Chapter 34 — The Bank Robbery
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
So as Wei Zhao saw it now, the question was how to get Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu out of this in one piece, not how to collar a few robbers. The police would see to that; he had no wish to get involved.
Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had plainly never met with anything of the kind. They were already rather stunned, not knowing what they ought to do.
"Listen up, all of you! Hands on your heads, squat down where you stand, and don't move, and I guarantee no one gets hurt. But if anyone so much as twitches—don't blame me for what follows!" The bald man fired another shot into the air, and the bank, noisy a moment before, went dead silent.
Children forgot to cry, grownups forgot to shout; meekly, of their own accord, they put their hands on their heads and squatted down on the floor. Facing armed thugs, they had no real choice: to live, they had to obey.
Not that these people lacked any sense of justice—only that at a moment like this, whoever stepped forward would pay for it with his life.
While the bald man stood there lecturing them with his gun raised, several of his accomplices had already rushed to the tellers' counters. After smashing the bank's windows with hammers, they held the clerks at gunpoint and made them stuff money into the bags they indicated.
"Hurry it up! What the hell are you dawdling for!" one of the robbers barked at a middle-aged clerk. "Drag your feet again and I'll put a bullet through you!"
"Yes... yes..." The man had little courage in him; frightened by the robber, his hands began to shake, and with a smack a stack of banknotes dropped to the floor and scattered.
"You goddamned fool! Are you doing that on purpose, trying to stall?" The robber's eyes bulged; bang, he fired, and hit the man in the arm. The man gave a scream and clutched at his own arm.
The robbers' earlier shots had all been fired into the air. They had cowed people well enough, but nothing like this one. This shot had been aimed at a man in deadly earnest, and so everyone in the bank, clerks and customers alike, clapped their hands over their mouths in horror, more afraid of these thugs than ever, not daring to stir.
The bald man was well pleased with his underling's shoot-one-to-warn-the-rest. He swept his gaze, smug and slow, over the whole of the bank.
"Sister Yaoyao, I'm scared..." Shen Yushu usually carried herself with a careless, tomboyish swagger, but at the critical moment she clutched at Gu Mengyao's arm, her small face gone dead white.
"It's all right, it's all right, Xiaoshu. I'll protect you." Gu Mengyao was frightened herself, but Shen Yushu was a year younger, so she had to play the elder sister and comfort her.
"You two needn't comfort each other. I'll keep you both safe," Wei Zhao said mildly.
He had no confidence that he could take all these robbers alive, but keeping Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu from harm was another matter; that much he could do.
Gu Mengyao's lips moved. By habit she wanted to get in a jab or two at him, but meeting that steady gaze of his, in the end she said nothing.
The robbers were nearly done loading the cash and about to leave the bank when the wail of police sirens came from outside.
Most of the customers frowned at the sound. Sometimes the police arriving was a good thing, but in circumstances like these, with the robbers unable to slip away, they would inevitably do something drastic.
If they seized a few more hostages, so much the worse. So most people's mood was now grim; for them, how much money the bank had lost was neither here nor there. To walk out of here alive was the best they could hope for.
"Robbers inside the bank, listen up! You are surrounded. Put down your weapons at once and surrender, and strive for leniency—that is your only way out. Otherwise, death is all that awaits you!" The voice came amplified through a megaphone outside.