Wyatt ducked, turned, bringing up his gun in one movement.
A man hed never seen before was framed in the doorway, body low, swinging a pistol on him. It was some kind of fancy target pistol and Wyatt heard it snap sharply a couple of times. The shots went wide. He returned the fire, then ducked back into the bank.
Riding was there, dancing lightly, shifting his aim, looking for trouble. Wyatt pushed him back into Nurses office. Stay with them.
Already there were raised voices on the footpath outside. Wyatt slipped farther into the bank, using desks and filing cabinets as cover. He waited. He couldnt show himself at the corridor. He and Riding could try for the front door but that would mean showing themselves on the street. If the gunman let them get that far.
Who was he? Was Anna Reid pulling some kind of cross?
Wyatt edged around to the main counter and crouched there, two metres from the corridor entrance. The gunman moved first. He came through fast and low, firing rapidly. Wyatt tried to track him with the. 38.
Riding was the first to die. He stepped out into the gunmans path, readied the shotgun, and caught a slug high in the cheekbone. Wyatt saw him spin back against the wall and glass split and fell in shards around him as he slid to the floor.
By now the gunman was past Wyatt. Wyatt rolled free of the counter, looking for a clear field of fire, and saw the gunman die.
It was Nurse, dazed and bloodied and filled with something like hate. He seemed to shake the banks revolver like a deadly forefinger at the gunman and fire it at the same time. The gunman pitched over backwards.
Nurse saw Wyatt. He ducked into the strongroom.
Wyatt moved. He wasnt going to play cat and mouse with Nurse. He ran for the Volvo, leaving seven strongboxes behind.
The big car snaked a little until the rear tyres caught. He heard the boot slam. Out on the street people stared and scattered. When he was clear of the shopping centre he slowed the car, pulled off the balaclava. A dense cloud of smoke was building in the east.
At the service station he parked next to the Camira. Everything was slow and measured now. He transferred the strongbox to the Camira, got in and started the engine. He backed out, drove away slowly. No-one noticed him. The drama was somewhere else, the sky acrid and roiling, sirens on the freeway above.
He looked at his watch. Nine-forty. Phelps would be leaving Nurses house about now.
At ten oclock he reached forward and turned on the radio. Thirty-two degrees, winds moderating. Wyatt kept the needle on 99 kph and looked at the city skyline in the distance. Already it was limned in a haze of dust and smog in the lifting sunshine. Heading the news bulletin was an unconfirmed report of a robbery and shootout at a Logan City bank.
He turned down the volume. Two million dollars, eight strongboxes. Assuming the money had been divided evenly among the strongboxes, hed got away with just a quarter of a million dollars. Riding was out of the picture, so that left eighty-three and a third thousand dollars each. Make it eighty thousand for himself and Phelps, ninety thousand for Anna Reid to cover her costs.
Or nothing for Anna Reid if shed sent in that gunman. Wyatt left the freeway and followed the river around to St Lucia. Would she have been so stupid? He could think of better ways she could have pulled a cross on him.
And shed have thought of better places than the bank for springing a hijack. Wyatt drove behind Womens College and paused a while. There was the Commodore, Phelps waiting in the drivers seat. Wyatt rolled forward again, steering slowly off the road until he was parallel with Phelps. The big man seemed to be engrossed by a pair of myna birds under the casuarina trees. He didnt glance around at Wyatt, didnt get out of the car. That was wrong and Wyatt cranked the gear lever into reverse. He didnt get further than that before a black Range Rover blocked him and two men came at him with guns drawn.