Dani skulked through the back door of the barn with her service weapon out of its holster. She stepped on the flimsy wood plank floor and pushed herself back into the shadows. Kenny was down on the ground, face-first. Boss was standing over him with a broken two-by-four, talking to someone holding a gun in the open doorway at the front of the barn.
Dani felt the heft of her gun in her hand and closed her eyes. She had only fired the weapon at targets on the gun range. All those people she wanted to shoot, the ones that made her life a living hell for being shitheads and nuisances, they fell away from her list in an instant because it became painfully apparent she much preferred those assholes to the one that stood over Kenny. This was real. She was about to step out into the open and put herself in a situation where it was highly likely she was going to have to fire her weapon. Even worse, there was a good chance that someone would fire a weapon at her. It wasn’t a position she wanted to be in. It wasn’t a situation she was sure she was ready to be in.
Her eyes were only closed for a few seconds. She opened them when she heard Boss scream, “Shoot him, goddamn it!”
She stepped out of the shadows and fumbled through the procedural address used in a situation with a firearm present, even though she’d said it dozens of times before. She should have said, “Sheriff’s department. Put down your weapon, and show your hands.” But instead she said, “Everyone freeze the fuck up!” It sounded ridiculous, and she was mad at herself for not following protocol.
Before she could correct her mistake, the man in the doorway dropped the gun and ran into the field. She mistakenly allowed herself to feel relieved and lost track of Boss, only noticing him diving for the gun when he almost had it in his hand.
“Stop!”
It was too late. He fired two shots in her direction, missing but sending her scrambling to hide behind stacks of boxes filled with canned goods.
“Pretty deputy?” Boss called out.
“That’s Deputy, shithead!”
“What the fuck ever. I’m just giving you warning that Ima fire a shot, maybe two, but it ain’t intended for any of the current occupants in the barn. There ain’t no need for you to return fire. Copy?”
“What the hell for?”
He fired a shot, said, “Fuck!” And then fired another shot.
“What was that?” Dani said, peering through a space between the boxes. She saw Boss standing behind the tractor, looking out the barn door. Kenny was writhing in pain, trying to turn on his back.
“Fucking pilot,” Boss said. “Coward run on me. Can’t have that. ’Course he was my ride out of here, but I’ll make do.”
“You ain’t gotta worry about that,” Dani said. “Ima make accommodations for you on that end.”
Boss laughed as he slowly moved out from behind the tractor. “You got fucking sand, I’ll give you that, pretty deputy.”
Dani grit her teeth and stepped back out into the open with her weapon raised. “I told you it’s Deputy.” She unintentionally groaned when she saw that Boss was standing five feet from Kenny with his gun trained on the injured closeout king.
“Unfortunately, sand ain’t enough. You can put your weapon down now.”
She worked to steady her nerves and said, “I was gonna tell you the same thing.”
“Ima explain the chain of events if things go your way. You ain’t gonna shoot before I do. That just ain’t gonna happen. You ain’t got that much sand. Ima shoot Kenny, and then you’re gonna shoot me. I’m close enough to shoot Kenny in the head. The distance you are from me? The notion that I just spilled this dumb fucker’s brains on the ground running through your head? I wouldn’t be too sure you can hit me from there.”
“That’s your chain of events, is it?” Dani asked.
“It is.”
She smiled and pulled the trigger, hitting Boss on the left side of his torso.
He stood, momentarily shocked, dabbing at the bleeding wound with his unencumbered hand and grunted out a laugh. “Well, goddamn, you shot me.”
“I figured it was the best workaround to your chain of events, only I was hoping you’d go down.”
All attention off Kenny, he flicked Step’s lighter to life.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Boss asked Dani. “You ain’t nothing but a pretty little deputy from a shit flatlands town.”
Dani sneered and calmly said, “I’m the law.”
Blurry-eyed from the pain, he turned his gun on her and fired a shot, missing once again. Just as she returned fire, she noticed Kenny raise his arm and somehow toss a small flame at Boss, hitting him in the leg. Her bullet caught the newly burning man square in the chest, but the spectacle of seeing himself quickly engulfed in flames sent adrenaline surging through Boss’s veins, and he was able to turn and run out into the open field even though he was mortally wounded.
Dani rushed to Kenny’s side and knelt down beside him.
The closeout king squeezed out a gulp of air and said, “Is he got?”
Dani peered out the door and spotted the burning man tripping over the dead pilot and flopping to the ground. “He’s got. Twice.”
Kenny smiled and blacked out.