“You ran these streets into the ground.”
His expression sharpens.
Fear punches through me, but I hold his stare. I will not give him the satisfaction. I will not let him see my hands shake.
“You think I’m scared of you?” he asks.
“Yes.”
His face twitches.
“People who aren’t scared don’t come in with guns and three backup idiots while the man they’re mad at is gone.”
Darlene mutters, “Backup idiots is generous.”
The pistol shifts toward her.
I lift both hands. “Don’t. I’m talking to you, Ron. Not her.”
He breathes hard through his mouth, the bandage across his nose fluttering slightly. “You think you’re clever.”
“No. I think you’re unstable.”
One of his men whispers, “Ron, man, we should go.”
Ron turns so fast the man flinches. “Did I ask you?”
“No.”
“Then keep your mouth shut.”
The whole room trembles around his volatility. The bakery is not warm now. It is too bright, too small, too full of exits blocked by men too nervous to trust their own fingers. I can smell the gun’s charged cell beneath the pastry sweetness, a faint hot-metal tang that turns my stomach.
Ron looks at me again. “Come with me.”
“No.”
He smiles. “That wasn’t a request.”
Darlene lunges for the shock baton.
Everything happens at once.
The gunman shouts. Ron grabs my arm. I twist and slam my elbow into his bruised nose because if I am going to die, I am at least going to make it memorable. He screams, and the pistol discharges into the ceiling with a deafening crack. Plaster rains down over the counter. Darlene hurls a coffee mug at the gunman’s head and hits him square above the eyebrow.
“Run!” she shouts at me.
I try.
Ron catches me by the hair and yanks me backward hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. I kick, scratch, and bite whatever gets close. Someone gets an arm around my waist. Another hand clamps over my mouth with a cloth that smells bitter and chemical, but I jerk my head away before I get more than one breath of it.
“No drugs,” Ron snaps. “I want her awake.”
That should not scare me more.
It does.
I drive my heel down onto someone’s foot. He curses. Darlene comes over the counter like an avenging nicotine angel with a pastry knife in one hand. One of the gang members shoves her back hard enough that she crashes into the register stand.
