He knew the instant it happened that the cut wasn’t life-threatening. Maybe he’d need stitches, but that was it.
In the same moment, he was pulling the trigger. Not realizing he was doing it, just acting on instinct. If he’d had a pillow in his hand he probably would have thrown it, but he had the gun so he pulled the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He was moving when he squeezed off the shots. Dodging the madman’s attack, moving out of range of the knife. But even with that movement, he knew he hit what he was aiming at. He saw the front sight and rear sight line up perfectly, saw them both merge with the too-close center mass of the madman’s chest in his black coat.
The three shots blasted louder than thunder in the contained space. Evan’s ears rang, and he figured he’d earned himself a year of deafness as an old geezer.
He didn’t care. Because all three bullets hit. He knew it. The madman who had tried to hurt Listings had been blown right out the open door of the bar.
Evan spun to Listings. She was on her knees, feeling at her neck. Blood sluiced from the long shallow gash along the left side of her neck.
“Didja get him?” she said. She was looking at the drunk.
Evan followed her gaze. The drunk – who, if madmen in trenchcoats were to be believed, had been named Ken – was staring up at the ceiling of the bar. He wasn’t moving. Nor would he. One hand clutched as his throat, the other had fallen onto his crotch, as though even in death he was determined to go out as crudely as possible.
“Yeah,” said Evan.
“You sure?” said Listings.
“Yeah.”
She stood. Walked toward the entrance.
“Where you going?”
“I want to know who this nutcase was. And what he had to do with your wife.”
They left the bar. And as they did, Evan thought, strangely, that they were moving into a darkness that would never end.
Listings pulled out her gun as they hit the street.
“You sure that you’re sure?” she said.
Evan felt like he had just fallen into some funhouse mirror version of reality where cause and effect no longer ruled; where up was down and in was out and when you shot a man three times in the chest he didn’t die.
There was no body on the sidewalk, no body on the street.
A man who had been shot three times, a man who should be bleeding – or dead – on the street… was nowhere to be seen.
CRIME SEEN by Michaelbrent Collings… available now!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings or on Twitter @mbcollings.
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