“Imagine my luck,” he continues. “I’m leaving the bar, and there you are. The douchebag cop who sent me to jail and tricked Ellen into leaving me. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it until I remembered my buddy’s gun. Unregistered, of course.” He smirks. “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” I reply. “But you know what Idothink?”
His brow furrows. “What?”
“I think you have that pointed at the wrong person. I’m the one you have a beef with. Not her.”
There’s a brief pause. Then Simmons bares his teeth in a rictus of a grin. “No. I think this is perfect. Random robbery goes bad, ex-cop and his girlfriend are killed, and the rest of the customers have no idea who did it. Plus. I’ll get to walk away with some cash. Sounds like a great plan to me.”
It does?
“Hey!” he abruptly shouts. “I can hear you guys moving. Don’t think you’re going anywhere! Just sit your asses down. If you do what I say,youmight make it out alive.”
“Shoot me first, then,” I say, holding his gaze. “Be a man about it. Shooting a woman first is the cowardly thing to do.”
Shooting a woman at all is cowardly, really. But semantics don’t really matter right now.
“You calling me acoward?” Simmons snarls. “You fucking last seven years in prison and then you can talk to me about being a fucking coward.”
And then, just as I hoped, the barrel of his gun drifts towards me.
“A fucking coward?” he repeats. “That’s some fucking nerve. You’re the coward!”
In some things, I was.
I was a coward when I fled Utica.
I was a coward when it came to relationships.
And for a long time, I was afraid to trust anyone.
Now?
There’s nothing I won’t do to keep Hollis safe.
“You look like a coward to me,” I tell him. “Threatening two innocent women? An old man? Because you have some screwed up grudge against me? What else can you call yourself?”
Under the table, I tap Hollis’s leg with my foot. A second later, she does the same.
Some of the pressure on my chest eases.
She understands what to do.
“How dare you?” Simmons roars. “I’m not a fucking coward!”
His finger tightens on the trigger.
It’s time.
Very intentionally, I look over his shoulder. I arrange my face into a mask of surprise.
His face clouds with confusion. Worry. Fear.
There’s nothing there, really. Just a line of empty booths set with rolls of silverware.
But he doesn’t know that.
And what I hoped for happens.
