He had been eating a slice of apple pie. He put his fork down. Garrett Hayes was the youngest of the four at 29, big through the shoulders with a jaw like a cinder block and a laugh when he laughed that could fill a room like sunlight fills a window fast and completely with nowhere left to hide. He had been with the chapter for four years.
He loved it the way you can only love something you chose completely with no one pushing you and no one pulling you. Just the pure clean act of deciding this is mine and meaning it. He had been telling Mike about his daughter, seven years old already, already reading at a fourth grade level, obsessed with horses, when Bobby set down the magazine. Garrett stopped talking.
He looked at Bobby. Bobby looked at the door. That was all. That was the entire communication.
Garrett put both hands flat on the table. Outside Leo Danton gripped the Mossberg. He could feel his pulse in his palms, behind his eyes, in the soles of his feet. He had never done this before.
He needed to remember that Corey didn't know him then. He needed to look like he'd done this a hundred times because if Corey got scared, really scared, not just nervous, things would go sideways fast. Corey had a short fuse and a long history of making bad decisions under pressure. "On three," Leo said.
"On three," Corey repeated. Leo counted. The glass door of Pioneer Wells Diner exploded inward. Brenda Kowalski had her back to the door.
She was refilling the napkin dispensers the way she always did at this hour when it was a slow hour. Her reading glasses pushed up on her head, her orthopedic shoes planted on the worn linoleum. The crash hit her like a physical thing. She spun, knocked over a full napkin dispenser, grabbed the counter with both hands.
"Everybody down, down, this is not a joke. Get down on the floor right now." That was Leo. His voice cracked on the word joke, which he immediately hated, but his body was moving and the shotgun was up and the diner was suddenly very bright and very small. Wallets out.