Stay the Night Read Online Free

the limp blonde off the shrieking elderly woman. He checked the wide gash on the side of her head and the pulse in her neck before he gave DeLuca a filthy look. “You piece of shit.”
    â€œYou did that to her, not me.” DeLuca tossed the stiff pack of bills so that it landed in the guard’s lap. “Pop it.” When Joe didn’t pick up the pack, he targeted the horrified senior. “I can ruin her makeup, too, if you want.”
    Joe took the pack and bent it in half. As DeLuca expected, the pressure triggered the tiny canister of CO 2 hidden inside the pack, which exploded with a muffled bang. Purple dye powder showered the guard, the old lady, and three of the tellers clustered around their fallen manager.
    As new screams erupted, DeLuca checked his watch. He still had a lot to do: grab the goods from the vault and make the switch. He’d need a few minutes to stow them in the manager’s office and jam the door.
    â€œZip it closed,” he told the teller. She didn’t move, even when he aimed for her dimple again. “Don’t try me now, you stupid bitch.”
    â€œI didn’t know.” Shock had made her into a bug-eyed, lock-jointed robot. “It’s not my fault. I didn’t know.”
    â€œGive me that.” DeLuca threaded his free hand through the handles of the gym bag and tried to haul it over the front of her station. The teller refused to let it go, clutching it as if it were her only lifeline. “Take your hands off or I’ll shoot you in the face.”
    â€œIf you do, you’ll get her blood all over the money,” a deep male voice with a distinct British accent said. “Damnably hard to launder out. Almost as much of a nuisance as that dye powder.”
    DeLuca turned as something whizzed in front of him and slashed the back of his glove, knocking the gun out of his hand. Whatever it was kept going and buried itself in the wall on the other side of the lobby. The thin wooden shaft bobbed, wagging its brown-feathered end at DeLuca like a disapproving finger. Even with the flaring burn of pain from beneath the gashed leather over his hand, it took him a moment to register what it was and what had happened, and even then he didn’t quite believe it.
    Shot me with an arrow?
    DeLuca turned to see where it had come from, and saw that two strange men stood there. The shorter of the pair, a stocky bleached blond dressed in a red T-shirt and black cords, held two knives in his broad fists. The dark, polished blades glowed like gold. Beside him, a taller, rangy-looking man in an off-white fisherman’s sweater and faded gray jeans drew another arrow from a quiver hanging from his hip. The powerful-looking longbow he held was as tall as he was, at least six feet long, and had strange markings carved into its sweeping wooden curves.
    The short one sniffed the air like a curious bulldog. “Two wounded, Rob.” His accent sounded different, thicker and harder to understand. “One male, concealed.”
    The one he called Rob fitted another arrow to his bow and pointed the sharp-looking copper head of it at DeLuca. “Find him, Will.”
    DeLuca didn’t know what to think. Neither one of these guys had been inside the bank when DeLuca had come out of the john; they’d just appeared out of thin air. But that couldn’t have happened. As soon as DeLuca had walked in and taken over, he’d forced the manager to dead-bolt the doors and barricade them with the loan officer’s massive desk. The doors were bolted, the barricade still in place.
    Why the hell was the dark one using a bow ?
    He started to tell the one called Will not to move, and then caught his breath as a peculiar odor filtered through his mask. It warmed his lungs and smelled as if he had his face buried in a pricey gift basket of oranges and chocolate. Not perfume, but something just as powerful. The scents seemed to linger in his chest even