The next moments didn’t take a terribly long time to play out. Not in terms of the clock tower out in the town square, ticking softly in spite of it’s size. It might have ticked perhaps forty or fifty times. The minute hand might have moved, a little. But not overmuch.
I watched him and felt a twisting in my gut and realized that he wasn’t pointing that rifle at me. But it wouldn’t take but a single sweep of the barrel, barely any movement at all in his shoulders, and I’d never make it home.
“Now,” Baron Euler said. I made the conscious decision that he was who he said he was. “I want you there.” He pointed with the barrel of his gun, and a man behind me made a sound like he was going to be sick to his stomach. “Go into that vault, and fill this bag with money.”
Euler shrugged a bag off his shoulder, caught it with his off-hand, and threw it across the room. It made a sound on the counter as it landed.
It took every part of me to turn and watch the man disappearing into the back. Everyone made like they were terrified to being shot. I knew that I certainly was, myself. I couldn’t blame anyone else who decided that they wanted to live today.
My eyes flicked off behind Euler. Jodie was sitting, pressed into the corner, his nose bleeding through his fingers. His eyes were wide with fright, and his shoulders all bunched up like he was trying to cover his ears with them. He wasn’t moving, and I was glad he wasn’t.
“You don’t need to threaten anyone,” I said. “Nobody wants to get hurt.”
Euler stepped closer to me. “Hands up, Missy,” he said gruffly. My hands went higher. “Above your shoulders.”
My hands went up higher than my shoulders. I could feel his eyes on me. Could feel them looking. He wasn’t looking at me like Jodie looked at me. Like the preacher looked at me. I felt my face go red.
“Hands above the counter,” he said. I turned to where he was looking. A man in a dark-blue vest had his hands hidden behind the thick wooden counter-top. I realized sickly that there was a very real threat here, and not just to Baron Euler.
“Do what he says,” I said, as if I had some kind of authority here.
The bank teller ignored me. His shoulders shook as he straightened up, and then all hell broke loose. An explosion went off right by my head, and something started whistling in my ears. In the edge of my vision, I watched Baron Euler’s hands working the lever on his rifle. In the center of it, the bank teller’s blue shirt was being painted black by blood that was pouring out. He had a pistol in his hands. Smoke poured out of the barrel.
Euler yelled something. He sounded far-away. The whistling was too loud to hear over properly. Like he was calling from the other end of a cave I heard his voice, low and rough. “Where’s that money?”
The man reappeared in the door. I could see his teeth chattering, and I could see wetness in his eyes. He stopped dead when he saw the other teller. I had gone numb at some point to the violence. I just wanted to survive. My whole head felt empty, like there was too much space inside it, and at the same time the only thought that would fit was, I wasn’t in his line, so it’s okay.
I could feel my own hands shaking. Jodie pulled his hands away from his face and looked at them. Euler gestured with the gun and said something. He didn’t yell this time, so all I could hear from his end of the cavern, over the whistling in my ears, was the fact that he was saying something.
The banker didn’t seem to have trouble hearing, though. He looked up like he’d forgotten that Baron Euler was robbing the place, and started walking again, tottering on his feet like he’d forgotten how to walk. Euler took the bag from his hands, then swept the barrel of the rifle across the room quickly. I felt my heart stop when it passed over me.
Then he passed me. The barrel never hesitated for a second. He knew that I wasn’t going to fight him. And in that moment of certainty he made a decision, though I didn’t know it until a second later.
He turned back to me. The barrel of the gun didn’t quite sweep all the way onto my chest. I was still afraid, though. It would be so easy for him to move it the extra three inches that it would take to put the barrel squarely pointed at my chest.
He said something. The whistling got a little quieter. It sounded like You. The word was short, in any case.
“What?” I raised my voice to hear myself over the infernal racket that was still going inside my head.
He didn’t answer me. Instead he grabbed my arm and pulled. It felt like if I tried to stop him, he’d pull my arm right out of the shoulder. I only tried for an instant, and then I let him win. He didn’t stop to thank me.
Instead he pulled me out of the bank, and pressed me forward. Up onto a horse. I was so stunned that I didn’t think to fight. And I knew in my gut that if I did, there would be no guaranteeing my safety. I wanted to live.
So I didn’t fight, and that was the biggest mistake I’d made all year. It was only going to be the first of many, though. And they were all going to center around Baron Euler. The biggest mistake I ever ran into, and the one thing I know I wouldn’t have changed if I could.