Page 14 of Mission: Possible

Within minutes, the wail of sirens reached me. The crowd that ran to the main entry now had the last stragglers joining them before they hammered on the closed glass doors with their fists and pulled on the handles. The doors remained wedged shut. Only me, the cop, the security guard, and the mom and boy were left in the middle of the room, watching the madness expand around us.

"Are you a doctor?" asked the boy, watching me intently.

"No. Are you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I'm seven."

"You're very brave for a seven-year-old. What's your secret?"

He thought about it. "I guess it doesn't make sense not to be."

I nodded. "That's pretty smart thinking."

"She's a nurse," said his mom. "The lady said so, remember?"

"That was a lie," I told them, shrugging. "I figured they wouldn't check."

The little boy glanced at the man and screwed his face up in thought. "That seems like an okay lie," he decided. "Is he gonna die?" he asked, watching the cop more intently now.

"No," said the cop. "It's just going to suck for a while. I'm Officer Andersen."

"I'm Jake," said the boy.

"I'm exhausted," said his mom.

"I'm going to check on those doors," said the security guard. "I don't know why they aren't opening."

"Is there a safety measure in place that locks them?" I asked.

"Yeah, when the security alarm is pressed. One of the tellers must have done that," he said. "There aren't many people who can reset it. The bank manager being just one of them." He winced and I knew what he was thinking. Was the bank manager dead? No one emerged through the internal doors since the explosion and I saw no reason for them to kidnap him if they already got what they came for. I glanced over at the tellers again. My bag of cash remained exactly where I left it. I couldn't understand why they didn't grab it. Ten thousand dollars in untraceable bills was a lot of money.

"They closed the big wooden doors too," said Jake. "I never saw them closed before. Right, Mom?"

"Right, honey," agreed his mom.

We all glanced over in time to see the heavy wooden doors pushed open, and several uniformed officers crowded through, their weapons drawn. The crowd didn't stop hammering at the glass doors until they finally opened. Instead of allowing them to spill out onto the sidewalk, the officers herded the group backwards into a corner of the bank, making them sit with their hands on top of their heads. The police officers fanned out but I already knew they wouldn't find anyone.

"We need help over here," I called out. "The bank robbers are gone. Those people are innocent bystanders."

The nearest officer squinted at me. "Lexi?" she asked.

"Hi, Tara!" I grinned, relieved to see a familiar face.

My cousin, recently returned to Montgomery from several years on the force in Chicago, holstered her weapon and jogged over to us. She clicked the radio at her chest and instructed the EMTs to enter. Within minutes, the bank was flooded with police officers and a pair of paramedics rushed in with a gurney and their huge medical bags. The EMTs took over from me and I rocked back on my heels, wiping my bloodied hands on my yoga pants.

"That's a lot of blood," said Jake, looking very worried now.

"It looks like more than it really is," I told him. "I know it appears scary but it's okay."

"Okay," he said, nodding but still visibly skeptical.

"Are you hurt, ma'am?" one of the EMTs asked me. I shook my head and assured her I was fine but she insisted on waving a light in my eyes and checking my pulse until I shooed her away.

"She's over here," I heard Tara say before I separated from Jake and his mom in the whirlwind of my brothers’ arrival. All of them asked to know what happened and checked me over for any obvious signs of injury.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I told them a dozen times.

"That's a lot of blood. Are you sure you're not injured?" asked Garrett, my oldest brother and most senior police officer.