“Leave me alone!” TJ yelled back at him. He shouldered the door open into the back room and slammed it behind him. The click of a lock as it slid into place made Clay swear through clenched teeth.
He turned as he reached the door, dipped at the waist, and hit it shoulder first. It held for a moment, just long enough for Clay to decide he was going to kill the clerk to keep this embarrassing clusterfuck under wraps. Then the bolt ripped out of the frame and the door slammed open. It smacked back into the wall, Clay half fell through it, and the clerk got to live another day.
Probably. The door swung shut again behind Clay as he got his bearings.
The storeroom was dark and smelled like old blood and ammo. Clay reached out to grope along the wall for the switch. He flicked it on, and the overhead lights audibly crackled to life with a dim yellow glow. Enough to illuminate TJ at the other end of the room, his face set in a panicked mask and a desert camo X-Bolt cocked to his shoulder.
“I t-t-told you to leave me alone,” TJ stuttered as his finger trembled on the trigger. “You should have… have listened.”
Clay exhaled slowly. Everything slowed down as he focused on the gun Some people tensed up when they were threatened, but to Clay it always felt easy and familiar. He licked his lips, mouth dry, and then grinned at TJ.
“You ain’t the first to say that,” he said. “You won’t be the last.”
TJ pressed his lips together in a hard line as he tilted the muzzle of the gun up so it pointed right at Clay’s head.
“Might be,” he said.
There was something wrong with the thin sliver of anticipation that caught in the back of Clay’s throat. It felt a bit like the moment before someone touched his cock, but he knew they were going to, so he’d not needed the army shrink to point that out. Thing was, that didn’t make it any less fun.
He stepped forward, and his stomach tightened. “Yeah, don’t think so,” he said. “You’re shit scared, TJ. Your hands are shaking. If there was any piss left in you, then you’ve managed to squeeze it out. Did you load that? Did you check if it was loaded? ’Cause it ain’t.”
The corner of TJ’s mouth trembled as he stared at Clay. Then he jerked the gun to the side and fired. The bullet smacked into the wall a few inches from Clay’s head, and the echo of the gunshot bounced around the storeroom. In the store outside, someone yelled. Clay laughed, a breathless whoop of glee, and bounced on the balls of his feet.
“Yeah! Wow. Called my bluff,” he said. “Remind me never to play poker with you.”
“I grew up hunting,” TJ said. “I know how to load a rifle and how to… What the fuck’s so funny? I could kill you. That’s what you’re here to do to me, right? So why shouldn’t I?”
Clay swayed to one side and the other to see how well TJ tracked him. “You should,” he said. “It’d be the smart call.”
TJ shifted his grip on the gun. “You’re crazy.”
Clay held up one finger. “Unstable,” he corrected him. “It’s… different medication, mostly. Don’t worry about it.”
He nudged one foot forward and to the side, toward the stack of plastic-wrapped cardboard boxes in the middle of the room. It wouldn’t provide much cover. At this range, the X-Bolt would punch a bullet right through the boxes and the—he glanced sidelong at the labels—franks and beans inside. It would work as a bluff, though.
The X-Bolt was a nice gun, but it wasn’t designed for close combat.
“They said you’d blame me,” TJ muttered to himself. His finger flexed against the trigger, barely enough to dent the skin, but it still made a thrill prickle the back of Clay’s neck. He focused on that and filed the words away to deal with later. “That I’d go down for it, but I ain’t gonna—”
The door to the storeroom swung open.
“Someone shot Judd,” Grade said after a beat. Observant little bastard. Clay hadn’t gotten the name, and he’d talked to the man. Grade’s voice stayed even and calm as he came into the room. “Everything OK in here?”
The muzzle of the gun switched between Grade and Clay as TJ tried to decide what to do. He backed up until his heels hit the wall behind him. The jolt made him fumble the gun briefly, long enough to make the skin over Clay’s shoulders tighten uncomfortably.
Hispotential death was all in good fun, but not so much when someone else was involved.
“All good with me,” Clay said. He snapped his fingers to pull TJ’s attention back to him. “Hey. Pay attention. You’re going to have to shoot one of us, right? Him or me. Who’s it going to be?”
TJ clenched his jaw and swallowed convulsively. He gestured with the gun. “Go stand n-n-next to him.”
“No,” Clay said. He took a step forward. “Him or me, TJ. Pick a poison. We ain’t got all day.”
“What’s wrong with you!” TJ demanded. Sweat dripped down his face as he edged along the wall to try and keep the same distance between them. “What thefuckis your problem?”
“Oh, we don’t have the time for that,” Clay said. His voice picked up intensity. “C’mon, TJ. You’ve done it before. What are you waiting on?”
Grade cleared his throat. “Or?” he said. “He could put the gun down? Maybe? Murder isn’t always the answer.”
