Everything happened at once, or so it seemed to me.
The back door flew open, and Clooney came rushing in, armed to the teeth, Rambo in the flesh. I had no idea what the various guns dangling from his body were called, but they were big and ugly.
“Andi!” he screamed.
“Clooney!” She was looking at her greatest fear come true. “Run!”
Michael brought his gun up even as he kept his choke hold on me.
Clooney tripped over something and fell flat on his face.
Michael’s bullet smacked into the back wall. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space.
I gave a brief thought to Chaz, who was supposed to have locked the back door. Had he been smart enough to run instead? He’d certainly been smart enough to stay out of Clooney’s way.
“Get up!” Michael waved his gun in Clooney’s direction, then at Andi. “Or I shoot her. I don’t need her anymore.”
“We don’t need any of them anymore.” Harl wiped nervous sweat off his top lip. He was as twitchy as Chaz, not with withdrawal but with the need to kill. And he’d just gotten another hostage.
“Patience, Harl,” Michael said. “In time. I make those decisions. I am, after all, God’s archangel.”
The look of disbelief on Harl’s face would have been funny in other situations. “Get a grip, Mike.”
A loud voice amplified by a bullhorn called from outside, “Hello, the café. This is the police.”
As relief surged through me, Michael whirled to face the window, moving so fast my feet left the ground as he spun me with him. I made a gagging sound as I struggled to gain my footing and relieve the pressure on my throat.
Harl snarled and swore. “Where did they come from?”
No one answered, but I knew. The coded message on the alarm system had worked. We would be saved!
Harl grabbed Andi and pulled her in front of him.
“Let go of me!” she screamed as she beat at his hands.
Clooney made an inarticulate growl as he struggled to his feet, his weaponry clinking and clanging.
Bright light poured into the café from outside, blinding all of us after so long in the dim illumination of the emergency lights. I squinted and could make out people and cars in the street. Or rather their silhouettes.
“This is Chief Gordon of the Seaside Police Department. Release your hostages and surrender.”
“Never!” Michael yelled.
I could feel him trembling. What I didn’t know was whether he was quivering with fear or fury. I suspected fury. Harl, on the other hand, stank with fear as he cowered behind Andi, quite a trick given her diminutive size.
Michael raised his gun to my temple, and I quickly rethought the I’m-saved concept.
I was afraid to move. My pepper spray was inches away, but Michael was on the edge. Even reaching for it might cause his finger to tighten on the trigger.
As I prayed feverishly, Lindsay raised her arm and brought it down with a rebel yell that would have made the Confederacy proud. It turned my blood to ice.
Harl screamed and let go of Andi, who fell to her knees. He grabbed his bicep where a paring knife was buried to the hilt. He turned green when he saw it. A single drop of blood slid down his arm. He raised disbelieving eyes to Lindsay, who was pressed back against her pastry table. The little knife she used to trim piecrusts was missing from its slot at the rear of the table.
Harl whimpered and his gun tumbled to the floor. “Mike?”
Andi grabbed the weapon and threw it beneath the stove.
Michael’s gun lowered as he too stared at the knife. The choke hold eased.
My turn. I pulled my tear gas canister from my waistband and aimed it over my shoulder. I squeezed, praying I had the nozzle aimed where I wanted it. At the same moment Greg materialized out of the dimness and shot Michael with a Taser.
Michael let out a roar and collapsed. I stumbled toward Greg, who wrapped me in his arms, a spent Taser in one hand, a gun in the other, my own superhero. Clooney stood behind him, finally untangled from his personal armory.
And just like that, it was over.