Hostage

'Mars, we're go

Mars climbed out of the truck, so cool that even heat like this couldn't melt him.

'Let's do it.'

Kevin didn't move. The two kids pedaled away.

'No one's here, Kevin! All you have to do is stand by the door and watch. This fat fuck will cough right up with the cash. They're insured, so they just hand over the cash. They get fired if they don't.'

De

'Get out of the truck, you turd. You're making us look bad.'

Kevin wilted and slid out like a fuckin' baby.

Junior Kim, Jr., knew a cheese dip when he saw one.

Junior, a second-generation Korean-American, had put in sixteen years behind a minimart counter in the Newton area of Los Angeles. Down in Shootin' Newton (as the LAPD called it), Junior had been beaten, mugged, stabbed, shot at, clubbed, and robbed forty-three times. Enough was enough. After sixteen years of that, Junior, his wife, their six children, and all four grandparents had bailed on the multicultural melting pot of greater LA, and moved north to the far less dangerous demographic of bedroom suburbia.

Junior was not naïve. A minimart, by its nature, draws cheese dips like bad meat draws flies. Even here in Bristo Camino, you had your shoplifters (mostly teenagers, but often men in business suits), your paperhangers (mostly women), your hookers passing counterfeit currency (driven up from LA by their pimps), and your drunks (mostly belligerent white men sprouting gin blossoms). Lightweight stuff compared to LA, but Junior believed in being prepared. After sixteen years of hard-won i

When three cheese dips walked in that Friday afternoon, Junior leaned forward so that his chest touched the counter and his hands were hidden.

'May I help you?'

A ski

Junior Kim could read a cheese dip a mile away.

His face impassive, Junior fished under the counter for his 9mm Glock. He found it just as the cheese dip launched himself over the counter. Junior lurched to his feet, bringing up the Glock as the black-shirted dip crashed into him. Junior hadn't expected this asshole to jump over the counter, and hadn't been able to thumb off the safety.

The larger man shouted, 'He's got a gun!'

Everything happened so quickly that Junior wasn't sure whose hands were where. The black shirt forgot about his own gun and tried to twist away Junior's. The big guy reached across the counter, also grabbing for the gun. Junior was more scared now than any of the other times he had pulled his weapon. If he couldn't release the safety before this kid pulled his own gun, or wrestled away Junior's, Junior knew that he would be fucked. Junior Kim was in a fight for his life.

Then the safety slipped free, and Junior Kim, Jr., knew that he had won.

He said, 'I gotcha, you dips.'

The Glock went off, a heavy 9mm explosion that made the cheese dip's eyes bulge with a terrible surprise.

Junior smiled, victorious.

'Fuck you.'

Then Junior felt the most incredible pain in his chest. It filled him as if he were having a heart attack. He stumbled back into the Slurpee machine as the blood spilled out of his chest and spread across his shirt. Then he slid to the floor.

The last thing Junior heard was the cheese dip by the door, shouting, 'De

Outside at the second pump island, Margaret Hammond heard a car backfire as she climbed from her Lexus.

Margaret, who lived across the street in a tile-roofed home that looked exactly like a hundred others in her development, saw three young white males run out of the minimart and get into a red Nissan pickup truck, which lurched away with the jumpy acceleration that tells you the clutch is shot. It headed west toward the freeway.

Margaret locked the pump nozzle to fill her tank, then went into the minimart to buy a Nestle's Crunch chocolate bar, which she intended to eat before she got home.

Less than ten seconds later, by her own estimation, Margaret Hammond ran back into the parking lot. The red Nissan had disappeared. Margaret used her cell phone to call 911, who patched her through to the Bristo Camino Police Department.

Their voices overlapped, Kevin grabbing De

'You killed that guy! You shot him!'

'I don't know if he's dead or what!'

'There was fucking blood everywhere! It's all over you!'

'Stop it, Kevin! He had a fuckin' gun! I didn't know he would have a gun! It just went off!'

Kevin pounded the dash, bouncing between De

'We're fucked, De

'SHUT UP!'

De

Mars touched him.

'Dude. Take it easy.'

'We've gotta get away!'

'We're getting away. No one saw us. No one caught us. We're fine.'

Mars sat quietly in the shotgun seat. Kevin and De

'Fuck! Throw it out, dude! We might get stopped.'

Mars pushed the gun into his waistband, then left his hand there, holding it the way some men hold their crotch.

'We might need it.'

De

'Listen, we gotta think. We gotta figure out what to do.'

Kevin's eyes were like di

'Jesus, De

De

'No one's turning themselves in! We can get outta this! We just gotta figure out what to do!'

Mars touched him again.

'Listen.'

Mars was smiling at nothing. Not even looking at them.

'We're just three guys in a red truck. There's a million red trucks.'

De

'You think?'

'They've got to find witnesses. If they find those two kids or the woman, then those people have to describe us. Maybe they can, but maybe they can't. When the cops get all that sorted out, then they have to start looking for three white guys in a red truck. You know how many red trucks there are?'

'A million.'

'That's right. And how long does all that take? The rest of the day? Tomorrow? We can be across the border in four hours. Let's go down to Mexico.'