Hell and Back Read online

  Hell and Back

  A Paranormal Romance Novel

  by

  Patricia Blackmoor

  Copyright © 2017 by Patricia Blackmoor. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to business, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely incidental.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  * * *

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty–One

  Chapter Twenty–Two

  Chapter Twenty–Three

  Chapter Twenty–Four

  Chapter Twenty–Five

  Chapter Twenty–Six

  Chapter Twenty–Seven

  Chapter Twenty–Eight

  Epilogue

  Free Chapter #1

  Free Chapter #2

  Prologue

  It had started out as a joke, the sort of thing you talk about while sitting on the patio at two a.m. on a warm summer night sipping beer.

  “If I were to rob a bank, here’s what I’d do,” Mitchell had said.

  I didn’t have much to add to the conversation. I worked as an administrative assistant at a local university. But Mitchell and Courtney were bank tellers; it was how the conversation got started in the first place. I sat back and listened politely, sipping at the light beer, swatting away the mosquitoes.

  “See, if it were up to me…” Courtney launched into her spiel. I’d sort of zoned out by then, letting my boyfriend and roommate chitchat. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when I heard Mitchell’s words.

  “We could do it, you know.”

  I set my beer down on the glass patio table. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not,” Mitchell said, running his hands through his dirty-blond hair. “I think we could really pull it off.”

  He had always been the confident one, and his confidence had paid off. Now, though, months later, I thought he was taking it too far.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said. I’d lost track of how many times I’d said that to him. He’d dismissed me every time, and he would dismiss me again.

  “We need to,” he said.

  “We don’t! We’ve got plenty of money now!”

  “Do you want to work as an office assistant for your entire life?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But we can live for years off of this without worry.”

  “Years?” he scoffed. “Maybe a year.”

  “It’s enough to get us out of here, if that’s what you want. Drive across the country, pack up and move to California. It can get us that far.”

  “I’m trying to make our lives better,” he said, his voice climbing to a near-yell.

  “This is too dangerous,” I said.

  “It’s been a month since our last robbery,” Mitchell told me. Despite my concerns, he was still packing his bag. “Things have died down, and no one will be expecting us. We’re not even robbing the same company.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about!” I said, grabbing his arm. “You robbed your own bank. You robbed Courtney’s bank. But neither of you work at American Bank, and so you have no idea how they run things!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mitchell said. “They’re all the same.”

  “They’re not!”

  Mitchell pulled away from me. “I’m doing this for us, Meg. You could at least be grateful.”

  “It’s hard to be grateful when I’m worried about your life!”

  “For fuck’s sake, Meg, lay off, will you? We’ve scored twenty grand from the last two jobs. More than that! We can get maybe another ten tomorrow. Then, yes, we can move to California. We can start a new life, get out of this town. That’s all I want.”

  He grabbed my hands, his gray eyes meeting mine. “That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”

  “If it’s what you want.” I struggled to hold eye contact. I liked my life here. Maybe I was stuck in a sort of dead-end job, but I was looking for something better. It paid the bills for now, paid my student loans. I liked living in the city, liked living with my boyfriend and best friend, liked being a young adult who went out on Saturday nights and had holidays off. I didn’t like being a criminal.

  It didn’t really matter, though. I was one now, and if I wanted to get out of this a free woman, I’d have to go along with Mitchell and Courtney’s plan for one last bank robbery before we got the hell out of dodge.

  “Can I help with anything?” I asked Mitchell.

  “I think my bag is all packed,” he said. He had his mask all set, a horrifying clown mask, a different one for each heist. One had been a Michael Myers mask, the other had been a Ronald Reagan mask. He said it was fitting.

  “I know you’re having reservations,” he said. “But don’t these people deserve it?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The tellers deserve to be scarred for life?”

  “The banks, Meg. You know that American Bank foreclosed on an eighty-five-year-old lady over a balance of two cents? Two cents!”

  “I know, but…”

  “They can afford it, Meg.”

  “I know.”

  Courtney came into the room, her blonde and pink hair pulled into a high ponytail. “Should we go over the plan?”

  “Might as well,” I sighed, stepping out of the bedroom Mitchell and I shared.

  “What’s gotten into her?” Courtney muttered to Mitchell as they followed behind me into our small but bright living room.

  “She’s getting nervous,” he said back. I could practically hear her roll her eyes.

  I sat down on the chair, tucking my legs underneath me. “What’s the plan?”

  “The other robberies went off without a hitch, so I don’t want to change too much,” Mitchell said. “Masks on, we’ll go in when it’s quiet, guns at our sides. Meg, you be waiting in the car, keep it running. Take off right away when we get in the car. We’ll drive to the university, park there, and walk back. Once we’ve counted out the money tomorrow night, we’ll start planning our move.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t told either of them that nerves had led me to moving the cash out of our apartment. If the police caught a lead and searched here, the cash would be an obvious clue. I’d hidden it. I knew how much we had; we could add it all together and I’d go back for the rest of the cash before we left.

  “What do you guys want to do for dinner?” Courtney asked, putting her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Pizza?” Mitchell asked, looking between us.

  “Not pizza, I’m counting carbs,” Courtney said. “Let’s or
der in Chinese.”

  “Works for me,” Mitchell said, grabbing his laptop so we could order. I marveled at their composure. They were so unconcerned about all of this.

  I didn’t sleep well that night, which was unfortunate as it was the last night of sleep I was going to get. I went to work in the morning, but I’d asked to take a half day, claiming a headache. That wasn’t too far from the truth. The lack of sleep and the nerves were making my head hurt.

  I’d dressed simply, nothing that would attract attention, just a black T-shirt and jeans, a floppy hat, and sunglasses to disguise my face in a casual way. I pulled up outside our apartment building and Mitchell and Courtney came bounding out, small black bags in their hands that held their masks and guns.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Let’s do this,” Courtney said as the two of them slid into the back seat.

  We didn’t speak much on the way to the American Bank branch. It wasn’t in the middle of the city; that would be busy any time of day. We’d chosen a branch in a wealthy suburb about a ten-minute drive from the university. It would be more likely to be empty in the middle of the day, and more likely to have more money for us to take.

  I parked around the corner from the bank across from a wide park. It was summer, but the lunch hour meant the park was empty. That was good. Fewer witnesses.

  I was amazed we had gotten away with it so far, but I supposed that was only a testament to how little people pay attention to their surroundings, and how easily the human memory can be corrupted. The papers had said that Mitchell had worn a Jason mask instead of a Michael Myers one, and described Courtney as tall and thin. She was short and curvy.

  My heart was racing, and I twisted my hands around the steering wheel. I had a bad feeling about this, a terrible feeling. Mitchell would just say I was being paranoid, and Courtney would roll her eyes. They were doing this with or without me. My nerves weren’t going to stop them and would only get me ridiculed, so I kept quiet. I lifted my water bottle to my lips, sipping at the water, as if that would calm me.

  “Ready?” Mitchell asked Courtney, and in the mirror I saw her nod. The two of them climbed out of the car and Mitchell came over to my window. I rolled it down.

  “We’ll be back before you know it,” he said. “Keep the car running.”

  “I will,” I told him.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Be careful,” I said.

  He leaned down and kissed me, the scruff on his face rough against my cheeks. I gave him a tight smile as he pulled away from the window and gave me a brief wave. I pressed the button to roll the window back up, and watched as the two of them slid on their masks and rounded the corner for the bank.

  I hated this part, the anxious waiting for them to come running back to the car with their bags of cash. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel for a moment before pulling up the screenshot I’d taken of the map of the circuitous route we’d be taking to get back to the university. It had to be somewhere busy, where the police would struggle to keep up, but also somewhere we could make a lot of twists and turns. I’d spent hours looking up the perfect way, studying the maps. If this was going to be my contribution to our team, I was going to do it well.

  I sighed, glancing over at the park, the swings moving slightly in the summer breeze. Still empty. Maybe the place we’d move to in California would be near a park, or even have a swing set in the backyard. A place to raise a family with Mitchell. That would be nice. Mitchell wanted a house in Los Angeles; he had dreams of being a screenwriter. I’d prefer something more suburban, more quiet. The thirtyish thousand dollars we’d get should be enough to make a down payment, even in California.

  The seconds felt like minutes, and the minutes felt like hours. My palms were getting sweaty, and I adjusted the air-conditioning so it was blasting a little bit louder. For the first robbery I’d brought a book to read, but I hadn’t been paying attention when the two of them came running out of the bank and so we hadn’t made as quick a getaway as we were all hoping. I hadn’t made that mistake again.

  I turned on the radio. I didn’t want to just be sitting there, glancing out the window periodically. That might arouse suspicion. I let a pop station play, singing and dancing along, letting it distract me enough so my anxiety wasn’t so high.

  It had been several minutes. I hoped they were all right. From around the corner, I couldn’t see the bank. They could have been arrested and I wouldn’t even know, or tased. If they were shot, I would have heard it, but they could have definitely been tased.

  Shit.

  When we got home—if we got home—I was going to have a very, very large glass of wine.

  Another minute ticked by, the numbers switching in the clock on the dashboard. I thought the anxiety might overwhelm me. I was going to pass out in this seat, and Mitchell and Courtney would come back and find me out cold because I couldn’t handle the stress. They’d never forgive me for that.

  It didn’t come down to that, though, because in the rearview mirror I caught the two of them running at full speed down the sidewalk.

  “Drive, drive, drive!” Mitchell said as the two of them slid across the leather seat. I put the car in gear and pulled away, tires squealing, as two out of shape security guards came jogging along after us.

  I’d covered the license plates with mud, not enough to get noticed but enough that the numbers couldn’t be read. That, combined with the boring taupe model I was driving, meant we didn’t attract much attention.

  “How’d it go?” I asked as I turned onto a side road.

  “Great,” Courtney said as she peeled off her mask, her eyes wide. Out of the three of us, she enjoyed this the most, always talking about the thrill and the high she got afterward.

  “I haven’t counted it yet, but I think we got about fifteen,” Mitchell said.

  “That’s even better than we’d hoped,” I said, turning onto another street. No cops yet, but I wasn’t going to slow down or let myself relax. I just had to get us to the university and we could disappear into the throng of students that would be meandering through campus.

  Courtney and Mitchell talked excitedly in the backseat about the robbery, but I was concentrating more on my driving. My heart was pounding in my chest, even though there was still no sign of cops behind us.

  “Think we’re in the clear?” I asked when there was a lull in conversation. The two of them looked behind us.

  “Looks good to me,” Mitchell said.

  “But let’s get to campus as soon as possible,” added Courtney.

  The two of them started counting the money. “Thirteen five seventy-four!” Mitchell crowed.

  I did the math in my head. That put us at nearly thirty-five thousand. If we spent five thousand packing up and moving to California, that left us thirty thousand for a down payment, plus the money I had in savings, and whatever Mitchell had. We hadn’t really talked about Courtney living with us, but I had no problem with it. We’d been roommates since our freshman year of college.

  “Almost there,” I said, turning the wheel. I froze as we took the road to campus. A police car was parked right by the entrance to the school. Probably a coincidence, and probably nothing to do with our robbery, but my heart nearly stopped. I reached down and grabbed my water, taking another sip.

  “Park over by administration,” Mitchell said. “The side lot.”

  “You want me to park there?” I asked. “What if someone sees my car? They’ll ask why I was still on campus when I said I had a headache.”

  “Tell them it hurt too much for you to drive home,” Courtney said with a shrug.

  The staff lot by the administration building was small and sort of off to the side, surrounded by heavy trees. If anyone was looking for our car, they probably wouldn’t think to look here. I navigated through campus, finally turning into the lot. The first thing I’d do when I got out was kick the caked-on dirt off of the license plates.

  I’d never ge
t the chance. I had just shut off the ignition when I heard a bang and the world went black.

  Chapter One

  This had to be hell.

  I didn’t remember how I’d gotten here. One moment I’d been looking out the windshield of my car at the trees around the parking lot, and the next moment I had been here. Wherever here was.

  It looked like a waiting room, like the kind at a doctor’s office or the DMV. The walls were taupe and the lights fluorescent, the carpet on the floor a sort of grayish-blue color. I was sitting in a plastic chair with a thin brown cushion. Next to me was a table full of magazines with names like Golf Today and American Fishers. I took a closer look at the titles. They were from 1996 and 1989 respectively.

  The room was spacious, the size of an airport terminal, with chairs crowded together in groups. I couldn’t tell how many people were in the room; I couldn’t see the far wall. It was just rows and rows of chairs and people. The only wall I could see was to my right, and it had one brown door in it. So far, four smartly-dressed people had walked through the door. Each had announced a name, and someone near me had gotten up from their seat and followed behind them through the door in the wall. They never returned, and the moment they got up, their seat was filled.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I had no idea how long I’d been here. Four people ago, clearly. There were no numbers, like at the DMV, so I had no idea where I was in line, when my name would be called, and what would happen if it was.

  I was still wearing the same clothes I had been wearing the day of the robbery, so clearly not much time had passed. Right? I couldn’t remember the time in between the parking lot and this waiting room. I must have gotten here somehow. Was this an ER? Had I been injured?