A young waitress. Couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. Standing behind the counter with her hands up. Tears running down her face. Mascara smeared across both cheeks.
And a man standing three feet from her with a pistol pointed right at her chest.
He was calm. That’s what made it worse. He wasn’t yelling. Wasn’t shaking. He held that gun like he’d held it a thousand times before.
“I told you what happens when you’re short,” he said. Quiet. Like he was ordering coffee.
Two other men sat in a booth near the window. One of them was eating pie like nothing was happening. The other one was watching me.
I had no weapon. No backup. No phone signal. Just a 58-year-old biker in a leather cut standing in a doorway with the bell still ringing above his head.
The girl looked at me. And I swear her eyes said the same thing my daughter’s said the night I almost lost her.
