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The music is gone when I shout, “LARA!” She’s there at Dom’s side before I can even turn to look for her.
She’s all business and not panicking in the least. She’ll make a good doctor.
Dom asks, “Is it bad?”
She quickly assesses the damage and then cracks a joke to calm him down, “Can’t take you anywhere, huh?”
“Now’s not the time, Lara. Did that dead fuck hit anything important?”
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, “don’t be a baby.”
“Hospital’s too far, can you fix me?”
“I’m sure as hell going to try.”
Dom looks up at me, “You got this?”
“I’ll handle it,” I say.
Lara looks at me and nods.
Dom puts his arms out to Chase and Nick, “Help me up.”
As they get him to his feet amidst his grunts of exertion, Lara runs over to the bar counter and comes back with a large cloth.
She quickly ties it over the wound to stop the bleeding. Dom grits his teeth against the pain.
“Let’s take him to the clubhouse,” she says. “I need somewhere clean and private to work and we won’t want to move him too far afterwards.”
Dom says, “You heard the doctor.”
Lara turns to Cassidy, “Come help me.”
Cassidy nods and they leave as a group.
I’m left with Rick and Stacey and a bar half full of shocked patrons. Stacey’s eyes are wide with shock. I yell to her, “Call the Sheriff and have him come out.” Then I address the patrons, “Sorry to spoil your night out folks, we’ll buy you a round on the house if you’ll just sit tight till the Sheriff gets here. He’s going to want corroborating statements from you all that this was a shooting in self-defense. We all saw the same thing so this shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes or so.”
They all nod in the affirmative.
I look back at the dead guy. What a fucking waste. That’s how quick life can be over. One minute you’re playing cards, the next…you’ve got six holes in you because you got too brave from the tequila.
I can’t move anything because it’s a crime scene, but I can’t expect these people to pretend there isn’t a dead body on the floor.
Rick must be a mind reader, because he finds a table cloth somewhere and brings it over to cover up the guy.
I turn to the guys who were playing cards. They all looking sullen with grief. It’s an odd reaction, considering the dead man was looking to stab them before we intervened.
I jerk my head at Rick for him to follow me to their table.
I ask, “What’s the matter, fellas?”
They look at each other for a long moment before the guy in the middle puts two fingers up the cuff of a sleeve. He pulls out a pair of aces and tosses them on the table.
The guy to the left of him says, “He said he was just passing through. We thought we’d never see him again. It was an easy mark.”
The guy on the right says, “We didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Bret. Really, we didn’t. I mean, who’d have thought the guy would draw down over a game of cards?”
All I can do is sigh.
