“We don’t have one,” Scarlett answered.
“Then give me what you have stashed in your purse or pockets,” the girl said.
Scarlett set the tip box on the counter and opened it.
Anger shot through me like a lightning strike. Those punk kids would walk out of here with our tip money over my dead body.
“I got it,” the girl said. “Now, let’s go to the back room where they keep more than just today’s cash, and they will open the safe or else they’ll bleed out on the floor.”
Such big talk for such a little person,I thought as I plastered myself against the wall beside the swinging doors and listened to the guy tell Rosalie and Scarlett to go ahead of them into the kitchen. Rosalie walked past me. Scarlett cut her eyes around and saw me, but she didn’t say a word or miss a step. When those two sorry-ass kids came through the doors, I touched the screen on my phone. The next second, the sound of a dog the size of Cujo started barking and growling like it was coming right out of the storage room. A man’s voice yelled, “Go get ’em, Jesus. Tear ’em up. Don’t quit until they are on the ground.”
Both would-be robbers froze. Before the dog stopped barking, the cold barrel of my pistol was pressed against the guy’s neck.
“You move, and I shoot. Have you ever heard of the apricot?” I didn’t give him time to answer. That episode ofJustifiedhad better be based on truth. That was the one where Raylan Givens explains that the apricot is a place at the base of the skull, and when someone pulls the trigger, the person is instantly dead.
“If I shoot you right here in the apricot, you will have breathed your last breath,” I said, in a voice so calm that it surprised me. “Both of you will drop your guns now and start backing up real slow like. I’ve got an itchy trigger finger.”
“You won’t shoot me—and if you do, my partner will kill the old woman,” he said, but he backed up into the dining room.
The girl took a couple of steps back, but she turned her gun away from Rosalie and toward me. That was when Scarlett slipped past them and brought the sawed-off shotgun out from under the counter. Theclacking sound when she cocked that thing sent shivers down my spine. The steely look in her eyes told me that she was angry, not scared.
“Both of you will very gently lay your guns on the floor and take a seat in a chair. If you don’t, I will shoot the girl first, and my friend’s bullet will find that apricot. This ends right here and now,” Scarlett said.
Apparently they did not want to die, because they obeyed. When they were seated, Rosalie hurried to the kitchen and brought out a roll of duct tape. When she had wrapped it around their hands and ankles, she ripped their masks off. They both looked like they were about sixteen. The girl had blue hair, and the guy had a scraggly beard that reminded me of Shaggy fromScooby-Doo. They both had lip rings, nose rings, and hoops in their eyebrows. That they hadn’t been pulled out when Rosalie yanked the masks away was a miracle.
“I ought to take a switch to you both,” Rosalie snapped.
“I should have shot you,” Shaggy growled. “You wouldn’t have been the first one, neither.”
“I can’t believe that we’ve been caught because I’m afraid of dogs,” the girlfriend groaned. “But we’ll only do a couple of years in juvie.”
“Not for murder, if you are telling the truth,” Rosalie said just as a police car pulled up and two officers got out, one with a bullhorn.
“This is Deputy James Carson. I need you to come out with your hands in the air,” he said.
Rosalie opened the door and motioned them inside. “Hello, Jimmy and Luis. Come on in and get them. We’ve got them tied up and ready for you.”
Jimmy tossed the bullhorn back into the car and followed her back into the café. When he saw the two kids tied up, he smiled and said, “You’ve done our job for us.”
“She wasn’t lying about them coming for pie and coffee,” the young girl said. “Next time we need to be more careful.”
Jimmy pulled his phone from his hip pocket, looked at a couple of pictures, and then showed them to Luis. “Little lady, I don’t reckon there will be a next time. Even out here in the boonies, we get photosand write-ups for who the FBI has on their Most Wanted list.” He whipped the phone around to show her the screen. “I believe this is you and your boyfriend. The FBI is involved now since you’ve crossed several state lines on this spree. Did you think you were reenacting Bonnie and Clyde?”
“We’re better than they were.” She scowled at him.
“I doubt that, Lisa McAdams,” he said.
Evil poured from her eyes. “So, you know my name and that I’m a juvenile.”
“Me too, and we are still alive to start again when we get out of juvie,” the boy said.
“Not so, Stanley Mason,” Luis said. “You don’t get to go to juvie when you have murdered two people.”
“Allegedly—and prove it,” Stanley growled.
“I don’t have to. Those guns on the floor will do that for the FBI,” Luis told him.
Rosalie had sunk down into a chair and had turned so pale that I was afraid she would faint. I rushed over to the counter, poured a glass of water, and took it to her. She took a couple of sips and then took several deep breaths. At that point, I wished that Rosaliehadcut a switch, or even a piece of cow’s tongue cactus, and beat on them for a while before the authorities arrived. The pompous little snots needed some discipline.
