“Based on your credit score — which is, to put it lightly, abysmal — I don’t know if you’d qualify to even take the free mints we have set up by the teller’s counters. Your score, combined with your likely history of illegal employment, means that it would be grossly irresponsible to approve you for this loan. No, Mr. Dunne, no matter how much you glare at me, loom over me, or threaten me, I will not approve your loan. And nor will anyone at this bank.”
His eyes fall to his feet, downcast. “There’s no way?”
As strange as it seems, I feel bad for him. He looks near the end of his rope and the threat in his voice borders on desperation.
I soften. Despite all my ingrained professionalism, my fervent desire to keep my job, I can’t help but feel a sense of pity for him. He needs this money. Bad.
I reach across my desk and put my hand on top of his.
“No. I’m sorry. Normally, I might refer you to the payday loan place just down the street, but this is larger than they handle and I don’t know if they’d approve you. Your situation isn’t good, Mr. Dunne. The only way you might get any sort of loan is if you had some collateral to put up, like a house, and even then, it’s doubtful.”
The downhearted look on his face disappears, swept away behind an expression of ferocity.
He shifts in his seat, reaches behind his back, and, in a flash, there’s a gun in his hand.
He levels it right at my head.
“I do have collateral. I have you.”
Chapter Two
Blaze
“What do you mean? What are you doing? This has to be a mistake.”
The look on her face is too cute; Shock and awe — nothing I haven’t seen before from plenty of women — and a bit of fear. Two deep brown eyes get as wide as dinner plates and her long, wavy dark hair rustles as she shakes her head in denial.
This pretty lady isn’t used to being surprised like this; being put in a situation she can’t think her way out of.
“This isn’t a mistake, this is a robbery,” I say, then I raise my voice to a roar. “Everyone get your asses to the ground or I will fucking blow this woman’s head off.”
With one hand, I sweep everything off her desk, sending papers, pens, even the keyboard to her computer, to the floor. With the other, I grab her and pull her to me. She slides right across the desk and pull her against my chest with one arm and brandish my pistol with the other.
The second she hits my chest and that long brown hair flies in my face, I catch a familiar scent. Lilacs. It sends me back. Years. To a time when life was even more uncertain than it is right now. To a senior year Biology class that I hardly bothered to attend but, when I did, I always remembered the gawky, brilliant, and wild-haired girl who sat next to me. She looks so different from the girl I remember, but there’s no way it’s not her.
“Tiffany Santos? Saint Tiffany?” I say, half gaping, half doing my best to look menacing as I point my gun at the security guard — some wizened old man in a wrinkly guards uniform — standing by the door. One gesture is enough to send him flat on the ground.
“Yes, that’s me. But no one calls me Saint Tiffany anymore,” she says, struggling in my grip. It’s not objectionable. She grew up in all the right ways and every time she moves she rubs that supple body against me.
Still, it’s hard to think about how hot she is right now and reconcile that with the gangly good girl she used to be.
“Is that because you finally pulled that stick out of your ass, or did everyone else finally grow up?”
I tighten my grip around her and start guiding the two of us toward the bank teller’s counter. I’ve never robbed a bank before — one of the few crimes I haven’t done — but I’ve got the general gist of it and catching up with someone I remember from high school isn’t a part of it.
“I just don’t see many people from high school anymore. I just don’t have time for it. Except Anna.”
So, the stick is still jammed high up her sweet little ass.
“Anna? Anna Ebri?”
With a flick of her hair and a nod, Tiffany gestures towards the woman sitting on a desk halfway across the bank’s lobby. She’s got bleached blond hair, a face that’s way too tanned, and she looks at least a decade worse for wear than Tiffany.
“She manages this bank. Her dad runs Southwest Regional.”
“She’s had some work done. I don’t remember her tits being that big.”
“Anna has had a lot of work done,” Tiffany says.
“Let’s go say ‘hi’,” I say.
Still holding Tiffany tight to my body, I drag us both to Anna and level my gun right at her large, too-perky tits.
“Hey, Anna,” I say. “Long time no see.”
She smiles at me. It’s a smile that stirs memories of a certain night behind the bleachers after a football game.
“Hey, Declan, I thought I recognized you beneath that beard. And those tragic tattoos. You look a lot more… rustic… than I remember,” she says, voice remarkably stable despite my gun being aimed right at her. “You want to put that away? Because this isn’t going to end well for you.”
“Put it away? I’ve never heard you say that before,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of the security guard scooting his ass across the floor and I send a bullet into the
