“What’re you—！? Are you insane!?” Axel exploded.
Elijah barely reacted, his gun still raised, finger still on the trigger.
“He was about to buzz us in!” Axel added.
“He was looking us up,” Elijah said, calm as could be.
“So what if he—？ He has kids . . . a daughter starting college! And now he—he—” Axel clenched both fists. “You said no one would get hurt!”
“No,” Elijah said, rolling his eyes. “That doesn’t sound like me at all.” In one quick movement, Elijah turned his gun toward Axel and pulled the trigger.
Another thunderclap.
A black burn mark appeared in Axel’s forehead, just above his left eyebrow. This hit was clean, instantly sending Axel backward, like a marionette with cut strings, crashing to the carpet.
A decade ago, Navy psychologists studied how humans react when faced with imminent death. According to action movies, everyone in the crowd runs and screams. In reality, however, your most likely reaction is simply doing nothing. Faced with fear, we freeze.
Zig reached for his knife. Elijah was faster, aiming his gun.
“Mr. Zigarowski, whatever you’ve got in your pocket, I suggest you leave it there.”
Zig stopped, his fingertips still at his pocket. “So that story you told us back at the bar—about the reason O.J. fired you . . . He suspected you, but couldn’t prove it.”
“If it makes you feel better, he’s a shitbag and he suspected me. Which is more than I can say for you.” Raising his gun to Zig’s face, Elijah slid his finger around the trigger. “Don’t look so wounded, Mr. Zigarowski. This was the twist you should’ve seen coming.”
“I actually did, asshole.”
Click.
Elijah was still facing the welcome desk, so focused on Zig, he didn’t hear the door to the parking lot open behind him. And he certainly didn’t feel the barrel of the gun until it was pressing into the back of his own head.
“You really think he’d leave me at a janky rest stop?” Roddy asked a bit too loudly in Elijah’s ear. “Oh, and by the by, that fancy beer in your bar sucked.”
“C’mon, Elijah, don’t look so wounded,” Zig added. “This was the twist you should’ve seen coming.”
90
Houston, Texas
Fourteen years ago
This was Roddy when he was fourteen.
It was just a matter of the paperwork.
“Sit,” the police officer said, shoving teenage Roddy—in handcuffs and an Eminem buzz cut—toward the metal chair.
Roddy knew he was in trouble the moment he entered the room. Two-way mirror. Desk bolted to the floor. This wasn’t the juvenile area—this was an adult interrogation room.
“Bad day for you, dumbass,” said Officer Barry Baltamacchia, though everyone in the station called him Bull for always breathing so hard through his nose. He was forty-three, but like so many overweight cops, looked at least a decade older.
Bull was right, though—it was a bad day.
Two hours ago, Roddy had been prowling the Nordstrom parking lot, using a bolt cutter and screwdriver to clip hood ornaments from any Mercedes or Jaguars unlucky enough to be parked nearby. Vegas Larry at the body shop offered seventy-five dollars apiece for them. Roddy already had two Mercedes ornaments in his pocket. As he started working on a third—a gray S-Class that needed a wash—he got spotted.
“Hey!” shouted a fortysomething Black anesthesiologist who was ROTC in college and had seen a few too many Spider-Man movies. Deciding he had great responsibility, the man headed toward Roddy. “What’re you doing!?”