Note: “Shae” is the first story in a quartet about the characters Shae and Laddie. The stories explore the dangerous nature of love and attraction, as well as whether we can avoid our own destinies. The story arc is told in reverse chronological order, with the events in “Shae” being the last to occur. Laddie is the narrator.

Shae

by Frank Zafiro

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"My name is Charity and welcome back to the program.” The woman's voice on the radio was silky sweet. “We have another caller on the line. Micah, is it? ”

“Yes, ma'am, ” a younger woman, maybe even just a girl, answered.

“Welcome to the show. What song did you want to request?”

There was some hesitation. Maybe a sniffle.

I scratched the stubble on the side of my face and took a sip of whiskey from the glass in my other hand. I held the liquid in my mouth, listening.

“Micah?” the hostess asked. “You all right, honey?”

The sniffle turned into a short sob.

I swallowed. The liquid burned my throat.

“I'm sorry,” Micah told the hostess. “It's just…oh, I hate Valentine's Day.”

I stared down into my glass and the bag of money beside it. I knew how she felt.

The job was supposed to easy, and quick. They all are. Somewhere between what they're supposed to be and what eventually happens, things get fucked up. Usually it's something small and I'm able to adapt to it. Like some general on the History Channel said, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. A true soldier adapts.

Shae was a go with the flow type of woman anyway. When I laid out the plan for her, she only half-listened to me. I had to raise my voice twice to get her attention and even then, I don't think she really heard every detail. For her, it was easy. Walk in, point the gun, get the money, and walk out. Everything else was flexible.

Well, it wasn't.

I'd like to say the whole thing would've gone like clockwork if we'd just stuck to my plan, but that would be a lie. Things came up that I hadn't planned for. I mean, how do you account for what customers will be in a bank at any given time? You can't. And if one of those customers happens to be a police detective in plain clothes, depositing his paycheck, how do you plan for that?

Go with the flow, baby. That's what Shae would've said.

The flow.

It was a flow of bad shit, that's what it was.

For starters, Shae lost her mask. I bought two plastic masks with elastic straps. Mine was Darth Vader and hers was one of the white Stormtroopers. She laughed at me at first when I brought them home from the costume shop. But when I showed her the eyes, with the large, darkened plastic lenses, she smiled broadly.

“Good vision, baby,” she said, her thick Irish accent arousing me. “Nice choice.”

Then she went and forgot the thing in the car. We arrived at the door of the bank, ready to rock, and she snapped her fingers. I asked her the problem and she told me.

The car was safely parked around two corners, a right and a left. It was about forty seconds away at a dead run and out of sight of any external bank cameras.

“Go get it,” I told her. “I'll wait.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Feck it, Laddie. Let's just do it.”

With that, she threw her long hair back over her shoulders and strode into the bank like she was the Queen of England.

I slipped on my mask and hurried after her.

The next thing that went wrong was the security guard. It wasn't the old guy that was there all three times I cased the place. It was a younger guy, though he was fatter than the regular mope. He was looking at Shae, admiring her form as she headed to the nearest teller. I was almost on him when he turned and saw my mask.

He was fast, I'll give him that. He managed to get his .38 out of the holster before I clubbed him with my sap.

“Nobody feckin' move!” screamed Shae, the silver Beretta in her hand and sweeping across all the customers and employees. Her thick brogue made the words sing.

Of course, everybody did move and it took me pointing my .45 at several of them and barking orders to back them away from the door.

Then the second security guard came out of the vault area at a dead run, his gun clasped in both hands. His tie flew back over his shoulder as he sprinted into the lobby. When he slammed on the brakes, he slid several feet on the tile floor. Then he pointed the gun at my Shae, which was a mistake.

I snapped off two rounds, catching him just below the armpit about an inch apart. He grunted and fell over without even looking my direction.

The screams broke out again and I wheeled around, pointing my gun everywhere and bellowing for them to shut up, just shut the fuck up.

Shae's eyes were alight with excitement and after I dropped the second guard, she gave me a look of pure lust from beneath hooded eyes and touched the tip of her tongue to her lip.

I opened my mouth to tell her to get moving, but before I could say a word, she turned and grabbed the nearest teller. The brunette woman with blonde tips shook her head in small shakes when Shae pointed the silver pistol at her.

“Be a dear,” she said, holding out the shopping bag “and fill it up. None of those feckin' dye packs, neither.”

She walked from teller station to station, making sure that the woman left the dye packs in the drawer, didn't hit an alarm button, or pull out the special bill that was tucked in an alarmed slot.

I forced myself to keep an eye on the customers and checked my watch every few seconds.

“Let's go,” I urged her. I was pretty certain no one had punched the alarm, but I couldn't be sure. Plus the gunshots might have been heard outside the bank and someone could have called the cops. We needed to get out of the bank with the money inside of the police response time.

When the brunette had pushed the last bundle of bills from the last drawer into the bag, Shae flashed her a smile. “Thanks. Now, down on floor with ye.”

The teller sank to the floor with a whimper.

Shae vaulted over the counter and strode toward me. The bag swayed heavily in her grasp. We hadn't even considered hitting the vault. There was enough in that bag for a clean start. We weren't greedy.

She reached me and held out the bag. “Be a gentleman for once, why don't ye?”

I reached for the bag.

More shots rang out.

Shae's eyes widened in surprise. Her mouth fell open and a light gurgle escaped. Confusion, then sadness, came into her eyes. She collapsed to the floor. All of that happened in less than a second, but it was burned into my memory for a thousand years.

I wheeled around, firing in the direction of the shots. Customers screamed in panic. Some crawled toward a wall or a desk, while others scampered toward the back of the bank, hunched over and shuffling their feet as quickly as they could.

The shooter was a man in his forties. He was thin and resolute. I learned later that he was a cop and looking back, I should have made him right away. But he had blended right in with the other customers. Now he was crouched and duck-walking toward one of the desks.

“You motherfucker!” I screamed and fired directly at him. The bullet struck low in front of him, ripping out a chunk of tile and whizzing off. Before I could fire again, he reached the desk and took cover.

I looked down at Shae. She was perfectly still, as if posed for a snapshot. Her hair was splayed out on the ground beneath her and a dark red pool was spreading outward from her body.

There was a short, guttural sound, full of despair. I realized a moment later it came from me.

I turned fired over the top of the desk just as the cop started to pop up and he hunkered down again immediately. My best guess said that I had one, maybe two rounds left in this magazine. The second mag was in my back pocket, but I'd have to put the bag of money down to reload.

More than anything, I wanted to stay and shoot it out. I wanted to kill the sonofabitch who fucked up my plan, who took away our future.

Go with the flow, baby, I heard her say.

I backpedaled toward the door. The cop stayed behind the desk and no civilians got suddenly brave. At the door, I emptied the rest of the clip into the desk the cop was hiding behind, turned and ran out of the bank.

The rest of the plan went off perfect.

“That one was for Micah,” the woman on the radio said, “sending her love from far away to Jordan , stationed in Germany .”

I sat at the desk, sipping the whiskey and listening to the saccharine dedication show that Shae loved. She called it her guilty pleasure. The .45 rested next to the bag full of money. I stared at the droplets of blood on the bag. I hadn't noticed them at the bank, or as I ran to the car and drove back to our shithole motel. But under the weak yellow light at the desk, the dark red drops stood out.

It wouldn't take the police long to put the pieces together. They'd probably have her identified in less than a day. Two at the most. Her prints weren't on file locally or in the U.S. , so that would buy me some time. Once the cops struck out, though, they'd think to check with Canada . They'd find out about the banks in Vancouver . Maybe we left some prints behind on one of those jobs. They'd figure it out.

I should be driving north instead of drinking and sitting. And I suppose I would, just as soon as I drained my glass. I'd tuck the money in my suitcase, already packed before we even left for the bank, dump the shopping bag and the gun into a sewer grate and drive north. It was an hour or so to Colville , where my cousin Murph lived. I could hole up there, check the news coverage and get some rest. Then we'd drive further north, hauling a snowmobile in the back of his truck. One snowmobile instead of two. I'd pay him off and then snowmobile across the border into British Columbia .

I hoped Shae's Uncle Terry would still take me in after what happened. I suppose I had enough money to make it happen, but with blood, you never know. Especially Irish blood.

And maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Terry showed up with his truck, right where we'd gone cutting wood last winter in B.C., and met me with a shotgun. If he chose to do that, he'd do it without a sneer or curse. He'd just level it at me and blast me in the heart, without a word. That was his way. And maybe that's what I deserved.

I could lie on the cold ground and my blood would spill out onto the white snow, just like Shae's did on the cold tile of that bank.

“I'm Charity,” the woman on the radio said, “and you can call me with your long-distance dedication.”

I imagined a bit of light brogue in her voice that wasn't really there, smiled and downed the last of the whiskey.

Another saccharine song started playing.

“This one is for all of you long distance lovers out there,” Charity intoned.

I'd head north, and go with the flow.

*** “Shae” first appeared in Crime and Suspense magazine in the February 2006 issue. This is a slightly different version.