Page 12 of Rescuing Mary

“No. There’s a table in here, but it’s bolted to the floor, and it would be too heavy for us to move even if it wasn’t.”

“Fuck. Okay, that’s okay. I bet those guys are already gone. They’ll take what money they can and get the fuck out. We’re comin’ for you, Mare. You tell the others their men are comin’ too. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t do anything rash,” Truck warned. “I love you.”

Mary’s stomach tightened at his words. He’d never come out and said it before. Oh, she knew he loved her, but she hadn’t heard the words. Hearing them now was almost painful. “Be careful,” she whispered, wanting to return his words, but not able to make herself say them.

“Always. You call me back if you need to.”

“I will.”

“You did good, Mare. I gotta go. Ten minutes and we’ll be there.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

Mary hung up the phone and took a deep breath and looked her friends in the eyes. “We need to get away from the door.”

“They’re coming, right?” Emily asked, her voice shaking.

Suddenly more than aware of how pregnant the woman was, and everything that could go wrong, Mary said, “Of course they are. They’re also bringing that other Delta team they’ve been training with. Those asshole robbers won’t know what hit them if they’re stupid enough to still be here when the guys arrive. Come on, over here away from the door. Sit. You’re not going to have that baby in here, are you? Because if you do, you’re gonna have to name him Hank.”

“Hank?” Emily asked as she waddled over to where Mary indicated, Rayne and Casey on either side of her.

“Yeah. You know, like bank, but with an H,” Mary quipped.

Emily shook her head and rolled her eyes, but she was grinning while she did it. Rayne and Casey got Emily seated and looked up at her.

“Now what?” Casey asked.

Mary looked around the room and shook her head. “The table is bolted down, so we can’t move it. There aren’t any other chairs or anything else in here. All we can do is wait.”

“Are those guys gonna want to come in here?” Emily asked.

Mary met her eyes. “As I told Truck, I don’t think they will. I mean, the boxes are locked up tight and there are two keys needed for each one. The customer has one and the bank has the other. Yeah, there’s probably hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels in here, but it would be tough to get at them easily. If I was a bank robber, I’d rather get into the money vault, where I could grab stacks of cash and go.”

“You aren’t just saying that to make us feel better, are you?” Rayne asked suspiciously.

Mary sighed and sat down about three feet away from the other women, making sure to put herself between them and the door. She met Rayne’s eyes and said, “I’d say anything to make you feel safe, Rayne. I’d do anything in my power to protect you. When you were missing in Egypt, I almost lost my mind. So yeah, I’d totally fucking lie if it meant you were happy, safe, and secure. But I’m not lying to you right now.”

The two women stared at each other without saying a word.

“You’re talking about more than stashing us in here to get away from the robbers, aren’t you?” Casey asked.

Not taking her eyes from Rayne’s, Mary said simply, “Yes.” This wasn’t the time or the place that she’d planned on having a heart to heart with her best friend, but it was what it was.

“I never asked you to do that,” Rayne whispered.

“I know. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Mary told her. “My childhood was shit. I had so many ‘uncles’ coming in and out of our house, I stopped bothering to learn their names after a while. They, and my mama, taught me to never rely on anyone for anything because they’ll always let you down. And it wasn’t just that she told me that every fucking day…I saw it. Every one of those uncles promised my mama a better life. They promised they’d take care of her, and me. And every single one left. I can’t really blame them because Mama was a bitch, but still.

“Teachers let me down by not noticing how hungry I was and how I hadn’t showered in days. Social workers let me down too. They’d come around every now and then after one of the uncles reported Mama, but they were overworked and busy and didn’t bother to really see me. Even the principal let me down after he found out Mama had kicked me out my senior year, by not giving a shit and threatening to have me expelled if I missed any more days of class. I told him it was because I was trying to find a place to live, but he didn’t care.

“Then I met you, Raynie. I wasn’t going to let you in, but you stormed the shields I had around my heart. I didn’t know what love was until I met you.” Mary knew she had tears in her eyes, but she didn’t stop. “You got me. You didn’t care that I used sarcasm to protect myself. You didn’t care that I was snarky and a bitch. You loved me all the same. Then when I got cancer, you were there every step of the way. You came to my appointments with me. You were there when I was too sick to get out of bed. You forced me to eat, to stay positive, and to live. And the weirdest thing for me was that you didn’t want anything in return.”

“You tried to offer me money,” Rayne remembered, her own face wet with tears. “As if I’d take your fucking money.”