Ruth Everett had no time for a hostage stand-off if she was going to make her afternoon bridge game.

It was all Frank's fault she was even at the bank. He needed to deposit his social security check. Despite Joan's repeated attempts to show him how mobile deposits worked with his phone, he insisted on visiting the bank in person every month. And, somehow, he always suckered Ruth into driving him.

It will just take a few minutes, he had assured her. I only need to deposit one check. You’ll make your bridge game with time to spare. Ha!

She agreed before she remembered that the nearest bank branch had closed for renovations last Christmas and never reopened. Then she discovered that the second nearest branch was on the wrong side of a livestock mishap that shut down a major roadway. At least her phone warned her about that one in advance.

And so it was that Ruth found herself waiting in line at the third nearest location, the ramshackle East Riverside branch of the Second Trust Bank. Despite Frank's assurances, it was not 'near' in any sense of the word, which instead made it the first farthest bank branch from Ruth's two o'clock bridge game. And already it was past one-thirty.

"Just how long does it take you to fill out a deposit slip?"

“This would go faster if you had a pen I could borrow.” Frank stood at a center counter, attempting to write with a cheap pen fastened by four inches of chain to the countertop. “How can you not have a pen? When Joan asked last week, you had a tube of superglue in your purse. Who carries superglue and not a pen?”

“I don’t have a pen, dear Frank, because you are always borrowing them from me and then losing them.” Ruth checked the time on her phone again. One thirty-seven. She should text Samir and let him know that she'd be late, and that it was Frank's fault.

The East Riverside branch was a dismal office full of dismal people going about their dismal banking chores at dismal speeds. And what were these people doing that took so damn long, anyway? Bank transactions should be quick. It's not like it was a social engagement. You pass over a check, get a receipt, that's it, you're done. Or show your ID, name an amount, collect your cash, you're done. Were they negotiating car loans? Filling out mortgage applications? Reallocating their entire 401k, fund by fund?

Everyone else in the bank was old. Not Ruth, of course. She was a very youthful 77 years of age, thank you very much. Mature, yes, but not old, still sharp and active. Frank wasn't old either; as he loved to point out, and was several years younger than Ruth. His grumpiness, however, added a few years, so in Ruth's eyes he was a smidge older.

But everyone else was old. No, not just old but elderly, of that age where youngsters offer their seats on the bus as if worried gramps might fall and break a hip. Even the office furnishings were old. The computer monitors were the clunky types used before flat screens became ubiquitous – Ruth didn't realize those still existed outside museums – and the coffee pot was an honest to goodness coffee pot, not one of those planet-killing K-cup gizmos that make espressos and lattes and nonfat caramel frappuccinos with soy milk.

It was this deviation from the normal clientele that caught Ruth's attention when the young couple entered the bank at quarter 'til two. They couldn't have been out of their 20s, practically kids, though she would be hard-pressed to make a more accurate estimate as to their age. This was because they were still wearing their motorcycle helmets with the visors down, along with an array of protective clothing, jackets and long pants and boots. She was, however, fairly certain it was a man and a woman, at least. The taller of the two stood two inches over six feet, according to the height ruler alongside the main door. The smaller was a woman with dirty brown hair spilling out from her helmet and a tattoo of a rose visible on the side of her neck.

Oh, and both of them were drawing guns as they entered.

Ruth reached for Frank’s arm, but he had spotted the pair only half a second after she did. Nobody else, not even the armed security guard, seemed to take notice. Business continued as usual. A frowning employee pecked at an electric typewriter, positioned in front of one of the window AC units. Up at the counter, a Pomeranian in a soft-sided carrier yipped while its owner waited for the lone teller to count money. Somewhere in the back, a fax machine whistled and hummed as it sought to establish a connection.

The tranquility of the bank shattered with the first burst of gunfire. The man fired three shots at the ceiling. A SIG Sauer P938, Ruth thought, focusing on the firearm out of habit. 9mm, semi-automatic, with a thumb safety, though the guy wasn’t using it. The woman held a Bersa Thunder 380 but had it aimed at the floor while her head swiveled to survey the room. She had better trigger discipline, Ruth thought, with her finger extended and resting on the cylinder. Her partner, on the other hand, was hopped up on adrenaline and perhaps something else, twitchy and restless and setting those little hairs on the back of Ruth’s neck on edge.

“Get down, get down, everybody get down!” the man shouted. He had a thick Cuban accent, not at all out of place. “Hacia abajo, abuelita! Everybody down on the floor!”

Already the teller at her wicket was gone, dropped out of sight and probably mashing on a panic button. A few others were quick to drop to the floor, Ruth among them, reasonably spry despite her years. Frank took a while longer to ease himself into a prone position, using the side of the counter for balance. Some others, however, were frozen in place, caught staring as if in disbelief at the armed duo. Even those responding were agonizingly slow in their movements, with protesting knees and creaky joints complaining as they did their best to comply with the demands.

"Ruth," Frank whispered, "do your thing."

Ruth shook her head. "You do your thing."

"You know I can't do my thing until you do your thing."

"Abajo, abajo! Todos, cállense la puta boca!" The man continued to shout, lapsing into Spanish, and though Ruth couldn't understand a word, she gathered it wasn't pleasantries. Then he swung his gun barrel to the side and bounded forward, still shouting. "No toques esta puta pistola, hombre!"

He directed the latter to the security guard, who stopped with his hand resting on the butt of his revolver. “Easy,” he said, slow and measured. “I’m just going to put it down.” Whether that was true two seconds ago, it was now. He unsnapped his holster and eased the gun out. “We’ll get you money from the registers, get you on your way.”

Somehow, he didn’t get shot, much to Ruth’s surprise. Instead, the male robber stalked forward and kicked the revolver away, sending it spinning across the tile floor. He pointed the barrel right up against the guard’s temple, and was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, finger still on the trigger, safety still off. “You think you’re some kind of hero, hombre? That what you think?”

“Oye, tranquillo,” his companion said, and almost followed it with a name that she bit back at the last moment. “Let’s just get the money and get out of here.”

Ruth had to admit, she was pretty impressed by the response of the security guard. Maybe he was scared out of his mind, but his voice sounded calm and confident. “I’ll get you the money, but I don’t want to move unless you tell me, okay? Nobody’s going to do anything.”

“We want what’s in the vault!”

That caused the guard to hesitate and when he spoke again, he picked his words carefully. “We, uh, we don’t have a vault here. This is just a small branch. I can—”

“You get me what’s in the vault, ahora mismo!”

By then, everyone in the building was down on the ground, either lying down or at least sitting down low, everyone except for the security guard and the two robbers. Even the Pomeranian had quieted down, having read the tension in the room. The woman paced over toward the teller windows, stepping by the abandoned typewriter and then past the counter where Ruth and Frank lay.

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“Okay,” the security guard said, quick to agree. Ruth knew there was no vault. It was ridiculous. They were in a crappy little bank branch inside a low-rent strip mall. Someone had been watching too many heist movies. There would be a safe, and perhaps that’s what the guard was thinking about to placate the two, to get them out and diffuse the situation as quickly as possible.

It was at that point that several things happened in rapid succession.

The first was the arrival of a young man and little girl from some back hallway that led off to the restrooms. Though they must have heard the gunshots, not to mention all the shouting, they both seemed dangerously unaware of the imminent danger around them. The little girl was about six years old, and she was gesturing to the man, her fingers moving through the air in front of herself. He focused his eyes on her movements, and not the others in the room.

The second thing that happened was sudden movement from the male bank robber, who swung his gun toward the newly arrived pair and fired twice.

The third burst of action came from a man Ruth had paid no attention to before, one of the younger customers in the room, a Hispanic man of about fifty who had brought his own gun to the festivities. He worked his way up into a crouch and was firing from the hip as he drew.

And, at the end of it all, Ruth did her thing.

“What the hell was that?!” Frank yelled, being one of only two people existing outside the frozen time stream centered within the bank. That was Ruth's thing: she could freeze time. Well, not exactly freeze it, but she could slow it to where it was basically the same thing. Controlling the duration was tricky business, and it gave her a hell of a headache, but she still had the touch.

Ruth gave him a baleful look. She didn’t move for a second before pushing up to her feet. "Bank robbery. I told you I was going to be late for my bridge game. I knew this would happen."

"You couldn’t possibly know that Bonnie and Clyde here were going to rob the bank."

"That I was going to be late to bridge, Frank. Try to keep up."

Everything inside the bank was silent otherwise, especially after the loudness of gunfire. A perfect snapshot of still life caught mid-action. Nobody else moved. There was no sound of breathing, no sound of slight body movements or any humming of the fluorescent lights overhead.

Neither was the man from the hallway spurting blood, though there was a dark stain already formed at his shoulder where he was shot. To Ruth’s relief, the girl appeared unharmed: terrified and mid-scream, but unharmed for the moment. Where the second bullet went, Ruth wasn’t sure, but she decided it was something to be worried about later.

“I don’t know how long I can hold this. Do your thing. Or at least do something.”

Frank was staring at a bullet suspended in mid-flight, caught along a clear trajectory from the bystander’s gun toward — well, presumably he was aiming for the male bank robber, but his aim was awful. There was a bullet hole already in the counter not three feet from where Ruth had been lying, which meant it hit over twenty feet from the robber. The suspended bullet was about three feet above ground level, though with time frozen, it wasn’t immediately clear where it was headed.

Frank crouched down a bit with the aid of his cane, studying angles. “Check on the man who was hit. I’ll figure something out with the bullet.” Because that was Frank’s thing, applying gravitational forces to objects to affect their movement.

Ruth nodded and headed toward the man and the girl. She knew they wouldn’t register seeing her. Not even as she stopped in front of the two, not so long as time stayed frozen. Since Ruth had no idea how long that would last, she didn’t dally. The girl was her priority. Closer inspection revealed that she was indeed unharmed, though that might change the instant time resumed, when the robber continued firing. The man was definitely harmed, with both an entry and exit wound visible on his shoulder. The good news was that the bullet missed all major arteries, so he was only looking at nerve damage: good news for his life expectancy, though bad news if he relied on that arm a lot.

“Florida Man here is about to shoot gramps over there.” Frank was considering options now, momentum and velocity. “If you’d been half a second slower, he’d have a bullet in his gut by now. I hate gut wounds. Too many important bits and pieces in the gut.” After further calculation, he gave the mid-flight bullet a careful nudge. There was no visible reaction, but the potential energy was waiting to be released once time caught up on affairs. “There. I think I nudged it enough to take out the bad guy instead.”

“You think?”

“Physics class was over fifty years ago. Cut me a little slack here. Yes. I think.” He’d had time to grow crankier by this point and stomped on his sideways approach to the civilian shooter. “What is this guy doing, spray and pray?” This time he gave a push on the barrel of the gun, one that would drive it and any forthcoming bullets toward the floor. “Everyone’s gotta play cowboy with their guns these days.”

Ruth sighed and rubbed her temple. She felt the headache coming on. “I’m sure he was just trying to help." With a slight shove, she applied enough force to the girl to send her stumbling back into the hallway when time resumed, out of any immediate lines of fire.

“By shooting a bank customer? Glad he didn’t decide to help me.”

Already, over two minutes had passed. Time was a pretty meaningless concept when it could be selectively frozen, but as Ruth had discovered over the years, it was the selective unfreezing that was the tricky part. She had little control over when time resumed. Sometimes it would seem to freeze for five minutes, and sometimes it would be more like five hours. All in all, it was a neat trick with the potential to backfire dramatically when she needed it to work.

“And why are these guys even robbing a bank with guns?” Frank continued his growing rant as he considered his options regarding the female bank robber. “This has got to be the stupidest plan ever. Everyone knows that you write a note and pass it to the teller, then take the money they give you and leave. Why shoot up the place when you don’t have to?”

Given that getting involved was all his idea in the first place, Ruth had little tolerance for his grousing. “Because,” she said, “they wanted to get into the vault.” Sometimes pushing Frank’s buttons was a good way to let off a little stress.

“And don’t get me started on the vault. I don’t even think this place has a photocopier, much less a vault. They’d be better off robbing a jewelry store or a restaurant or something if they wanted to go for melodrama. Or a casino. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of movies about robbing casinos. People get to shoot all sorts of guns in those.”

“It’s a shame they didn’t consult with you about the robbery, Frank, so they could include this in their calculus. I’m not convinced these two are the brightest of the bulbs, though.”

In the end, Frank left the female bank robber as she was and returned to his spot on the floor. He and Ruth both eased back into an approximation of their previous positions. Whatever small inconsistencies arose would be overlooked, given the carnage and chaos in progress in the bank.

“So,” Frank said, after a few long moments of silence. “How long do you think it will last this time?”

“I don’t know.” Ruth’s impression was that as she aged, how long the time freezes lasted was diminishing, but it was a tricky thing to judge. She shifted her position some on the floor. Now that she had time to think, to stop and take everything in, she regretted not acting sooner. “If I’d been faster, I could’ve caught things before that man was shot.”

“Should’ve would’ve could’ve, Ruth.”

“Twenty years ago — heck, even ten years ago — my reflexes would’ve been good enough.”

“Ten years ago, these two weren’t robbing a bank,” Frank pointed out. “They were probably sitting on some couch in an apartment somewhere, watching after-school cartoons.”

“I know, I just—”

And then time resumed, all at once, with no warning. With it came a rush of sound, screams and shouts and people moving about, and two more bursts of gunfire that had Ruth’s ears ringing from how loud it was inside the small confines of the bank. She heard that lady’s dog yapping fiercely, and when she raised her head to look, it was standing braced in front of the female robber as if fixing her where she stood with his twelve pounds of Pomeranian attitude alone. The security guard, having retrieved his gun during the chaos, approached the woman with the weapon trained center mass. The male robber lay on the floor, bleeding, either dead or struggling not to die.

Ruth’s head pounded with the onset of a headache. The screams didn’t help. She drew in a steadying breath and stood while looking around the room. So far as she could tell, the injuries were minimal: the man with the daughter, and the male robber, were the primary ones in danger. The rest of the injuries seemed limited to minor bumps and bruises gained from complying with the robbers’ demands to get down.

“Shoot him!” a lady screamed at the security guard. It surprised Ruth that more people weren’t shouting, but with the end of gunfire, people were in a state of shock. That was good. Fewer people to get in the way.

Frank was already by the downed robber, checking on his wounds and working to stop the bleeding. At least three people were on the phone with 911, and the security guard — who was not, Ruth was relieved to see, shooting the other bank robber — seemed to have his side of the situation well in hand. Nobody moved toward the man in the hallway, or the little girl who was crouched down against the wall with her arms over her head.

Ruth went to help. Bridge would have to wait.