The Heist

A/N: I am taking a bit of a break from my other story The Virgin and the Fae, because of writer's block. Hopefully I will work on both these stories but for right now it looks like I'll be focusing on The Heist for the moment...I just wrote this up quickly this morning so let me know your thoughts as to whether I should flesh this first chapter out more first or just move on to the next chapter....


“Are you sure you don’t need anything else, Catherine?”

Catherine gave an exasperated sigh, looking over the plastic table at her mother.

“Yes. I swear, I don’t need anything more, we’re never going to be able to fit what we already have in the car anyways.”

“I just think that you might want to give a second pair of sheets another thought. Even if you don’t use them, they’d be good to have on hand. That way you can have clean sheets even if you don’t do your laundry each week. And having to do your own laundry is much more work than just giving it to me.”

Catherine looked out at the mall—it was relatively empty, but then it was a weekday. Most adults were at work and most kids in school by this time of fall. The stragglers here mostly looked like business people in desperate need of a new tie or purse for a corporate dinner and then a few other late-college starters like her and maybe one or two groups of early teenagers playing hooky.

Stupid quarter system, she thought. It made no sense that a select few colleges had to start in late September and get out in late June while the rest were standard day after Labor Day and middle of May.

“I’ll be fine. The laundry room is in the basement of the dorm so it’ll be easy enough to do laundry whenever I need to.”

“Alright,” her mother responded, fidgeting slightly before taking another spoonful of her ice cream.

Catherine just stared at hers.
The thought of finally going away to college, especially now when it was so close, was terrifying.

Would she make friends?

Would she do well?

What did she even want to do with her life?

She looked out over the mall again. It was quite nice—newly made too. It had been a landmark deal between the three counties nearby: all three contributed to the constructed in the hopes in increasing their residency numbers. Although the placement was rather out of the way, just off the main road that connected all three, but in the name of fairness it was as equidistance and as a result neither conveniently close nor overly far away.

They sat on the second level—looking down over the children’s play area of the first floor—at one of the clear plastic table and chair sets in the food court. There were no other patrons sitting but there was a couple in-line at the same Ben and Jerry’s that Catherine and her mother had stopped at.

The guy manning the counter didn’t look much older than Catherine and not at all pleased to be wearing the company’s baseball cap. He seemed a bit fidgety too. Catherine’s mother had asked her if she thought he was on drugs after they had paid and walked to sit down.

“Are you not going to eat that?” Catherine’s mother asked, pointing at the rapidly melting cup of Cookies N’ Cream.

“No,” she replied, passing it across to her mother. Her mother had always been a stress eater, though this past year had been the worst. Between her only child going away to college and her husband’s infidelity and their subsequent divorce, Maureen had not had a good year. She was heavier than Catherine remembered her ever being and more tired as well.

Catherine wished she didn’t have to leave for college so soon. A large part of her hesitation came from the worry of who would look after her mother when she was gone.

Suddenly a responding boom rang out in the atrium below. Catherine flinched and Maureen gave a bit of a squeak of surprise. It sounded like a gun shot.

Catherine was about to reassure her mother that it was nothing, just a car back-firing outside or a pipe bursting perhaps, but before she could, the screaming started.

At first, it was as if she was far away, watching herself and her mother sitting petrified in their seats. She knew—even though she couldn’t see them—that the couple buying ice cream was cowering behind the counter if the had any good sense, cowering in front of the counter if they didn’t.


More screams. A particularly shrill one shocked Catherine to her senses. They had to move. Out in the middle of the open food court, she and her mother were easy targets—whatever it was that was going on.

“Come on,” she hissed grabbing her mother’s hand and pulling her to her feet with a jerk. “We have to move.”

But where to hide?

There were three options, as best as she could tell.

To the right and then to the stairs that led down to the first floor, which would be stupid since that was where the shots had come from.

Or behind them to the food court to hide behind a counter, which also seemed stupid. This room was far too open. They needed some place small and contained but with multiple entries and exits.

That left going to the left, where a large door marked "employees only" stood at the end of the food court.

Catherine had no idea what lay behind it, but it was their best option, she thought.

“Come on, this way.” She began running, not even thinking to crouch low to the ground. All that mattered in that moment was getting her and her mother through those doors.

It felt like forever but they reached it eventually. Nervous and over-excited, Catherine fumbled with the doorknob, struggling to turn it far enough to open the heavy door. The metal doors finally opened and as soon as they were inside, Charlotte shut them quickly, already looking around for somewhere they could escape or hide.

It was a stunted corridor, heavily lit with florescent overheads with two doors—one marked men, the other women. Catherine stopped, trying to focus her thoughts on which one would be closer to the outside, but before she could take her mother into the men’s room, Maureen had already run into the women’s. Catherine dashed in after her.

It was a locker room; likely where the food court employees and shop clerks could change before and after their shifts, with three offshoots from the main row of lockers, each with a thin, wooden bench in the center.

There were no windows.

Catherine became frantic. They were in a smaller space all right, but they were trapped in it. There was only one entry and exit and unless they blocked it, whoever was here would get in. But if they blocked it, then they were trapped inside. Besides, she thought looking around, what could they block it with?

The benches were nailed to the floor and the lockers attached to the wall. Quite firmly attached, Catherine decided after pushing and pulling against one.

Maureen looked like she was beginning to shut down. Her eyes had taken on a glazed appearance and she was whimpering softly.

“Come on,” Catherine repeated again. “It’s going to be ok. We are going to get out of this.” How though, she had no idea. It looked like there was a bathroom area in the back and Catherine, not letting go of her mother’s hand, pulled her towards it.

The room was lit with the same fluorescents of the hallway and the linoleum seemed mockingly clean.

They could die here. They could die in this bathroom that smelled of antiseptic.

Catherine then saw a grate. It was above the stall against the wall. It was small space, but still large enough to climb through.

Probably an air duct passageway. It likely wouldn’t lead outside but they could use it to hide in until they were sure the threat was over.

Catherine climbed up on the toilet seat and bracing herself with one arm on the stall divider, she intertwined her fingers with the grate, pulling at it as hard as she could. The screws gave a slight shudder, but made no hint of budging.

She needed more force on it. Nervously, she let go off the divider and intertwined her other hand in the grate, pulling backwards on it with her whole body weight. The grate sprung off suddenly, throwing her backwards with the suddenness of its release. Her head struck the side of the stall door and the grate cover fell to the ground with a clang.

Catherine gave a small moan of pain.

“Catherine!” Her mother cried out, seeing her daughter bleeding was enough to revive the catatonic Maureen.

“How bad is it?” Catherine asked, gingerly moving her hand up to her head.

It wasn’t too bad, she decided, though it hurt like hell. The cut was shallow and gave little blood. Mostly it just felt bruised.

Her hands were bleeding too. Only her fingers, but it was like having paper cuts all along the length of them. She seemed to have scrapped them raw against the metal wires of the grate.

It didn’t matter. All this could be addressed later. Right now they had to get into the air duct.

“Go, go in first and I’ll follow you,” Catherine said, gesturing to the air duct.

“I-I can’t, Catherine,” her mother said softly.

“What do you mean you can’t? Of course you can. Just climb in and—“

“Catherine, you have to go in without me. I—I am too big to fit.”

Catherine looked over at her mother. Hope had made her optimistic but now as the daze of the head wound cleared she realized her mother was right. She had grown too heavy to fit inside the air duct.

Fuck.

Catherine wanted to start crying just then. Fuck. What was she going to do?

Maybe there was still time to get to the men’s room.

Maybe there was a window there or a way out that her mother could fit through.

But just then, she heard the sounds of voices.

There wasn’t time.

“Catherine, you have to go without me. Go!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“Catherine—“

“Shut up!” Catherine hissed back, trying to think of what they could possibly do at this point.

“Go into one of the stalls and lock the door and pull your feet up.”

“What are you going to do?” Maureen asked.

“I’m—just do it,” Catherine responded. Maureen moved quickly into the stall on the end and shutting the door behind her.

Catherine grabbed the grate from the floor and quickly moved to stand by the door, shutting off the lights.

Please let there only be one. Please let there only be one.

It felt like an eternity when finally the door swung open. With all her might, Catherine brought the grate cover down over what was hopefully the head, but likely the shoulder of her would-be assailant.

He flailed against the blow, knocking her back to the floor, the grate spinning away from her.

This had not been well thought out at all, Catherine thought depreciatively as she crawled under the sinks, intending to try to trip the moaning assailant.

With a quick kick, Catherine knocked him to the floor with a thud.

What was she supposed to do now?

That question was answered for her when the lights were flipped on, flooding the bathroom with awful florescence.

Catherine looked up in terror at the man who stood in the doorway, holding a gun trained on her face.

“Number 37. How good of you to join us.”


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