Into the Dark by Stacy Green

hers lying around. Someone could have made a copy.” A wave of fear rippled up her spine. “What are you getting at?”
    “I don’t want to further upset you, but at this point, we have to assume he had help.”
    “What kind of help?”
    “The kind that only someone with inside knowledge of the bank would have.”
    Emilie dropped her head to her hands. That meant someone she worked with disliked her. She knew exactly who that someone would be. Lisa had worked at the bank longer than Emilie, and her sights had always been set on management. Her unfriendly attitude and inability to work with others had squashed that hope. She’d been furious when Emilie was promoted to branch manager.
    “Lisa. She left before the robbery, and she’s not exactly my biggest fan.”
     

Chapter Seven
     
    The sun had crept up the horizon by the time Nathan stumbled into his apartment in East Las Vegas. He stripped and put his smelly clothes into a garbage bag; then he sealed the bag and set it by the door. Those clothes were a lost cause. Dumped some food into the tank for his hungry green Tiger Barbs, cursing when he saw their dark home. The light had been out for a week. Green gunk spread over the glass like a spider web.
    After the shortest shower in history, Nathan collapsed into bed. Maybe he would be less disillusioned after a few hours of sleep. He was always exhausted after a hostage situation, but today had been different. Seeing the lengths the masked man had gone to in order to kidnap Emilie made Nathan question his choice to work in law enforcement.
    In his six years as a cop, he’d seen the worst society was capable of. His rookie year, he and his partner had interrupted a robbery in progress. The suspect was apprehended, but the damage had already been done: the forty-nine-year-old cashier lay dead on the cracked tile floor behind the counter, blood streaming from the bullet hole in her forehead. The most haunting image of the night had been the woman’s daughter running up to the ambulance begging to know why there was no hurry to get her mother to the hospital. The sound of her grief remained in Nathan’s head for weeks.
    He had seen druggies overdosed and left to rot, some beaten so badly their eyes had swollen shut. Regardless of the nature of the victim, Nathan always took a moment to reflect on each loss, wondering about those left behind and how they would cope.
    And then there was Jimmy. Nathan was only fourteen years old when he’d held Jimmy, trying in vain to stop the blood as it poured from the stab wound. Jimmy had died in his arms. Nothing he ever experienced as a cop could be worse than that.
    But this crime wasn’t like any of the others he’d seen. Emilie’s attempted kidnapping was the result of an extremely calculating individual, someone so obsessed with another human being he would involve the lives of innocent people just to get to her.
    The partner made everything SWAT had accomplished seem worthless. No matter how many criminals they got off the streets, more were out there just like the masked man: normal, quiet people who had the time and intelligence to plan heinous crimes. And police could do little to stop them until at least one life was shattered.
     
    Jimmy would tell him to stop being a pussy and man up. He’d go on about how one man couldn’t save everyone, and all anyone could do was his best.
    Look where your best got you, Jimmy. Six feet under .
    Nathan pushed the memories of Jimmy out of his mind and focused on the case. Surely Avery was smart enough to realize the partner had help from inside. No way did the escaped man just stumble across that tunnel during a leisurely stroll in the storm drains. Who had access to the bank? Who would have known about the hidden door?
    Employees. Contractors, repairmen, cleaning service. Ex-employees .
    Emilie said the bank had been built on top of an older foundation, one that was original to the city. Anyone with knowledge about the original