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pumped through my chest unless I hurried. I placed
the gun on the floor, my left hand already in the air. I did the
same with my right hand and waited.
    “ You are under arrest for armed
robbery. You do not have to say anything…” I stopped listening
after he said ‘armed robbery’.
    A mere two seconds passed before I was
handcuffed and yelled at to stay still. I don’t know what they
expected, it wasn’t like I was going to run off with my hands
cuffed together. It wasn’t like I could drive that way. If Ryan
didn’t have the car keys, anyway.
    “ I didn’t do anything,” I
protested as they frog marched me to their patrol car.
    “ What was the gun for then?” The
cop scowled. “Fashion accessory?”
    If my hands were free, I would have punched
him for the sarcastic comment. Perhaps it was a good idea after all
to have cuffed me.
    I looked around for Ryan, wanting to hurt him
even more than the cop. If he got away, I was going to hunt him
down and skin him alive for leaving me there. We’d been together
for almost a year, you would have thought he would have at least
let me in on the plan. A simple ‘hey honey, I’m going to rob a
bank. You want to come?’ would have been nice.
    A hundred people with cell phone cameras were
waiting outside. Each one recording footage of me being shoved into
the police car. I was going to make the news, perhaps even be a
breaking news story. I was going to be famous. How wonderfully
horrible.
    More media were waiting at the police station.
My chauffeur made no attempt to shield me from any of it. I think
he took great personal satisfaction in my humiliation. Man of the
year, right there.
    Inside, it was quieter. But it wasn’t going to
stay that way for long. “Ryan! You idiot!” I yelled across the
foyer. There was my man, cuffed and being escorted in by another
cop. At least he wasn’t successful in his abandonment of
me.
    “ Tessa, don’t say anything,” Ryan
yelled back. He was angry, poor dear.
    “ How could you be so stupid? You
are such a freakin’ loser.”
    “ And you’re a ray of sunshine? You
got us caught.”
    The cop was trying to get me to move with him
through a door. But I wasn’t going until I’d said my piece. “Are
you kidding me? I’m the one to blame here? You better make this
right or I swear I will kill you.”
    “ You’ll have to beat me to it, you
bit-” he didn’t get to finish before his handler pushed him through
the door.
    I let the cop lead me to my cell. I was placed
into a cage with three other women and told to wait until I was
processed. I had no idea what that meant. Processed . Were they going to churn me into a
lunch meat like some offal? I had never set foot inside a police
station before, I wasn’t up on the lingo.
    I sat on the edge of one of the two benches.
Two of the other women were beside me. The other took up the entire
bench opposite by herself. She was staring at us with a look of
either hunger or hatred. I always got those two looks mixed up.
Either way, she had the rest of us in fear of our lives.
    “ What are you in for?” The woman
next to me asked. I smiled at her, not needing to wonder what she
was in for. Her severe lack of clothing told me her profession. She
wore enough make up to join the circus.
    “ Armed robbery,” I
replied.
    She didn’t say anything, just shifted herself
down the bench away from me. Apparently I was a bad ass
myself.
    “ I didn’t do anything, my
boyfriend kind of surprised me with it,” I tried to defend myself.
For some strange, unknown, reason I needed this woman to like me.
“Instead of a flash mob, he gave me a bank robbery as a token of
his affection.”
    It seemed to work a little. “I’ve had
boyfriends like that. What is it with men?”
    “ I seriously don’t know.” And I
didn’t. Thinking back to all my previous relationships – and I
admit, there had been plenty – I realized I still couldn’t
understand what went on in the male brain.
    One guy I