Chapter 10
He almost didn't answer the 3 o'clock call, but got tired of the ringing. He ripped the receiver off the hook.
"Unless you got everything ready early, there ain't nothing more to say," Sandy snarled. "No more hostages will be released until we are safely out of here. Don't call again until you've got the money, and the van." He hung up the phone and stood in the doorway of the cooler for a while and looked at the hostages. Then he shoved Elvis, sitting on the floor outside, with his foot. It looked like that idiot was going to sleep.
"Get up, asshole. Go in there for a while and watch 'em. I'll try to find a safe place to watch what's going on outside."
Grumbling — he had been half-asleep and he hated being woken up before he was ready — Elvis stood and entered the cooler, slid the door mostly closed again so he could lean against it. He yawned.
"Excuse me?"
He looked at the old man's back. "What?"
"My knees. Arthritis. Please, can I just straighten out my legs and sit here?"
Elvis sighed. Trouble-makers, every one of them. Still, he was an old man. Sort-of reminded him of his grandfather. "Just go ahead and back against the wall, like that other trouble-maker. Keep your distance from him, though."
Pete grunted and painfully pushed himself a few feet back against the wall, leaving his legs straight in front of him. He absently rubbed one knee. "Thank-you, Elvis. I didn't believe what the other one said about you."
Charlie involuntarily stiffened, and his ribs protested. He looked at Elvis and saw begrudging interest.
"Whaddya mean? What's he been saying?"
Ricky suddenly threw in a thought. "He says you're stupid. Can't think for yourself."
Elvis took a step closer to the group, face reddening in anger. He raised his gun, intending to send the teenager into next week, but then the boy's mother spoke.
"I think he's using you. He's making you do all the shooting, so after, if…if things don't go right for you — he can say it was all you."
The teenager's girlfriend spoke next, in a frightened voice. "R-Right. So he can do what they do on television? Cut a deal?"
Charlie's eyes traveled from one to the other, and he sat and marveled. He was being held hostage with a troupe of thespians. Where were they getting this?
Elvis, growing angrier, suddenly looked at him. "Come on. You're the college guy. You must have an opinion, too."
Charlie shrugged, and kept his mouth shut.
Elvis walked through the gap in the kneeling group caused by the absence of Charlie and Pete, and didn't stop until he was right in front of Charlie. He raised his semi-auto, pointed it directly at Charlie's head. "I asked you a question."
Charlie swallowed. "I- I think he's going to kill you when he kills the rest of us. He's using you to control us until he's safe in Mexico with the money. Then, he won't need you anymore."
"He's not listening to anything you say." Elvis lowered the gun and looked at the old man, who was talking again. "You didn't want to let Jeremy go. You didn't want to let us make phone calls. You didn't want to let Charlie answer that first call that came in. It's obvious he doesn't repect you."
Elvis made a sound in his throat like a wounded animal and crossed the cooler again to the door, sliding it open and sticking his head outside. "Sandy! Where the hell are you?" He spotted movement a few feet to his right and saw Sandy on the floor counting the money they had gotten from the till and the hostages.
He strode over and stood over him. He spoke angrily. "What are you doing? Pocketing the take now? You're not watching anything!"
Sandy looked up at him, sneered. "Don't be an idiot, El. You never finished counting this. Probably would have been wrong, anyway." He looked back at the money in his lap, and never saw it coming. If he hadn't have looked away, he never would have believed it, anyway. Elvis didn't have the balls to take him on.
He was sorting the money into denominations as he counted. He reached to add another to the stack of twenties, and wondered, briefly, what was dripping onto the money and what had exploded. His ears were ringing.
There was no pain.
The first shot was fired directly into his brain, and short-circuited that response. The second shot, to his heart, bled him out in a few seconds.
Slumped over the stacks of money, his dead body continued to jerk as Elvis screamed, and emptied his weapon, finally dropping it on the floor next to Sandy, and pulling from the back of his jeans another weapon.
He stood, breathing heavily, looking down at Sandy for awhile.
Then he leaned over and wrested the other 44 out of Sandy's dead hand, straightened, put his back-up piece back into his jeans. He turned and strode again for the cooler.
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The Agents and Officers in the parking lot instinctively ducked further into their cover when gunfire erupted again in the store. Lieutenant Richards began phoning again, immediately.
Don waited in the semi-circle of personnel at the tech van for someone to answer, and his heart thudded. "Please, God," he thought over and over, "Please don't let it be Charlie."
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They heard the argument, Sandy's ill-timed insults, and then they all jerked when they heard the gunfire, and the screaming.
Charlie, eyes wide, locked eyes with Pete.
One crazy down, one to go.
