Her cell phone had rung at least three times, only it was on silent, so it just vibrated in her blazer pocket. She sent up a prayer of thanks that she hadn’t left the ringer on. She could imagine the robbers wouldn’t have taken lightly to her keeping the phone during the incident. She’d honestly forgotten all about it until the first call came. She’d nearly jumped out of her skin, but only the security guard had seemed to notice anything was different. To calm herself, Donna had taken to watching the second hand on the oversized clock in the lobby. She gave her full attention to each tick, counted each second meticulously. Anything to keep her distracted. The more time passed, the closer they were to getting out of this. She counted a few more ticks as the second hand swung into an upright position. 6:43.

“Ready to roll,” the shorter one said as he came back into the lobby.

“Everything’s by the back exit?” the leader asked.

“Yeah.”

“Surveillance?”

“Like I said, security cameras all tape to a room in the back. I’ve got all the tapes. Not that it will matter once we get where we’re —”

“Shut up!” the leader turned the gun on his colleague momentarily, but they were too far away for anyone to take advantage of the situation.

The entire group had been too stunned to move anyway. It was the loudest the leader had been since this ordeal started. He regained his calm demeanor quickly.

“What did I say to you about being a stupid common thief and running your mouth too much?”

The shorter one just hung his head, appropriately chastised.

“Go ahead and get them ready,” the leader nodded to the group. The shorter one nodded and reached into the black bag he’d taken back toward the vault. He pulled out a handful of large plastic cable ties.

Oh God, Donna thought. This was new. This wasn’t a part of the plan they’d mentioned before.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be taking our leave of your momentarily,” the leader began, polite as ever. “We want to thank you for your cooperation.”

The shorter man started at the end of the line, tying the hands and feet of the bank employees with the cable ties.

“We’re going to need a delay before you call the authorities,” the leader said by way of explanation. “I’m sure you underst—”

“Shit!” they heard the third robber cry out from the back, followed by his heavy footfalls as he ran in their direction. “Bernard, we’ve got the cops out back!”

“What?” the leader instantly forgot about lacing into the strong one for using his name when he heard the news. “How?” he asked as the shorter one went to investigate.

“How the hell do I know?” the strong one shouted at him.

“Keep your voice down!” Bernard warned.

“Patrol car, looks like a drive-by in the back,” the shorter one advised as he made his way to the other side of the lobby. “Dammit, we’ve got one in the front, too!”

The strong one all of a sudden looked like a caged animal. Bernard wasn’t far off, his plans obviously gone more than awry. He turned back to the short one. “You said you had countermeasures for all the vault alarms!”

“I did! I used them! It might just be standard, Bernard, just a double-check, but the second car makes me nervous.” There was a pause. He needed orders. “Now what?”

Bernard’s breathing had gotten heavier, and he forced himself to slow down. “First things first,” he said. “Get on the scanner, find out what’s going on.” He turned to the third one, “Take care of them,” he gestured to the group, where the shorter one had left off with the cable ties.

The strong one moved toward the group, and Bernard turned back to the shorter one. “We waited until after hours, the surveillance tapes are kept in-house, we didn’t force the lock on the vault...”

“We didn’t even touch the ATM,” the shorter one said, continuing the list of what they did right, “And there was only one teller on duty when it went down, so unless there was a silent alarm I didn’t detect —”

“YOU!!!” Bernard charged to the teller beside Donna. The strong one had just secured the teller’s hands and was working on her feet. “Did you trip a fucking silent alarm?!?!?!?!” The teller, Patti, according to her nametag, just cried hysterically. “DID YOU?!?!” Bernard demanded, all semblance of his earlier civility gone.

“N-no,” she whispered.

“Lying bitch!” he screamed, kicking at her.

“I didn’t,” Patti insisted, hysterically.

“You’re lying! Don’t. Fucking. LIE. To. Me!” he said, getting in her face with the gun. He looked down at her nametag. “It’s not nice to lie to people who’ve asked for your cooperation, Patti. That’s poor customer service. What do you think should happen to employees who don’t provide good customer service?” he said maniacally, tilting the gun close to her head.

Patti was screaming incoherently at this point, babbling on about how they didn’t have silent alarms at the teller windows anymore because they’d been set off too easily by accident in the past and begging not to be hurt.

Donna’s heart had never gone out more to another human being in her life. The guy was actually enjoying scaring her to death. And all she had done was get out of bed and come to work that morning.

“She said she didn’t do it.”

Whoa. Who said that?

Bernard turned his head to Donna. “What?”

Oh, shit. Was that me? Did I say that?

She swallowed hard. “Sh-she said she didn’t do it. She’s too afraid to lie. She froze when you came in the door, do you really think she tripped an alarm? She’s just scared.”

Well, that almost sounded like her voice.

Bernard smiled. Donna was astonished at how wicked-looking he’d become in the last few minutes. She wondered if she’d just made the stupidest mistake of her life.

“What’s your name?” Bernard said.

“W-What?” Donna wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

“What’s your name?” Bernard repeated. Donna stared, wide-eyed. “Come on, I know everybody else’s name. He used the barrel of his gun as a pointer. “I know Patti’s name.” Patti flinched and continued to sob quietly. “I know Mr. Williams’ name down there. I know...” he took a moment to glance at the security guard’s tag. “I know Fred’s name over here. But you,” he jabbed the gun at her a little for emphasis and she flinched in spite of herself, “don’t have a nametag. What’s. Your. Name.”

She would have answered him. Really, she would have. But the moment she looked directly at the barrel of the gun pointed at her chest, she lost the power of speech completely.

Bernard leered. “You don’t have to tell me. I can find out myself.”

He jumped up and took the two steps to where her purse still was on the floor with all the wallets. He kicked it over and several of her things spilled out. He picked up the wallet and flipped it open. Donna couldn’t breathe.

“Donnatella Moss,” he read from her driver’s license, coming back to stand over her. “5761 Belmont Road Northwest, Apartment 216...God, that’s a scary neighborhood at night!” he exclaimed as he flipped the wallet closed and tossed it back on the floor. “What’s a pretty girl like you with a pretty name like that doing living in such a dump?” He kneeled back down in front of her. The strong one had moved around and was securing Fred’s hands and feet, but Donna hadn’t noticed.

Bernard picked up one of the cable ties and leaned forward, pushing her hands behind her back. As he reached behind her, he whispered in her ear. “I never forget a name or a face. And I never forget a back talker. 5761 Belmont, Number 216? I’ll have to drop by one day, when all this is over. Then you and I will spend some time catching up, Donnatella Moss. Just the two of us.”

He cinched the cable tie so tight it bit into her skin, but it was his threat that caused the cry that escaped her lips.

He stood up and smiled, before going back to the short one for an update.

They spoke in hushed tones, the short one telling Bernard about scanner traffic that talked about citizen reports of suspicious activity at the bank, and some kind of possible silent alarm at the same location.

Donna didn’t hear any of it. She leaned her head forward, her forehead on her drawn-up knees, and rocked back and forth slightly, trying to calm her nerves. She couldn’t slow her breathing down, and the lightheadedness was back with a vengeance. She thought she was going to cry. No, she was crying. This had to stop. If he saw her crying, that would just make it worse.

She heard a tiny whisper come from her right. “Thank you.” It was Patti.

Donna looked over at her. She was still obviously upset, but she had calmed down considerably. Donna actually found herself smiling just bit. “You’re welcome,” she said, and found she actually meant it. The exchange renewed her strength, and she leaned her head back against the marble, trying to forget the smell of Bernard’s aftershave and the feel of his stubble against her cheek. Her tears were quickly subsiding.

“You OK?” came another whisper. This time she looked to the security guard on the left. Donna bit her lower lip; it was still trembling a little.

“Yeah,” she nodded quickly.

“You did good,” the guard said with a little smile. “I know it might not feel that way, but you did. You kept your head and you got him off of Patti. That was nice of you.” He glanced up at the three, who were still discussing their new situation. “I’m Fred Garfield.”

“Donna Moss. Well...I guess you knew that,” she smiled ruefully.

“I did,” Fred said with a hint of a grin.

“Yeah.”

“Well, Donna, you’ve done your good deed for the day,” he said.

She looked him in the face, realizing her tears were now completely gone. “Fred, you’ve just done yours.”

They cut the conversation short as Bernard and the other two broke apart.

*************

“Josh,” Ryan appeared in his doorway. “A Detective Linden, line 2.”

Josh snatched the receiver off the base. “Josh Lyman.”

“It’s Linden. Have you heard anything from Ms. Moss?”

“No.”

“OK.” He took a deep breath. “I may have something for you.”

Josh was too busy trying to swallow the lump in his throat to answer, but after a moment, Linden continued anyway.

“There was a silent alarm tripped at that branch about half an hour ago, which would indicate that the vault was opened without the proper access codes, that it was somehow electronically jimmied. We sent two patrol cars to do drive-bys, and they indicated that there were several cars left in employee parking in the back, and, like your citizen report, that the blinds were drawn in the front. That’s against procedure; you want your lobby visible to the street at all times. So we contacted their corporate headquarters. The E Street branch hasn’t filed their nightly electronic reports yet, which should have been done more than an hour ago. We may have a situation.”

Josh took another beat, then found his voice. “And...what are you saying, that Donna’s...that Donna’s inside?”

“We don’t know who’s inside. Let me be very clear, we don’t know for sure what’s going on. We’re following procedure and taking the next steps right now, but even if this is what we think it is, there’s nothing to indicate that Ms. Moss is inside.” Linden took a breath, then added, “Except that the last time someone saw her she was headed for the ATM, and apparently no one’s heard from her since.”

Josh already had his elbows on the desk, and his head in the hand that wasn’t holding the phone, but the room was spinning in ten different directions at once. “Oh, God. OK. OK,” he closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Assuming that Donna is in there, that anyone is in there and there’s a...a thing in progress. What’s next?”

“We’re doing what we do. We’re taking the next steps.”

“What are the next steps?”

Linden sighed. Civilians usually weren’t privy to procedure, but these were unusual circumstances.

“We’ve got more manpower on the way to the bank now. They’ll try to make contact with whoever’s inside. If this is all some mix-up and the staff is in there slacking off, we’ll know that soon enough. But with all these different reports...if it’s something else, we’ll know that too, and then we’ll get into it.”

“What does ‘get into it’ mean?” Josh asked, his voice getting louder by the second.

“When I find out, I’ll let you know. Stay by your phone.”

Josh heard the click and the subsequent dial tone and thought he would be physically ill.

“Hey.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t even seen Sam standing in the door. “How long have you been there?”

“What’s going on?” Sam asked, concern evident on his face.

“I...” Josh looked back down at the phone. He had no earthly idea where to begin.

Sam began for him. “Ginger said you asked for Bob Linden’s number.”

“Yeah,” Josh inhaled and decided to get it all out in one breath. “Donna left here before 5 to go down to Capitol Grille. Karim called and said she went to the ATM at the bank across the street and was supposed to come back, but never did. She’s not answering her cell. And now they’ve had a silent alarm tripped at the bank. They think something might be happening and...and that’s the last place Donna was headed that anybody knew.”

“My God,” Sam whispered, approaching the desk. “What did Bob say?”

“He said that they’re not 100 percent sure, they’re taking steps to confirm. And even if it is what they think it is, there’s no evidence that Donna is or isn’t in the bank. Except, you know, she isn’t here. She isn’t answering her phone. And we can’t find her anywhere else, so...” He let out a shaky breath. “I don’t really know what to do now.”

“Bob’s gonna keep you updated?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. Well, I think for starters, I mean I know this isn’t a political...whatever, but I think for starters, you might wanna tell Leo.”

Josh jerked his head up as if the idea had just occurred to him. “You think there’s anything he can do?”

“Not right now. Not that you’re not doing already, but, you know, just to keep him in the loop,” Sam said.

“Yeah. Yeah, OK. You’re right.” Josh stood up and started to the door. Sam stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Do you wanna bring in Toby and CJ?”

“I don’t want to DO anything with it yet, I don’t even —”

“Josh, I’m not talking about spin strategy here, come on. I’m asking if you want them to know.”

“Oh,” Josh thought for a second. “Yeah.”

“You want me to tell them while you’re in with Leo?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. Go.”