Page 20 of The Wrong Idea (The Kinky Bank Robbers #2)

That’s when the trouble started. One of the customers, a middle-aged man, couldn’t breathe. He was on his side, gasping.

“I have to help him,” Thor said.

I looked at Thor with wide eyes. He was supposed to keep the people in order. Zeus and Odin would kill him if he left his role.

“Fuck me, I can’t just stand here,” Thor said.

“I know, but—”

“I have to help him.” Thor handed me the machine gun. “Hold the crowd.”

I stiffened. Hold the crowd? “Excuse me?” I said.

Still in his mask, Thor went to the man and kneeled next to him, loosening the guy’s tie. I heard Thor tell the man he was a doctor. He asked about his symptoms. He was no longer using his bank robber voice.

“Call the paramedics, Ice,” Thor called.

“What?” I said.

“Just do it.”

I pulled out my phone and called 911, reported we needed paramedics at the bank, and that it was a breathing thing. When the 911 operator asked more questions, I just hung up.

Zeus and Odin came out with the manager, loaded down with bags. “What’s going on?”

“Respiratory distress,” Thor said. “Paramedics on the way.”

“What?” Odin barked.

“Okay. We have to leave now,” Zeus said.

But Thor was pumping on the guy’s chest. “I can’t,” he said.

“Okay, then,” Zeus said evenly. I was shocked at his calm. “Does anybody else here have medical training?” Zeus asked the crowd on the floor.

Nobody had any.

“We have to go,” Odin said.

“I can’t leave him,” Thor said. The man was breathing again, but he seemed very ill. He needed Thor.

“Nobody else? No medical training?” Zeus barked.

One of the tellers raised his hand. “There’s a nurse practitioner at Valu-Marque across the street. There’s a Zip Clinic there.”

“Can a nurse practitioner take over for you, Thor?” Zeus asked. “Would that be acceptable to you?”

“Yup,” Thor said. “A nurse practitioner can do this for sure.”

Zeus strolled up to me and took my machine gun. “Go get the supermarket nurse, Ice.”

“I have to go out there? By myself? What if…what if…” Doomsday scenarios began to crowd my mind.

Zeus lowered his voice. “You’re okay, the five-oh isn’t here yet.

If we have to make a hot exit, you get lost and call us.

No matter what happens, we’ll fix it. Your safe word means trouble.

That’s our alert.” He watched me levelly, a mountain of strength and calm. “We’re good. We can handle paramedics.”

“So, I just ask the nurse to uh…to come over here…”

“You need to go in there with a little bit of Odin in you, got it?” he continued. “A little bit Odin and a little bit you. Hear me?” Zeus’s gravity centered me. “You can do it. You have nerve and sass. Nobody’s more suited.”

I nodded. He thought I could do it. It meant everything. And right then, I saw him anew. I saw him as the gifted commander he’d once been.

A little bit Odin. Meaning a little bit scary-bossy.

I shoved my gun in my waistband, covered it with my vest and went out, pulling off my mask.

I had a blonde, long-haired wig and a beauty mark; it would have to be disguise enough.

I ran across the street and slowed when I hit the parking lot.

Blood racing, I strolled through the doors.

The environment of the supermarket felt eerily every day-ish, all cheerful lights and muzak. A voice on the loudspeaker alerted me to cinnamon bread being on sale. Carts’ wheels squealed. I spotted the Zip Clinic right up front and walked over.

A younger woman was sitting on a stool at the counter. “I’m next,” she said.

“Medical emergency.” I walked in.

Inside, a fifty-something nurse in a white jacket and dangly earrings stood up from a chair. “You can’t just come in here.”

The man in the chair looked outraged.

“Medical emergency,” I said.

“This isn’t an ER,” the nurse said.

I felt wild. Desperate. I yanked the man up from the chair. “You have to let me talk to her! You just have to, okay?” He looked bewildered as I pushed him out the door. I think it was my intensity that made him go along with me. Or maybe the wig of wildness.

I closed the door, took out my gun, and pointed it at her with a shaking hand.

The woman’s jaw dropped.

A little bit Odin , I thought.

“You can have anything,” she said.

“There’s a bank customer in respiratory distress across the street. You’re gonna come across the street and deal with him.”

“What?” She just stared at the gun. “I can’t just…”

“Get your stuff or I shoot!”

She just stared at me.

What would Odin do? He’d break something, that’s what he’d do. I looked for something to break…but I didn’t want to make an alarming sound for the people outside! I swiped a folder off the desk and papers slid across the floor. “Now!”

She looked frozen.

“You want to be on the ten o’clock news for being dead? Or do you want to be on there for being a hero? ’Cause that’s your choice now. Get your shit for respiratory distress.”

She was still frozen.

I got right into her face and did my best Odin growl. “I am a stone-cold killer and I will shoot this gun right in your pretty face!” I thought the compliment might soften things, but when I heard myself say it, not so much. “Do it!”

Her lip quivered. “Please, no!”

I grabbed a bag and put it over my gun. “Get your breathing stuff or that guy across the street won’t be the only one who needs it!”

She sprang into action, grabbing a large Tupperware box.

“Go. Eyes forward,” I said in the scariest voice I could muster. “And if you signal anyone, I’ll see it and I will so shoot you. I see all! I am a fucking cyclops!”

She grabbed a box of latex gloves while I remembered a cyclops only has one eye.

“Also, I’m a satellite, watching from every direction. The point is, you better act natural.” I opened the door and we headed out.

“Be right back,” she chirped to the man and the woman waiting. We beelined out as a pair, down the parking lot, and across the street. I felt like a total asshole.

The bank was still dark. I pushed open the bank door and ushered her in. She went to the man’s side. Thor turned to her and started talking. She pulled something out of her box. They were working together now.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Cops? Was this it?

My blood raced.

“Thor,” Zeus said.

The sirens grew louder.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

“One sec.” Thor ripped open a pack. The nurse took over the pumping. I couldn’t see what else they were doing.

“No more time,” Zeus said.

My heart pounded.

Thor stood. We walked out of the bank slowly. The street looked normal, but the ambulance was down at the end. There were more sirens now, coming from the other side, it sounded like.

“Crap. Cops,” Zeus said, pulling off his mask. We all followed suit, pulling off our masks as discreetly as possible. “Easy, everyone.”

We opened the doors to the van and slid in with our bags, Thor and me in the back, Zeus and Odin in front.

“Let’s get out of here!” I said.

“It’s okay, we’re good,” Zeus said. “Down, everyone. Hide.”

Thor and I huddled down so that nobody from outside could see us. Up front, Odin did the same. My pulse drummed in my ears.

Zeus started up the engine and pulled out just as the windows lit up red. I couldn’t believe how slowly he was going.

A siren blasted—it sounded like it was right next to us.

“Fuck,” Zeus said.

“We okay?” Thor asked.

“Not yet,” Zeus said.

“I couldn’t leave him,” Thor grated. He sounded so strong about it. He couldn’t leave the man.

I wondered if he would be in trouble now for real. He had nearly messed up our escape. He stared at the seatback. He looked determined and strong.

And strangely, calmer. That weird energy I’d been feeling off of him all week was gone. What had changed? Was it having the chance to act like the doctor he was after so much time? Was that it?

I thought about the reckless joyride Thor had taken me on during those early days, him wanting to shoot down the dolphin sculpture, and getting Zeus riled up at the massage place. Pushing against the confines of the group. Was that Thor, pushing against the limits of our life?

I studied him harder, and I caught another hit of that new serenity in him, and when he looked up with that cool blue gaze, I knew that was it. Being a healer was a deep part of his identity, and he’d been cut off from it for way too long,

“I know. I get it. You had to help him,” Zeus said from up front. “I understand.”

Thor nodded.

“Steady,” Odin said.

The sirens sounded louder and the windows flashed red. I thought about a hot exit, which meant exactly what you might imagine—going out with guns blazing.

It was definitely cooler to talk about a hot exit while you were lounging in your hotel suite eating bon-bons than when you were riding in an SUV loaded with guns and money while cops prowled the streets around you.

Thor reached out and took my hand and squeezed it.

I squeezed back. “What’s up, doc?” I said.

He rolled his eyes but didn’t let go of my hand. I was glad for that. I needed that contact with him just then.

We held hands like dorks there in the back seat, gripping onto each other for a very tense five minutes as the vehicle crawled through the streets.

And then another five minutes. More time passed. We turned again. Again.

“Unmarked car on our tail,” Zeus growled.

Thor muttered a curse under his breath. I closed my eyes.

“Odin, can you do something with the traffic lights?” he asked.

“Not from down here. I’m plotting a route, though,” Odin said.

The sirens were sounding fainter.

“This guy tailing us, he’s suspicious,” Zeus said. “Getting more so. Really looking at us.”

“He’s probably just seeing what we’ll do,” Odin said from his crouched position in the front.

“He’s going to pull us over,” Zeus said. “He sees these kilts and we’re done.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“The kilts fucking rocked,” Zeus said.

“Make a U-turn at the next light,” Odin said, monitoring the situation from his super-military maps app, no doubt. “If he follows, we run, and I’ve got a route.”

I felt queasy as the hulking vehicle swung around.