He took another bite of his burger before answering. “He was okay at first, but not as the conversation went on. We talked about everything that happened since those guys came into the bank. Holton kept asking me why I talked to them when we were in the storage room, and he noted how I asked them how long they intended to keep us there.”
Jo sipped some water, then said, “Why did you do that?”
“Because they pissed me off.”
“You have a temper?”
He turned red. “Sometimes. I don’t know, I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t think they’d be able to get into the safety deposit boxes. I figured if I told them that, maybe they’d just ask to get the cash in the drawers and leave.”
It was foolish—as she’d come to expect from him—but she didn’t say that. “You didn’t get the sense that these guys were more coordinated, that maybe they were more than just typical robbers?”
He shrugged. “I guess I should have.”
“You went against bank policy, right? You’re not supposed to push back in any way.”
He ate another fry. “Yeah. That’s been pointed out to me.” His belligerence faded, replaced by remorse as he fiddled with another fry. “I put everyone in danger, didn’t I?”
She nodded. “It could have gone really, really badly—especially for Douglas.”
“Yeah, Doug didn’t deserve that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“What happened when they took you into the vault?”
“There’s a small room with a table in it. That’s where a person takes their safety deposit box, where they can have some privacy. Then there’s another door to the actual boxes. He had me open that door, and then he went into the room for a minute. And then he brought me back to the storage room.”
“Why’d you keep pushing the robbers, asking them to let us go?”
A hand instinctively went to his stomach, and he lightly brushed his shirt. “You don’t have to point out that I was stupid. I’ve never been hit like that in my life. Honestly, in the seconds after that, I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe.”
“You’ll have a bruise for quite a while.”
“Yeah. It hurts just touching it.”
“Well, you wisely kept your mouth shut after that.”
“For all the good it did me. They took me with them.” He had the burger halfway to his mouth, but he set it down then. “I really did wonder if I was going to die, and you know what’s funny? In that moment, I thought maybe I deserved it, because I realized how I’d put everyone at risk.”
“Nobody deserved to die. They had no right to do what they did. You shouldn’t have been in the situation at all.”
“I’ve never been in a bank robbery before.”
That didn’t surprise Jo, but she nodded for him to go on with his thought.
“Yeah. I graduated from college a year ago, and I’ve been working at the bank, trying to get some financial experience. Luckily, nothing like this ever happened.”
“What do you think those guys were after?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t have enough time to get into all the boxes, that’s for sure. But I saw that duffel bag. It was pretty full.”
“Do you have access to accounts with safety deposit boxes?”
He shook his head. “I see names here and there of people with the boxes, but I don’t know specifically who they are.”
Jo sipped at her water. That would be good information, but she didn’t know how she would get it.
“Are there any well-known people who have accounts there, anybody that you can think of? Politicians, or some wealthy or famous person?”
He shook his head. “Some people have a lot of money, but I don’t know who they are.” He stared at his plate. “I wonder if the police think I might’ve been involved because of the way I acted. I tried to tell the detective it was just me being angry and stupid.” He looked toward the door. “Somebody had to tell the robbers about the bank, to give them intel. But it wasn’t me.”
“What about one of the other employees at the bank?”
He took a couple bites of his burger while he thought about that. “I don’t know. I haven’t been there that long. Doug’s worked there for years, and he’s a good guy. I can’t see him being a part of something like that.”
“And Ward?”
“I don’t know him. He stays in his office, and he doesn’t interact with us a whole lot.”
“Could he help with information?”
“I suppose.”
Something to think about, at least. Jo went on. “What about Sabrina?”
“I don’t know.”
She sensed something in the way he said it. “What?”
“I don’t like her that much. She’s never been that friendly to me.”
