Rivals

Rivals Page 27

Weathers parked his car as close to the bank as he could get. The police had already closed down the road that lead past the bank building, stringing up yellow tape and parking cars lengthwise across the street to keep anyone from trying to get in. There were plenty of reporters already who were trying to cross the barricades anyway. They'd been waiting for this, Brent knew. Waiting for Maggie to do something bad.

"If I can talk her down, if I can get her to surrender," Brent said, "will you let her come home?"

He knew the answer, of course. But he waited for Weathers to sigh and say, "It's gone too far for that. I'll need to arrest her - it's better if I do it than the local cops, probably. I can take her some place safe."

"Like a - " Brent swallowed painfully, " - a psychiatric hospital? So she can get some help, work out her problems?"

"Maybe, eventually," Weathers said. "I was actually thinking that the local jail wouldn't be able to hold her. She could just punch her way through the walls. I have an idea about a place we can put her she can't escape from." He sighed again and turned to look Brent in the eye. "She's broken a lot of laws, and she's hurt people. You have to understand, Brent, that society has a responsibility to people who - "

"I understand that she's my sister, that's all," Brent said, and he got out of the car before Weathers could say anything more.

There was a policeman standing at the roadblock pushing back the reporters but when he saw Brent he lifted up the yellow tape and let Brent duck underneath it. Beyond the tape cars were parked in a semi-circle around the bank's front door. A few tendrils of yellow smoke were rolling along the gutters - Brent had no idea what that was about. The flashing lights and the squawking of so many police radios disoriented him. Cops with handguns and rifles were crouched behind the cars. They didn't look at Brent as he walked out into the middle of the street. Behind him a police captain with a bullhorn called Maggie's name. The amplified voice made Brent wince.

"Margaret - your brother's here. Do you want to talk to him?"

Brent stared at the police captain, then back at the revolving doors of the bank. This wasn't going to work, he thought. There was too much chaos, too many people strained to the pitch of desperation. He needed to talk to Maggie alone. He looked back at the police captain and said, "I want to go inside."

"No way, kid," the captain told him, holding one hand over the mouthpiece of his bullhorn so what he said wouldn't be broadcast to the whole neighborhood. "It's too dangerous."

"I wasn't asking," Brent told him, and walked over to the revolving door. It was shattered, its glass broken, but the metal frame was intact and when he pushed it, it turned and let him inside.

Maggie was waiting for him there. She grabbed him and then jumped back, away from the door and the windows. She pulled him over a counter and down into a narrow space behind the teller windows.

"You shouldn't have come," she said.

"Jeez! That hurt! My head bounced off a cash register," he told her, rubbing the back of his skull. The pain faded almost instantly, but still he was annoyed. "Why did you do that?"

"They've got snipers out there. If I show myself in the windows they're going to shoot first and ask questions later."

Brent took a long look at her. The light wasn't great but he could see how tired she looked. Her eyes were narrowed and her hair was a mess. She looked even more desperate than the cops outside.

"Mags, what's been going on with you?"

"I've just been trying to keep out of trouble." She glanced up at the white painted wall behind them. It turned blue, then red, then blue again as the police flashers outside cycled. "Didn't work. Listen, I'm going to run away. Leave town. You'll probably never see me again. I'm sure that's what everyone wants."

"Not me," he told her. He stared into her eyes. She looked away but he kept watching her face. "Did you see the message I sent you? It was on TV all day. And in the papers."

"I've mostly been avoiding the news. It's all about how awful I am and how everybody's scared of me." She shrugged. "But yeah. I saw it. It was... really nice of you, Brent, to say those things. It's nice to think there's one person out there who might believe I had excuses for everything I did. I wish I could say it mattered, though."

"Of course it matters! That's why I did it. I want you to come home. We'll straighten everything out with grandma. I'll even talk to her about not hitting you anymore. Mandy Hunt probably won't press charges, if you just explain - "

Maggie laughed at him.

Brent felt his cheeks getting warm. He didn't like that laugh. It said he was just a little kid, still, and he couldn't possibly know how serious things had become.

"I admit it won't be easy to come back," he said.

"Easy," she said. She wasn't avoiding his gaze anymore. Now she was just blowing him off. "Easy. Everything's easy for you now, isn't it? Everybody loves you. The big hero. Brent, if I go out there right now with you and turn myself in, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they'll give me a chance to explain? Or do you think they will just take me off to jail and let me rot there for the rest of my life?"

"You... may have to go to jail for a while," he admitted.

"A while. I'm seventeen years old. By the time I got out I would be as old as Grandma. Bank robbery, Brent. Attempted murder - that's what the papers are saying about what I did at Mandy's house. Assault and battery, on Grandma. Who knows what else they can think up?"

Brent shook his head. "So you won't come with me. You won't come out of here peacefully."

"Actually, I will," she said.

He blinked. "You will?" She didn't sound as if she meant it.

"I'm going to walk out that door with you, arm in arm. That way, they won't shoot at me. They'll wonder if maybe, just maybe, I've decided you're right and that I should just give up. Take what's coming to me. Reform and become a model citizen. They won't believe it. But maybe they'll think it for just a second. Which is all the time I need to get away."

"Please, Maggie. Just consider coming home, for real. For me."

"Let's go," she said, and stood up. She hauled him up to his feet. Together they jumped over the teller counter and headed to the door. "I'll know if it's working in a second."

"How?" he asked.

"If they start shooting the second I appear in the window, then they aren't buying it. Come on. This way."

"And what if I refuse to help you?"

"Then," she said, "you can watch the police gun down your sister in cold blood, and you can spend the rest of your life knowing you could have stopped it, and you didn't."

Brent squeezed his eyes shut. That was exactly how he'd killed Dad, wasn't it? By watching it happen and not doing anything. He had no choice.

"We're coming out together," he shouted. The police had to be listening.

Together they approached the revolving door. They couldn't both fit through at once, so Maggie pulled the metal frame out of the way and they squeezed through where the door had been.

"Maybe we should put our hands up," Brent said, when he saw all the guns pointed at them.

"Brent!" Special Agent Weathers said, then, "hold on to her! But get your head down!"

Brent looked the other direction, to his right, and saw a policeman in riot armor standing with his back to the wall of the bank, just outside the doors. He had a shotgun and he was bringing it around to point at Maggie's face.

It was a setup. From start to finish.

Brent started to scream "Maggie, jump!," but before he could get her name out, the policeman fired.