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up and leveled it at Mr. Star Wars’s face.
    Nicki turned to run, but the assailant stiff-armed her, planting the heel of his hand into her breastbone, and sending her tumbling back into the Twinkies and Ho Hos.
    â€œStay the hell away from me!” he barked. The hand with the gun appeared to be trembling.
    The clerk behind the counter didn’t move. His jaw dropped to his chest and his face paled as his eyes focused on the barrel of the gun.
    â€œDon’t look at me, you fucking moron,” the robber growled. “Give me the cash from the drawer. You want to die?”
    The clerk jumped as if poked with a cattle prod, dropping his novel to the floor and putting his hands in the air, high over his head, a parody of an old Western.
    â€œMoney,” the attacker repeated. “Put your hands down and give me the fucking money.”
    â€œW-we don’t have much,” the clerk stammered. He looked scared to death.
    â€œStick your hand in the drawer, asshole. Grab what you’ve got, put it in a bag, and get down on the ground. If you even think of tripping an alarm I’ll blow your head off.”
    Nicki had never been so terrified. She’d never seen the business end of a gun before, and she’d never seen anyone willing to commit murder. When she tried to get up from the mess of collapsed shelving and scattered groceries, the masked man unleashed a kick that nailed her in the ribs.
    â€œI told you to stay the fuck where you are!” he spat.
    The pain exploded through Nicki’s chest, making her wonder if maybe he’d shot her anyway.
    â€œPlease don’t,” she sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me.”
    But the robber had already turned his attention back to the clerk, who was frantically scooping money out of the drawer and stuffing it into a plastic shopping bag.
    She’d forgotten all about Brad, thoughts of survival pushing everything else out of the way. So when she saw him moving up behind her assailant, it was all she could do to keep from yelling out his name. He moved like those ninja warriors she’d seen on television, slowly closing the distance.
    The assailant sensed it, though. When Brad was still five feet away—a good two feet farther than he needed to be for a decisive strike—the gunman turned. Nicki screamed.
    Brad rushed the attacker like a linebacker, hitting hard, somewhere in the midsection. An explosion rocked the Quik Mart as the gun discharged, triggering another scream from Nicki. She tried to roll out of the way of the fight, but the driving force of Brad’s tackle sent both men hurling straight for her. She covered her head with her arms, and grunted as they fell on her hard.
    Brad was yelling, too, and like Nicki, his words didn’t make sense. It was a roar of frenzied anger, and after the first two seconds, it became clear that the robber didn’t have a chance.
    Brad cocked his fist and fired it into the gunman’s face. Nicki could feel the impact reverberate all the way down to her. “Drop the gun!” Brad commanded, and he leveled another bone-crushing blow to the face.
    The gunman made a high-pitched squealing sound as the blows found their marks, and as he rolled away, across the white linoleum floor, Nicki noticed that he left a bloody smear. The gun clattered to the floor and Brad made a dive for it, executing a shoulder roll to come back to his knee, with the gun leveled at the attacker, who himself had found his feet.
    â€œFreeze or you’re dead,” Brad commanded.
    The attacker stood there, saying nothing, drooling blood through tight weave of his woolen mask.
    â€œHands,” Brad commanded. “I want to see hands.” The gun looked different in Brad’s hands than it did in the robber’s.
    The attacker made that high-pitched squeal again, then without a word, he spun and ran for the door, not even slowing as he charged out into the steadily darkening