You are the one who should be worried. I want to give you both an honest piece of advice." Mike said. And now he did look at Corey with that gray pre-storm gaze. "Your friend there is smart enough to be scared.
You should catch up to him." Corey raised the revolver. It was the wrong move. Everyone in the room knew it was the wrong move. Even Corey on some level knew it was the wrong move.
But he had been making wrong moves his whole life and the muscle memory of panic was stronger than the muscle memory of judgement. And so the gun came up and it was pointed directly at Mike Callahan's face and the room held its breath. Mike looked at the gun. He looked at the trembling hand holding it.
He looked at Corey's face, the sweat on his upper lip, the white rims of his eyes, the way his jaw was clenched so tight it was shaking. And then Mike Callahan did something that nobody in that room would ever quite be able to explain even years later. Even when they'd had time to process it and talk about it and watch the security footage back 100 times. He picked up his coffee cup.
He took a sip. He set it back down. "You've got about 30 seconds of courage left in you." He said to Corey conversationally, the way you might comment on the weather. "After that your legs are going to stop working.
I've seen it before. The adrenaline runs out and your body figures out what your brain already knows." He paused. "Put the gun down, son. You're going to put it down anyway.
The only question is whether you do it now with some dignity left or in about 30 seconds when your knees give out." Corey's hand was shaking so hard the gun was rattling. "I'm not I'm not scared of you." he said. "I know." Mike said, "That's the problem." The fluorescent light above booth nine flickered once, twice, and came back on fully for the first time in two weeks flooding the corner of the room with harsh white light. And in that sudden unforgiving brightness, the four men in booth nine were completely nakedly visible.
The patches, the leather, the absolute stillness of four people who had chosen their ground and had no intention of moving from it. Brenda Kowalski behind the counter had stopped shaking. She was watching Mike Callahan with an expression that she would later, when the local news asked her about it, struggle to describe. "He wasn't angry." she would say.