SEALs Love Curves Book 5: Friends
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Mary E Thompson
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Man at the Counter
Book 5: Friends
Kyra
Kyra Cordes cleared her throat and stepped forward in line for the teller. She was in a hurry, and there were not nearly enough people working. She didn’t expect it to take so long to cash one check, but if she’d waited until after her interview, the bank would have been closed. And she had to pay her rent tonight.
She tapped her shoe and glanced around. She caught the eye of a guy a few people behind her and rolled her eyes. He smiled and nodded, like he agreed.
Finally, she made it to the front of the line. She cleared her throat again. Her throat was scratchy. Spring was in full bloom, and with it, pollen was everywhere. She dug through her purse to see if she had a cough drop and heard, “Can I help you?”
Kyra looked up and found the teller calling to her. She smiled and stepped forward. She didn’t even have to see the woman’s stomach behind the counter to know she was pregnant. God, Kyra was surrounded by pregnant women. At work, at the gym, at the damn bank. Rubbing it in that she couldn’t get pregnant.
“Hi,” Kyra said to the teller.
“Can I help you?” the teller repeated, her smile dipping just a little. There was a line behind Kyra, a long one. The teller eyed it, then brought her focus back to Kyra.
“Yeah, um, I need to cash this check.” Kyra handed over the check and the deposit slip and cleared her throat again. “Do you mind if I grab one of these?” She pointed to the hard candy dish next to the window.
“Sure,” the teller said, taking the check with a smile.
Kyra unwrapped the candy and popped it in her mouth. She cleared her throat again and turned her neck. Her shoulder was stiff. That didn’t usually happen when the pollen started to bother her.
“How did you want this back?” the teller asked, lifting her gaze to Kyra.
Kyra opened her mouth to answer, but her tongue felt thick. She opened her mouth again. Nothing came out. No sound, no words, nothing.
The look in the teller’s eyes screamed of concern. Kyra didn’t know what was happening to her, but it was obviously not good. This was not pollen, and it was not going to get better with a hard candy.
Kyra panicked at the thought of the candy in her mouth. She couldn’t move her tongue to spit it out. Like everything else, it was numb.
The teller stood and got taller and taller and taller. Then a sharp pain hit Kyra’s head. She couldn’t see the teller anymore, but instead she saw feet. And the front door.
* * *
Slade
Slade O’Keefe was barely paying attention to the other people in line in front of him at the bank. He hated going there. It was almost as bad as the DMV. The people were just as happy to be working there, and just as efficient.
It was his turn to make a cash run for the week for F-BOMB, the company Slade owned and ran with his former SEAL teammates. Their boss, Daniel Dunn, liked to have petty cash on hand in case they bought lunch or dinner or breakfast, or all three, as was the case that week. They’d used the last of their cash buying treats to have on hand for the interviews they were conducting.
With Dunn about to have a kid, the whole team agreed they needed an office manager. Someone who would keep shit together. They all clearly sucked at the job, as evidenced by the fact they ran out of cash and had to tip the last delivery driver in change. Embarrassing.
The group of them were former SEALs who had created a business as private security and investigations consultants. That was the fancy way they talked about it. In reality, they were civilians with the skills of all the bad guys who could work around the letter of the law to get things done. That was how Slade liked to think of it.
The front door opened and closed quickly, drawing Slade’s attention. His neck stopped him from turning all the way. Something wasn’t right.
In front of him, the teller shouted and the woman on the other side of the counter fell to the floor.
Slade rushed over, more of his body fighting him. He’d definitely been drugged. He didn’t know how or when, but something was working its way through his system. Quickly.
He tapped the woman’s cheeks and rolled her onto her back. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”
She immediately started choking.
Slade rolled her to her side again and apologized before he stuck his finger in her mouth to see if she was choking on something.
Something hard touched his finger. He scooped it out, hoping it explained why she fell. Nope, just a piece of candy.
Slade turned her face to his. She looked up at him with hazel eyes, almost green to match her shirt. They were dilated, like she was on something.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, feeling his own body sink deeper and deeper into whatever drug was pulling at him.
She opened her mouth like she was trying to say something, but no sound came out.
Slade reached for his phone to call Rocky, the team’s medic, but someone else screamed before he could grab it. Slade turned and froze.
“You aren’t going to want to do that,” said a man with a gun trained on Slade.
“I’m just trying to help her.”
The man shook his head. “No, you’re not going to get her help. Because that’s why we’re here. And besides, you’re going to need help soon, anyway.”
“What did you do?” Slade choked out. The fight was draining from him. He dropped one hand to the ground, struggling to keep his eyes on the man with the gun.
The man smiled. His blue eyes were like ice. His face was scarred, like he either had a bad case of chicken pox as a kid or serious acne. Slade catalogued everything. The man’s short, dark hair with a hint of red. The black hoodie and dark jeans. And the gun that was definitely from a run-of-the-mill gun shop and not something homemade.
Which meant if Slade could get him to fire it, they might have a chance to find him later.
“You’re a coward,” Slade said. “You don’t have the balls to shoot me.”
The man shrugged, allowing Slade a moment of relief. Then he lifted his gun to the teller. “You’re already on the ground. You’re not a threat. Shooting you would be a waste of a bullet. But her?”
Slade struggled to turn his head to the teller. Fear mixed with her tears. Her hands cupped her round belly, protecting her unborn child. She slowly shook her head.
“Are you going to be any trouble?” the man asked her.
“No,” she said quickly. “No. Please.”
The man looked back at Slade and grinned. His teeth were almost perfect. Everything about the man said he had plenty of money, but he was robbing a bank. That wasn’t always about the money, but Slade wasn’t going to be able to do anything to stop it.
His arms gave out, and he dropped to the floor. The man lowered his gun so it wasn’t pointing at the pregnant teller. He glanced at Slade and grinned.
“See? I told you you weren’t a threat.” He looked around the rest of the bank and said, “Let’s move.”
Then he disappeared from Slade’s view.
* * *
Kyra
Kyra watched the man who’d tried to help her sink to the ground in front of her. For a moment, she had hope that he would save her and she’d be okay, but then the man she’d smiled at in line pulled a gun on them.
A bank robbery. She could only imagine what her parents would say if she told them about this. Her entire life, she’d been the screw-up. The one who let them down. She wasn’t thin enough or smart enough or anything enough. Not when her older brother was perfect. He was attractive and athletic and smart and everything a parent wanted in a child.
Kyra? She was as opposite as it could get. She was a disappointment. Which was why she lived on the other side of the country from her family. It was almost far enough.
As she lay there on the ground, the only thing she could think was at least she was wearing clean underwear. Her mother always told her to make sure she wore clean underwear in case she was ever in an accident. Kyra thought it was a weird rule, especially because if she was in an accident that was bad enough that someone would see her underwear, the chances were good that the person also would have no idea they had been clean before the accident.
Kyra hoped she didn’t wet herself lying on the ground staring at the sexy man who was giving her looks. Wait, was he trying to say something?
He kept shifting his eyes up like he was trying to look behind himself. Was he having a seizure? No, he kept looking back at her. He was doing it on purpose.
Kyra looked behind him. Not much was going on. The men were getting everyone to lie on the ground.
Oh! He wanted her to watch what was going on.
Kyra tried to nod, but her head wouldn’t move. She didn’t want to risk making a noise and alerting the men with the guns that they were communicating, so she just blinked and hoped he understood.
He stopped rolling his eyes back in his head, so she assumed he got the message.
Kyra watched the men work. They were clearly in a hurry, which worried her less than if they were taking their time. If they were in a hurry, they were going to try to get out of there before the cops showed up.
Would the cops show up?
Kyra hoped so, but how would she know. Someone had to alert the cops for them to know there was a bank robbery in progress. That usually meant a silent alarm.
She almost laughed at herself. She watched too many cop shows. She didn’t know how real life worked.
Two of the men stayed with the other people in the bank. Another man and two women were also on the ground, like Kyra and her companion. Drugged, she assumed. It was the only thing that made sense, although she couldn’t figure out how they’d been drugged. It had to be something in the bank that she touched. The door? The pen? Deposit slips! She touched the deposit slips. She tried to look at the man across from her. Yes! He had a deposit slip, too. That had to be how they drugged everyone.
Movement caught Kyra’s gaze, and she screamed. The teller she’d been speaking to was being dragged away by the man with the blue eyes. They went to an office. Kyra’s noises didn’t get far, and she wasn’t very loud, but the man across from her noticed.
A tear ran down Kyra’s cheek. The woman was pregnant. She didn’t deserve to be treated like that.
Kyra stared at the doorway they disappeared through until the two of them walked back out with a third person. A man with keys. The three of them went to another doorway and disappeared again.
They weren’t gone long before the man with the gun came back alone. He had a black bag over his shoulder. He nodded to the other two men he was with, now both holding bags of their own, and the three of them went for the front door.
The security guard stepped in front of them. “I’m not going to let you leave here with that,” he said.
The man with the blue eyes grinned. It was the kind of smile Kyra would have found attractive in other situations. God, what kind of men did she like?
“And what are you going to do to stop us?” the man asked.
The guard reached for his side. Before he could even get the gun out, the man lifted his and shot the guard.
Kyra jumped and squeaked. The guard stepped back and fell against the wall. He slid down slowly, his eyes wide, leaving a red streak.
“Anyone else want to stop us?” the man asked. “How about you?” He pointed the gun at a man in his twenties. “No? You?” He chose a woman in her forties. “How about you?” He pointed the gun at Kyra.
Tears slid down her cheeks. She just needed rent money. For an apartment she no longer wanted to live in. And instead, she was going to die.
The man grinned and shook his head. “No one can stop me.”
Then he and his friends walked out the door like they were regular customers, if you could overlook the masks the other two had covering the lower half of their faces.
Kyra waited to hear gunshots or sirens or something to tell her the police were there, but there was nothing unusual. Silence. Normal street noise.
The other people started to move. To get up. One went to check the guard for a pulse. One checked the front door. Another pulled out his phone and called the police. Kyra and her companion had no choice but to lay there and let it all happen around them while the drugs worked their way through their systems.
* * *
Slade
Slade watched as his companion’s eyes scanned the room. He could hear people getting up and moving. His phone buzzed constantly, likely the rest of his team trying to reach him. The word was definitely out about the robbery, and help was arriving.
Feeling returned in his fingers first. Slade itched to grab his phone, but the feeling was slow to filter through the rest of his hand.
The whole time Slade lay on the ground, his anger filled him. Once again, he was defenseless as someone held him captive. This time, he wasn’t going to walk away. He wasn’t in the middle of a war and had to follow orders. He was going to find the men who did this. He was going to end them.
A firm hand landed on Slade’s shoulder, and his entire body jerked. Adrenaline sped through his system as he turned and tried to fight off whoever the hand belonged to.
“Slade, it’s me,” Rocky said. Adrian Malone, known as Rocky to the team, was the team medic and one of the smartest people Slade knew.
“Oh, God,” Slade groaned, the adrenaline forcing the last of the drugs from his system. “Rock.”
“What the hell happened?” Rocky asked. He held a light up and shined it right in Slade’s eyes.
Slade wanted to fight him, but he knew it would be worse if he didn’t let Rocky do a quick exam. “Drugs and guns. I don’t know what they gave me or when.”
“Deposit,” the woman on the ground murmured.
“Deposit?” Rocky asked.
“Deposit slips,” Slade said, looking down at the papers still clutched in his hand. “They must have put the drugs on them.” He looked down at her. “Good catch.”
She tried to smile, but not much of her face moved. Her hazel eyes still showed fear, but her breathing was steady. Some of her hair had fallen forward into her beautiful face, but she couldn’t move it out of her eyes. She was still clearly feeling the effects of the drugs.
Rocky noticed and went to her, brushing her hair back and starting an exam. Slade checked out the scene around them. The guard lay on the ground near the door, not moving. Other people huddled together and walked around. Police officers were taking statements.
“Slade,” Rocky said, pulling his attention. “What’s her name?”
Slade shrugged. “I don’t know. She was the first one to go down. I came over to help her and they pulled the guns.”
“You know you need to give a statement,” Rocky said.
Slade nodded. “I’ll talk to Captain Patrick. Is she going to be okay?”
Rocky leaned back and nodded. “She’s going to need to go to St. Nicholas, but she’ll be fine. You should go, too. For now, stay put. I’m going to bag those slips.”
Slade nodded and watched Rocky walk away. Slade sat back on the floor next to the woman. She tilted her head to look up at him and her hair slid back into her face.
Slade brushed it back from her eyes and smiled. “Hey.”
She had beautiful eyes. Hazel with a lot of green in them. Perfect lips with a little bow. Round, soft cheeks. And a curvy, plush body to go with them.
Slade was a sucker for a curvy woman. And damn if the one trying to smile at him didn’t make him forget all about the way they met.
