath through her nose and lifted up the inner drawer, revealing the small stack of hundreds under it. "We have a system that minimizes the amount of large bills in our drawers." She took out the hundreds and willed her hands to stay steady. "Hundred, two, three, four..."

He snatched it out of her hands and counted it himself.

"Seven hundred?"

He tossed the bag onto the ground. "I'm not gonna need that."

She reached for the twenties. That stack was the highest of the denominations.

Something was telling her to be patient and keep him occupied. The phone hadn't rung back.

Fox was probably working on something else at the moment.

From where she was standing at the counter, she could see Estes sitting up better. She wasn't trying to stand up, but she looked more alert.

Tracy pulled out the top third of the bills and nervously started to face them all in the same direction, a habit she had from when she'd been trained as a teller.

"Twenty, forty, sixty-"

"Just give me the fucking money!"

His hand shot out to grab the money, but she instinctively pulled her hand back. His grasping fingers pulled at the bills sending them flying into the air.

Two loud bangs startled her even more and from the other side of the drawer she saw S.W.A.T. team members spilling out of the breakroom.

"Texas Rangers S.W.A.T.!" "Put your hands up in the air!" "You're under arrest!"

The man reached for her with one hand and grabbed at the gun he'd tucked in his waistband.

Tracy looked at the officers coming toward them and hated that she couldn't tell who was who from where she was. They were all dressed in black from head to toe and the way the lights were, they were all backlit.

She wanted to reach for the man's gun and take it away before he could hurt any of the officers, but that was crazy!

She wasn't trained for this.

For anything like this.

And she was panicking, her heart pounding in her throat, her skin went cold. She froze like a fucking popsicle.

That was until she heard something over the din.

"Tracy? Get down!"

She dropped like a rock, covering her head with her arms.

When she heard what sounded like a punch and the crack of bone, she moved her arms so she could see.

Someone had the gunman in what looked like a sleeper hold, at least that's what the announcer called it on those wrestling shows.

The gun that was in his hand was snatched away by another member of the S.W.A.T. team.

Within the span of a few heart pounding seconds she saw his arms pulled behind his back and him taken down to one knee with the gun safely in the hands of Weston's team.

"CLEAR!"

She heard Oxy's voice and smiled. He might be a little 'not right' in his head, at least that's how the team talked about him, but he always got the job done. And this time, he sounded pretty proud of himself.

Well, she was, too.

"Bringing in the medics!"

Duval.

She'd know that growling tone anywhere.

"Check on Estes!" Tracy called out the words as she got up onto her knees. "She was out for a bit when the car came through the doors!"

A hand hooked under her arm. "I've got you, Mom."

Tracy started laughing, a little more like sobs than she'd like. "Jack," she sighed and looked into the other woman's eyes, "are my staff okay?"

Jack nodded with a smile. "I had a feeling that was going to be your first question. You trained them well."

"Well," she sighed, "I always told them it could be a matter of life and-"

She stopped before she got to the last word.

Tracy didn't want to talk about that at all.

"Come on, Mom.” Jacks’s reassuring voice had her usually wry tone. “Dad’s waiting for you outside.”

Tracy dragged her feet long enough to listen in to the EMTs as they examined Estes and got her ready to transport to Sagebrush Hospital for a full work up.

And for Estes to promise to kick her butt if she didn’t go outside and reassure Weston that she was alive and well.

“I don’t want my brother to think I kept you away.”

Tracy went with Jack, leaning on her a little more than she would like.

But, as hard as Jack could seem, there was a warmth in her that Tracy really liked.

Given the situation, it was also something Tracy needed.

“Babe!”

She heard him before she saw him, her eyes watering with tears.

“West?”

Tracy reached out her arms and suddenly they were filled with him.

He pulled her tight and damn near cracked her ribs against his bulletproof vest.

“Damn it, Tracy.”

“West?” She barely managed to gasp out the word with her lungs begging for air. “I love you.”

Weston froze against her.

And then as his arms slowly loosened around her, she heard his breathless groan. “Oh, babe, I love you so damn much.”

The back of the credit union building was suddenly swarming with people.

The flash of cameras and the blaring light of video cameras made it hard to see beyond their light.

She wasn’t sure, but she had the feeling that her declaration might make it onto the evening news.

But then his lips were on hers, one of his big, strong hands wrapped around the nape of her neck, and she didn’t seem to care anymore.