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father to the door, telling herself with every step that Max was going to be fine. He was a cop. He knew how to handle himself. At the same time, she worried that because he was a cop, he could be in more danger. At least Spencer was with him. They might have had their differences in the past, but she knew Spencer would do everything he could to protect his brother.
     
    * * *
     
    "They're on something," Hallie murmured, watching the gunmen pace around the bank, their movements nervous and agitated.
    "Which makes them more dangerous," Spencer said, his expression grim. "They're not thinking rationally."
    "Why aren’t they talking to the cops?" The phone had rung three times in the past five minutes. A hostage negotiator had gotten on a loudspeaker telling them that the bank was surrounded and to pick up the phone. But so far the gunmen had done nothing more than argue with each other.
    "They don't know what to ask for."
    "Does it matter what they ask for? The cops aren't going to give it to them, are they?"
    "Maybe they will, if they want to keep the rest of us alive."
    She swallowed hard at the thought of more gunshots, more blood, more death. She was barely keeping it together, but she couldn't lose it now. Later—later, she'd break down, let go. Hopefully by then she'd be on her beautiful island in the middle of the ocean, letting the sun soak away her troubles, and the rum flow through her veins bringing peace and forgetfulness.
    But her island image was hard to cling to when she looked down at the man on the floor. Max's face was ashen, and while the blood flow had slowed down, it was still seeping through the scarf and Spencer's fingers.
    "Press down a little harder," she said.
    Spencer frowned. "I'm hurting him."
    "No, you're saving him, trust me."
    "You've worked on gunshot wounds?"
    "More than I can count. I was an Army nurse."
    "Was?"
    "I got tired of watching people die." The stark words came out of her mouth before she could stop them.
    Spencer stared back at her. "My brother can't die, Hallie. Max is the good one. I'm the screw-up. It should be me on the floor, but Max had to be the hero. He had to try to save that woman."
    "I think he did save her, if that's any consolation."
    "I should have jumped up first. I saw her going for the alarm. I just didn't want to draw attention to her. But if I'd moved—"
    "You can't change what happened. I've been down the endless road of 'what ifs'. It doesn't get you anywhere."
    "You're probably right." He looked away from her to the gunmen. The men weren't paying them any attention, too wrapped up in their own discussion of what to do next. Turning back to her, he said, "What happened, Hallie?"
    She didn't know how to answer that question. "A million things."
    "Give me one."
    "Well, the worst thing was watching my boyfriend die and knowing that he wouldn't have been where he was if I hadn't wanted to talk to him. He would have been far away from the bomb blast if it weren't for me. And I've gone over that night so many times in my mind, thinking how one different decision would have changed it all. But like I said, playing that game doesn't make anything better."
    "I'm sorry."
    She shrugged, because nothing he could say would take the pain away. It was her constant companion.
    "Wrong place, wrong time, doesn't make you to blame, Hallie."
    "Maybe. But that wasn't the only thing I did wrong that night." She paused. "I'm not the good one, either."
    He met her gaze. "Hard to believe."
    That's because he didn't know her, didn't know the depth to which she'd sunk. Her own father could barely look at her now. All her life she'd tried to live up to his very high bar, but she'd fallen short. It was another reason why she wanted to escape. The last place she wanted to be at the holidays was with her family.
    She shook her father's disapproving image out of her mind and focused on Max. She wished she could do more for him, but he needed surgery. They just had to keep him alive until