Unlucky 13 - James Patterson Page 0,18
was warm inside and lit with bluish light from the overhead fixtures, making the space evenly bright. No shadows here at all.
Randy was humming a lilting, wordless tune in her mind. He did that sometimes, and she found the melody sweet and comforting.
She looked around the bank, assessing the customers and the bank employees, sweeping her gaze across the circular customer-service station to her right, where a large customer rep with purple bangs and her middle-aged paunchy colleague attempted to calm an irate man with a big battered briefcase.
Directly ahead, to the back of the bank, were the teller windows. A line of three customers waited to conduct their transactions, and Mackie joined the queue.
The woman in front of her was maybe twenty-five, wearing a full-length yellow raincoat. She had a heavy handbag over her shoulder and black rubber boots. She was reading something on her tablet and seemed lost in it.
Mackie figured it would take about four minutes to get to one of the three tellers, and Randy agreed, suggesting that Mackie use the time to read their body language.
Mackie observed the nearest teller, a gray-haired white woman in a blue silk blouse, speaking in brief rehearsed sentences to her customer. Next to her, a white male teller was counting out money, paying close attention to the count, then counting again.
The teller to his right was a black woman, pretty, wearing a tight floral-print blouse and a gold chain around her neck. She was laughing at something the customer had said.
Mackie thought the old woman would probably take directions best.
The line advanced and then the black teller flipped on the light at her station to show that her window was open. She looked at the woman in the yellow slicker standing in front of Mackie and said, “Miss? You’re next.”
Mackie walked right up to the woman in yellow, close enough to see the chipped red polish on her fingernails. Mackie said, “Gee, I think you dropped this.”
The woman turned her head and looked at Mackie, who had taken her Ruger out of her pocket and now pressed it hard into the woman’s side.
She didn’t need Randy to feed her her lines.
“This is a gun,” Mackie said quietly. “You want to live? Do exactly as I say.”
CHAPTER 20
THE WOMAN IN yellow said, “What?” and stiffened her back.
Mackie hissed, “Keep your eyes front. What’s your name?”
“J-J-Jill.”
“Jill, we’re going up to the window. Be good or be dead. Understand? Let’s go, now. Move.”
Randy’s voice inside her head: You’re doing fine, baby doll. Wake her up.
Mackie said, “Jill. I. Said. Move.”
“Please don’t shoot. Please.”
Mackie gave the woman a hard poke and they crossed the eight feet of granite floor between the rope line and the teller’s window. The teller wore a name tag on her blouse. SANDRA CARNAHAN.
Sandra said, “And how may I help you ladies today?”
Mackie leaned in and speaking over Jill’s shoulder said, “I have a gun. Act normal.”
“I understand,” the teller said. Her eyes were huge and fixed on her.
“Don’t hit the alarm, or I will shoot.”
“I have a baby,” the teller said.
“Good for you, Sandra. Your baby wants you to clean out your drawer and give the cash to me. No dye packs. No alarm. Screw with me and your baby loses her mom.”
“I’m doing it. Don’t worry.” Sandra sniffed.
She opened her drawer, piled three stacks of bills into the metal transom, then flipped it so that it opened on the customer side.
Mackie reached around Jill and had just wrapped her hand around the money, when Jill lost it. She screamed.
Sandra was hyperventilating, looking like she was going to scream, run, or both. All the eyes in the bank went to Mackie and the woman in yellow.
Inside Mackie’s head, Randy said, Sandra stepped on the button.
Really? Big mistake, Sandra. This is on you.
Mackie raised her gun, aimed, and fired. The bullet punctured the plexiglass window, but Sandra had ducked under the counter. Mackie turned to see everything going crazy. People dove behind pillars, got under desks, pressed against walls.
Jill dropped to the floor, covered her head, and began keening, “Nooooo, nooooo, noooooo.”
Mackie spoke in a cold monotone, saying to Jill, “Look what you made me do.”
She fired twice, bullets punching neat holes in the yellow vinyl. Then Mackie turned to face the audience from her place on the stage.
CHAPTER 21
MACKIE FELT A surge of adrenaline, the good kind that made her fearless and able to do anything. She had killed before but only in a crowd.
Blending in was her