Page 23 of Baiting Kong
“You’re telling me.”
“So, did he spend his time on the floor like you did?”
“I think so, but I couldn’t really see him from where I was at until he crawled over to help a customer who’d gotten shot.”
“That’s what I hate about dealing with dumbasses,” Creature said. “They always manage to get someone else caught up in their bullshit. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were the only ones who got hurt. That’s the one thing about a bullet: it doesn’t care who the intended target is; it just goes where it’s pointed.”
“That’s pretty much the same thing one of the cops said,” Axel explained. “One of the robbers even shot the ATM. No clue how long it’ll be out of order.”
Creature snorted and shook his head. “At least they didn’t try to wrap chains around it and yank it out.”
“In that shitty little car they were driving?” Axel said. “Man, the whole thing was a rolling shitshow from the moment they burst through the door and one of them yelled, ‘Nobody move, while the other one demanded we put our hands in the air.”
“The fuck?”
“Right,” Axel said. “It took all the willpower I had not to ask him to make up his fucking mind.”
“Was a good thing you didn’t, or you might have been the one with the bullet hole.”
“Yeah.”
“In a situation like that, it’s best to keep your head down, hit the silent alarm button if you have one, and then do whatever they tell you to.”
“I did hit the button on my way to the floor.”
“Sounds like they weren’t even on the same page when they went in there; one of them wanted cash, and the other wanted chips.”
“I think they both wanted cash, and the chips were just a bonus.”
“I mean, I’ve heard of getting distracted before, but was there something on the rack, something new that snagged their attention?” Creature asked. “I know tweakers are unpredictable, but typically, something has to happen to set one off.”
“I don’t know. I was too busy getting the money out of the drawer and shoving it in the bag, though I was torn between whether to give them paper or plastic and nearly started laughing when Scout asked which one they’d prefer.”
Now, that gave Creature a moment of pause. Had Scout set them off by being a smartass? If so, the kid could have gotten them both shot along with the woman in the store.
“Did he taunt them any more than that?” Creature asked.
When Axel hesitated and bit his lower lip, Creature knew that there was something going on that he wasn’t trying to talk about.
“Should I take that as a yes?” Creature prodded.
“No,” Axel replied, immediately jumping to Scout’s defense. “I think he was just nervous and anxious and scared, the same as I was, and it just slipped out. He didn’t say anything else after that. I did, after the robber told me to surprise him.”
“And what did you say to that?”
He shrugged, squirming a little. “I said, ‘Sure, how about I toss in a hand grenade free of charge?’”
Taken momentarily off guard, Creature snorted and smacked a hand to his face, covering his eyes, and groaning, because dammit all, that was funny as hell, but the last thing he wanted to do was encourage Axel to be reckless.
“What you should have done was keep your mouth shut and shove the money in the first thing you grabbed.”
“I know. I knew it was stupid the moment I said it,” Axel admitted. “But I’d already gotten into a fight with my old manbefore work, and I guess I was tired of being silent when someone was giving me shit.”
“Yeah, I get that, I do,” Creature admitted. “But that wasn’t the time or the place to vent your frustrations.”
Axel sighed at that, nodded, and ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right.”
“So walk me through what happened next,” Creature said. “You were filling the bag, which would take less than a minute, and Scout was, where, on the floor already?”
