The Hostage Bargain

  When small town girl Melinda Prescott is taken hostage by three hot bank robbers, she quickly discovers that a life of bank heists, luxury hotels, and kinky menages is way more exciting than working on the family farm. She should be scared of her dominating, fierce captors…but there’s something wicked inside her that’s craving to obey their every dark desire.

  Melinda eagerly throws in with her three smoldering fugitives…and soon realizes that these are no ordinary bank robbers—and that bad guys aren’t always who they seem. But will her delicious captors overcome their own demons enough to let her in? And can they fight a conspiracy that’s larger than all of them?

  The Hostage Bargain

  Copyright ©2012 by Annika Martin

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this ebook only, or sharing as permitted by your ebook vendor.

  Cover art: Bookbeautiful

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental. All the characters in this book are adults.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m so grateful to my fabulous friends who have offered me their support and writerly smarts along the way: Claire, Eva Clancy, Jeffe Kennedy, Jill Myles, Denise Townsend, and Penny Watson.

  The Hostage Bargain

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was looking busy behind the teller window at First City National Bank one Sunday, a delicate operation that involved doodling a frame of stars around the very edge of a piece of scratch paper, when three bank robbers burst in.

  And I really do mean burst. One moment the bank was quiet, even sort of sleepy; the next moment, it was an explosion of mayhem with people yelling, screaming, and crying; guns flashed, things got smashed and tipped over. The robbers perpetrating all this violence wore zombie masks—mottled skin, sunken eyes, the whole zombie nine yards.

  In addition to the masks, they wore business suits and leather gloves, and they moved with military precision. There were only three of them, but it seemed like they were everywhere. I was startled, and frightened for my teller pals and the handful of customers in there—I didn’t want anybody to be hurt—but this tiny little buried part of me felt a kind of dark glee. Somebody was attacking the bank I so deeply hated! The institution behind the ruination of my family.

  So yes. Dark glee. I wanted them to succeed.

  They commanded all seven of us tellers to put up our hands—so we wouldn’t push any silent alarm or panic buttons, no doubt.

  Yeah.

  What they didn’t know was every single one of us tellers First City National Bank of Baylortown, Wisconsin, FCN for short, hated bank owner Hank Vernon with a passion—a seething, lava-like passion churning deep in our bank teller hearts. Any one of us would’ve loved to see his bank implode or explode or just crumble into the river, hopefully taking Hank Vernon and his predatory kin with it, though I was the queen of the Bring-Down-Hank-Vernon Brigade, being that I had more Vernon-inflicted wounds than all of my co-workers put together.

  The robbers ordered the other tellers to march around and join the patrons on the floor, but because I was at the end of the row—or maybe I looked friendly and cooperative, heaven knows I was planning to be—they gave me the job of cleaning out the drawers and putting money into a bag under the watchful and piercing green eyes of a green-faced zombie.

  “Touch anything else and you’re dead,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, dude,” I said, heart racing a million miles an hour, one of my favorite feelings in the world. The excitement and adrenalin pumping through my veins reminded me of being on top of ski jump. The delicious point where you take off and you’re careening out of control. “I’ll do anything you want,” I said breathlessly. “Anything at all.”

  His gaze intensified.

  I didn’t mean that sexually, I almost added, but I stopped myself. The idea of doing anything he wanted sexually had a sudden thrilling appeal, and I knew from the directness and energy in his gaze through that zombie mask that he had heard it in exactly the same way.

  Shivers crawled up my spine. Temporarily insane. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  I grabbed more money.

  More yelling out on the floor. “Down! Fingers knit or I blow you heads off!” As if to emphasize his point, one of the robbers kicked the coin counting machine over onto a glass table, making a terrific crash. Somebody whimpered. That I did not approve of. The bank patrons and my coworkers were good people who didn’t deserve to be frightened.

  I, however, was practically vibrating with excitement.

  “Send us off with tracking devices or exploding dye and you’re dead,” my guy growled at me. “We’ll come back and mess you up.” Then he grabbed the flowers out of the little vase at my station and ripped them up and threw them on the floor.

  Okay, then!

  I moved to the next drawer. “I’m telling you, don’t worry. I’m into it. Tell Scary Spice out there not to shoot anyone and we’re good.”

  His green eyes blazed. “I make the rules here. Not you.”

  My belly tightened; that was a little bit hot, the way he said it. Did he know? Was he being hot on purpose? “Ten-four,” I said.

  His eyes locked on mine, or more, he looked right into me as though he recognized me. Not personally—I’d have known those green eyes anywhere—but like he knew how jazzed I felt.

  My breath sped as I gave him back the bag; my hand brushed his leather glove and shivers shot through me. He might look like Frankenstein under there, but at that moment, sexiness oozed from him.

  Years ago, my mom showed me an article that said thrill-seeking people like me are missing a brain chemical, and that they make up for it by taking risks. She showed it to me hoping I’d stop taking so many risks, but all the article did was to make me feel glad to be missing the brain chemical. I can’t imagine going through life without leaping from the cliff over Mucklanaho River, or racing down the abandoned ski slide, or getting excited about green-eyed criminals.

  “The safe.” His gaze glowed behind his mask. “Who can get us in?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised on that count,” I said. “It’s open.” Hank had left for the day, and the rest of us weren’t exactly conscientious when he was gone.

  “Thor!” He waved his gun at one of the other two robbers.

  A guy in a blue zombie mask jumped over the counter with startling athletic grace.

  “Three minutes twenty.”

  “Thor? As in the Norse god?” I asked.

  That pair of green eyes bored fiercely into mine.

  Gulp.

  “Lead us back.”

  I turned and led them back, straight into the walk-in, and pulled open the money safe. My big, green-eyed robber ripped the camera from the wall and tossed it to the floor like it was nothing. Then he pulled bundles of money off the shelves with fast, efficient movements while Thor held the bag. These men had done this before. It was fabulously badass, and even then, I was thinking this scene would become a staple in my repertoire of stranger sex fantasies for weeks.

  Okay, make that months.

  “Three-five.” Thor pressed a finger to his ear. He had ear buds in? Listening to music at a time like this?

  “What?” the big green-eyed one asked.

  “Nothing. Traffic.”

  Aha, on th
e police scanner. Suddenly I came to my senses—I was missing a couple of major destroy-Hank-Vernon opportunities here.

  I caught Thor’s eye. I held up a hand—stop—and put my finger to my lips—shhh— then I pointed to the listening device, there to catch employee grumbling. We all knew about it, though of course we weren’t supposed to.

  “Zeus.” Thor pointed to it.

  Zeus.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” I warbled in my best fake-scared voice. “Please.” I pointed to a section of bills—fifties. I ripped off the seal, displaying the trackers for them to see, and I pointed to all the bundles that had trackers. They had little red marks and we were supposed to leave them there in case of robbery. I felt like a lady on the shopping channel demonstrating the features of a new product. If they had a shopping channel for badass robbers in zombie masks who named themselves for gods.

  Thor and Zeus exchanged glances. I expected them to cast the trackers onto the ground, but my green-eyed Zeus pocketed them. Clever. He was getting sexier by the second. I also liked that these guys had named themselves after gods. It demonstrated confidence.

  And I had something more to show them.

  The Vernons had started investing in gemstones as a hedge against the economy; Hank and his sister had recently acquired a collection of loose diamonds at an auction, and they were supposed to bring them to one of the branches with safety deposit boxes, but if there was one thing you could count on, it was Hank’s laziness. My gaze fell on the strongbox shoved way back on the floor. Could the stones still be in there?

  I hesitated—if I showed them the diamonds out of the blue, the Vernons would know I’d gone out of my way to help the robbers. Yet, I so wanted the robbers to have them. This was the Vernon’s private property and wouldn’t be FDIC insured.

  I cleared my throat and, imitating a man best I could, I barked. “What else is in here?” The two of them looked at me like I was crazy. I winked. Then, in my regular voice, I said, “What do you mean what else? There’s nothing else!” I knelt and pulled out the strong box, opened it. A mound of velvet bags sat inside. Yes! The diamonds. Still there.

  I let out a cry. “Ow! Please! What more do you want? What do you want from me?” Of course they weren’t hurting me, I just wanted it to sound that way for the recording. No doubt I seemed totally crazy, like I had a split personality, one half threatening the other, but hey, you don’t get that many chances to screw the Vernons.

  I yanked out one of the bags. Zeus gestured with his gun and I emptied it into my hand, then looked up in mock surprise. Diamonds.

  Thor eyed Zeus, then turned to me said, “You show us everything there is to see now or we’ll kill you! Now! Everything!”

  I nodded. Thor was into it.

  Zeus pocketed the diamonds while Thor yelled at me some more. “What’s in that box? You fuckin’ show me!”

  “I don’t want to die,” I said in my most weepy way. I felt like part of the gang.

  They grabbed up every last diamond.

  Thor stiffened, put his finger to his ear. “Suspicious activity, this address.”

  The third robber burst in. “Guy out there dropped a dime.”

  “Fuck,” Zeus said.

  The three of them looked at me. It was like they’d all gotten the same inspiration at the same time, or a group communication from the mothership.

  “We don’t take hostages,” Zeus said.

  What? Hostages?

  “No choice,” the scary one said.

  “Seconded.” Roughly, Thor grabbed my arm.

  Hostages? Shit! I tried to think of what happened to hostages in various movies I’ve seen, if they usually got killed or not. Then I remembered—they’re movies. Anyway, I was on their side. Surely they understood that.

  “Odin!” Zeus threw a bag to the crazy one, then another.

  Odin. Another god.

  Thor grabbed my arm and put a gun to my head, and we ran out of the safe and down the back hall; they seemed to know the layout as well as I did.

  The gun freaked me out. “You don’t have to be so…you know…”

  “Yes I do,” Thor said as we burst out the door. He gave me a shove and we started across the parking lot.

  Odin had something in his hand, like a video game control. He punched a button, and just like that, an earth-shaking boom ripped through the air.

  Flames blazed from a car in the parking lot.

  Another explosion came from the other side of the lot. Flashes. Smoke gushed into the air from all directions.

  “Hey!” I said. “Be careful—that bank’s full of innocent people!”

  “Nobody’s getting hurt,” Thor said, pushing me along. “It’s called fireworks.”

  Under the cover of smoke, we headed into the alley, toward a white van with Romano’s Catering emblazoned on the side, or at least I think it said Romano’s Catering. You could barely see shit. Somebody slid a door open. Thor pulled me into the back seat.

  Eyes shut! Now!” Thor commanded.

  I complied. Doors were slammed and we were off. I heard a sound like ripping fabric.

  “I’m going to blindfold you. We can’t have you seeing our faces, or we’ll have to kill you.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Okay.” I told myself this was getting serious, but it still felt thrilling. I assumed that Odin and Zeus were up front; no doubt they’d taken off their masks. Definitely less conspicuous to drive from the scene of a robbery sans mask.

  Sirens sounded. I braced, eyes shut, as the van peeled out and turned.

  “It’s okay,” Thor reassured me, knotting the cloth at the back of my head without getting any of my hair caught, a skill that impressed me. For somebody who didn’t typically take hostages, he was pretty handy with a blindfold. “None of us wants to kill anyone,” he said. “So let’s stay strangers. We’ll let you off once we know we won’t need you, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Hands.”

  I put out my hands and he bound them up with efficient movements…for a bandit unused to hostage taking. The sirens grew louder, cranking the air of tension inside the van. Where were we?

  “Fuck,” somebody said.

  Were the sirens coming for us?

  The sirens passed.

  “Okay, then,” Thor mumbled.

  Whichever robber was driving—Zeus or Odin—he was driving sanely, which pleased me. I figured the biggest danger would come in with a high-speed chase at this point.

  Romano’s was an actual restaurant a few towns over, but I doubted these guys were from Romano’s. They were smarter than that.

  Train crossing bells. I felt the van slow. Low voices up front. I could feel the rumble through the seat.

  “Are we held up by a train?” I asked loudly.

  A door creaked open. What was happening? Had somebody bailed from the van?

  “Because if we are,” I continued, “there’s a bridge you can take.”

  “You think we’re idiots?” Odin barked—I could tell it was him, because Zeus had a deep voice, and Thor was right next to me. Also, Odin had just a whiff of an accent. “I think we know the logistics of the area,” Odin added.

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “Don’t be,” Odin said. “We are awesome at this, and we don’t need your fucking input.” Odin’s accent involved saying the ‘g’ just a little bit too hard, so that it sounded like your fucking g-input.

  A door slammed and we squealed out—a U-turn from the feel of it.

  Softly, Thor said, “Somebody needed to get rid of those trackers.”

  “Oh,” I said. So they’d thrown them into a boxcar.

  We continued on, saying nothing.

  “I want you to know something,” I announced. “I won’t be any trouble. My main mission in life is to screw the owner of that bank. And I’m not talking sex. Even if I saw your faces, which I swear I haven’t, I would never tell. I want you to get away.”

  “Can you shut her up?” Odi
n said, and started up a hushed conversation with Zeus in the front.

  “Fine,” I whispered, feeling annoyed, nervous, and excited all at once.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Thor said to me. “We’ll find a place to let you out and you’ll have fifteen minutes of fame.” I felt the seat depress next to me—Thor, sliding closer. He lowered his voice to a hushed, sexy tone. “We have to find the right sort of place, though. There’s an art to every part of this.” I liked his familiar tone. Like he was confiding in me.

  I nodded. I couldn’t see their faces, but I was starting to differentiate them by personality as well as voice. Thor was smart and easy to get on with, and we seemed to be on a certain wavelength; he was the one who’d immediately understood why I was talking in different voices in the safe and played along. Zeus was the big silent green-eyed robber who oozed masculine hotness. Odin was the bad boy techie, and he had that accent and a high opinion of their smarts. The three of them seemed sane and even kind of cool, yet excitingly dangerous, being that they were bank robbers. I rather liked the combination.

  Sirens in the distance. “Oh, no!” I said.

  “It’s fine,” Zeus said. I imagined him there in the front, his green eyes and solid presence, utterly in control of everything.

  Thor said, “Why don’t you tell me why you hate your boss so much.”

  I rested my head back on the seat, trying to think where to start.

  “That bad, huh?” Thor said.

  “If it wasn’t for Hank Vernon, my parents would still be around,” I said.

  The hush in the car was palpable.

  “I’m sorry,” Thor said softly.

  “It’s been five years,” I said. “I’m…” getting used to it wasn’t quite right. More like struggling to live with it. “I’m okay.”

  I told them about how the whole thing started, with the Vernons’ quest to take our farm, run us off the land, and lease it to a company that mined frack sand, which was way more lucrative than the mortgage their bank held. I told them about how amazing my mom and dad had been, standing so strong against the Vernons. Like scruffy warriors, my folks. That farm had been their life.