Resistance Is Useless

I don’t remember how this all started. All I know is that the first time we robbed a bank was about three years ago. Why? I don’t know. We had money, so that wasn’t the point. I think it was the thrill, the excitement, the chance of getting caught.

Maybe that was the reason we were so reckless about it all. We never really planned it for example, we just acted. We would choose a bank, pick a date and go for it. Call it stupid, call it reckless, call it whatever you want, but till now we’d never been caught.

Today was the day, the bank we’d chosen a few weeks ago was Provident Bank. We were in my car, which was parked in front of the bank, waiting for the right moment. I check my gun one last time and shot a grin at my friends. “Ready?” I asked and they nodded. I put on the mask and opened the car door.

Once we were inside the bank it was almost a routine. Zack knocked out the single guard, Rian made sure nobody could get in or out while Jack and I collected everyone’s phones, knocking over all the computers to make sure nobody would alert the cops.

I heard one of the guys yell at the girl behind the counter, I wasn’t really paying attention so I don’t know who it was. I tossed a set of keys to Jack. “Yo Jay.” I said, using Jack’s nickname in case someone heard, we couldn’t risk anyone knowing who we were.

I turned to the girl behind the counter. She was pretty, with long dark hair and greenish eyes which held a terrified look. “You, get up, let’s go.” I said. She looked at me with a blank expression. “Did I fucking stutter!? Get the fuck up!” I suddenly felt bad for treating her like this, but I had to if we wanted to get the job done. She stumbled, but got up eventually.

I took a good look at the girl, she was pretty, no, not just pretty, she was beautiful. I don’t know why, but I felt a connection with this girl. I wanted to know who she was, where she lived, what her favorite color was, anything, I was dying to know every little detail of this girl’s life.

Our eyes locked for a second and some unknown force was taking over my body, telling me to kiss her.

I resisted the urge and dragged her along to the vault and after a after a few minutes, Jack threatening her and me comforting her she opened it and we threw as much money as possible in the bags.

Once we made sure there was not a trace of evident left we left the building as quick as possible. From the corner of my eye I could see Jack pulling the girl from the counter with him.

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“What the fuck Jack!” I screamed. “Why the hell did you take her with you? Robbing a bank is one thing, but kidnapping? Did you lose you fucking mind?” I was livid. It had been a few hours since we’d dropped off the girl, whose name was Karina as we’d found out in the car.

"She knew too much Alex. She was way more involved that we'd originally planned. You could have asked her the combination instead of dragging her to the vault." He screamed back. “So it was either that and scaring her enough not to go to the cops since we have all her information now and know where she lives, or killing her right then and there at the bank.”

I could literally feel the blood drain from my face when he talked about killing the girl. Normally I wouldn’t have giving it a second thought and killed her if it was absolutely necessary, but for some reason this time it was different. She wasn’t anything specially, just an ordinary girl who happened to work at a bank and had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, so what was the big deal?

“See! Admit it!” Jack snapped me out of my thoughts. “You can’t stand the thought of hurting her. You think I’m stupid? I’ve seen that look in your eyes before and that was with Jennifer.”

I clenched my fists so I wouldn’t punch him. Jennifer was my ex-girlfriend from two years ago. She found out what me and the guy did in our ‘free time’ and confronted me with it. After telling her everything she freaked and told me she was going to tell the cops. Let’s just say things didn’t work out between us after that and that the guys ‘took care of her’.

“Don’t ever fucking bring that up again.” I hissed and stormed out of the room.

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One week later

I couldn’t get the image of Karina out of my head. She was there every time I closed my eyes and it was driving me crazy.

I was lying on my bed, too tired to do anything, but my mind was racing so it was impossible for me to sleep, even though it was around midnight.

I tossed and turned. Suddenly my eye fell on something in the corner of the room. It was a bag, Karina’s bag. I’d taken it with me after Jack left it in the car.

I got up from the bed and sat down on the ground in front of it. My mind wandered back to Karina. How was she doing right now? Was she okay? Did she manage to get home? We shouldn’t have dropped her off like that. What if something had happened to her. What if….

Stop! This was insane. I was worried about a girl I didn’t even know! A girl who’d probably run away screaming if she ever saw me again.

Then it hit me. She didn’t know who I was. Well, maybe she did know me, but she didn’t know I was one the guys who’d robbed that bank.

I searched her bag until I found something with an address on it. Unfortunately there was no such thing. I did however found a couple of old receipts, all from the same coffee shop.

A smirk formed on my face. Guess I found a new place to get my morning coffee from now on.