He slipped from his cruiser, readied his weapon and bullhorn, and crouched down behind the open door of his car. Raising the bullhorn to his mouth, he aimed it at the front doors of the bank and calmly said, “Law enforcement has surrounded the building. Come out with your hands in the air.”

Trembling, I crouched next to Brigit, whispered “good girl” to let her know she was doing well, and aimed my gun at the door in case the robbers decided to come out shooting. Please, please, please, dear Lord! Don’t let that happen! Truth be told, my gun skills sucked. Having been a twirler in my high school marching band, I was much better with my baton. Problem was, a baton was of limited use. It required your target to be within striking distance. While I had a Kevlar vest to stop bullets, Brigit was unprotected. She’d make an easy target. My heart squeezed again, even harder this time. Please don’t let Brigit get hurt!

A moment later, the glass door opened a few inches, then banged shut again.

What was happening?

Were the robbers scrabbling with innocent customers?

If so, it was my job to stop it before anyone got hurt.

Gulping back the cantaloupe-size lump of fear that had formed in my esophagus, I gave Brigit the order to follow me, ran to the door, and yanked it open, dashing inside.

Two screams sounded in stereo. “Aaaah!”

The first scream came from an elderly man who was having trouble opening the door from his electric scooter. The second came from me as I tripped over the scooter and rolled in an inadvertent somersault over the tile floor of the foyer, through the open inner door, and into the main room of the bank, praying all the while that my gun would not accidentally discharge, especially since the barrel was now shoved up under my left boob.

When I stopped rolling, I sat where I’d landed on my ass, pulled my gun up to sight, and scanned the room over it. Everyone I could see had bewildered expressions on their faces and their hands in the air. None wore pantyhose over their heads or held a weapon.

“Where are the robbers?” I hollered as Brigit trotted up next to me.

“They left,” said the old man, backing up with a beep-beep-beep and pulling his scooter up next to me with a zzzzzip. “They ran out the door right after they caught a teller on her phone with 9-1-1. They slapped the phone out of her hand and took off.”

He pointed across the space. I followed his gnarled finger to a young, fair-haired teller who’d gone hysterical, shrieking and crying despite her coworkers’ best attempts to quiet her down.

I looked back to the man. “Did you see which way they went?”

“Sure did.” This time he pointed out the door and to the right. “They ran off that way.”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“Were all of them armed?”

“I’m not sure. One of the men stood outside the front doors so I didn’t get a good look at him. The man who waited inside the doors had a rifle. The one who gave the note to the teller never pulled out a weapon as far as I could tell. He had his hand in his pocket, though, and there was something in the shape of a pistol in it.”

I pulled myself off the floor and addressed the startled crowd. “Everyone stay put for now. We’ll need to get your statements.”

Giving Brigit the command to follow me once more, I headed back outside and told Spalding what was going on. “I’m going to see if my partner can track the robbers.”

Spalding nodded. As he walked toward the building, I instructed Brigit to follow the robbers’ trail. She put her nose to the ground and began to sniff and snuffle her way across the lot in the direction the man had pointed. While Brigit was not trained to track a particular person, she was trained to detect where an area had been recently disturbed and to follow that path to the culprits.

Snuffle-snuffle. Snuffle-snuffle.

While she advanced across the lot and onto the sidewalk with her head down, I trailed along directly behind her, acting as her eyes, watching for cars or people who might get in her way or pose a risk. I ordered her to halt at a corner, raised my hand to stop an approaching minivan, then gave my partner the signal to continue tracking.

A block down, the large group of people I’d noticed on my drive to the bank milled about at the bus stop. One of them, a short, skinny thirtyish man, wore a city of Fort Worth bus driver uniform. When he spotted me and Brigit approaching, he waved to get our attention and hollered, “Three men with a rifle just done hijacked my bus!”

Chapter Five

Gone with the Wind

Brigit

When the trail on the ground ran cold, Brigit stopped and raised her snout in the air.

Sniff-sniff.

She’d been following three male scents, each with a distinctive aroma. One smelled like some type of adhesive. The second smelled of mentholated shaving cream. The third reeked of gasoline and bananas and marijuana. All of the scents dissipated at this spot. Either the men had climbed into a vehicle or Scotty had beamed them up to the starship Enterprise. Regardless, there was nothing more the dog could do.

She plopped her butt down on the ground and stared straight ahead, giving her passive alert as she’d been trained to do. She also curled her tail tightly against her body. With all these people milling about willy-nilly, there was a good chance one of them might step on her tail if she wasn’t careful. Brigit knew from experience that people often didn’t look where they were walking. If they didn’t step on a dog’s tail, they stepped in its poop. Really, humans could be so stupid sometimes. You wouldn’t catch a dog doing something so dumb. But, then again, the species Canis familiaris was superior in so many ways to mere Homo sapiens. The poor things sported only patchy hair, requiring them to augment with clothing. Their teeth were incapable of ripping through thick meat, requiring them to use forks and knives. Their vision and hearing were vastly subpar, too. Brigit pitied the lowly creatures.

Her partner Megan reached down and gave her a scratch on that sweet spot on the back of her neck. “Good girl.”

Brigit risked a quick tail thump of appreciation and took the liver treat Megan held clenched between her index finger and thumb. My kingdom for an opposable thumb. It was the only thing about humans the dog envied.

Chapter Six

Like Candy from a Baby

The Switchman

Hot damn , this feels good!

All his life he’d done the right things. He’d told the truth. Worked hard. Ate his vegetables—even those disgusting, squishy, boiled Brussel sprouts his mother had foisted on him.

And where had being a good person gotten him?

Nowhere.

But he’d changed all that today. In just a matter of minutes he’d gone from nowhere to on his way. Hell, he’d never even held a gun before today. What a rush! He’d felt powerful. In control. But most of all, he felt vindicated.

Smokestack might have cajoled him into the bank heist, but he’d been right. Only a wimp would accept being tossed out on his ass without fighting back.

Nice guys finish last.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

The Switchman sat back in his seat on the front row of the bus and slapped his knee. “Who knew robbing a bank and hijacking a bus would be so easy?”

Smokestack, who sat directly across the aisle, sniggered. “Told ya.”

Smokestack had also claimed that ninety percent of crimes went unsolved. The Switchman figured his partner had pulled that number either out of the air or out of his ass. He hadn’t called the guy on it, though. It didn’t matter what the odds were of getting caught. Once he’d decided to go through with this plan of retribution, there was no way he’d turn back. He’d laid out a whole new course for himself and he couldn’t wait to see where it would take him.