Page 112 of Cash

“What?” Brick stared back at Junior.

“This fucker says he ate at that kitchen place on the twelfth.” Junior cocked his head. “That was a Wednesday. So, uh, how the fuck he eat there?”

MKK.

Madame Kimchi’s Kitchen.

Junior was right. The restaurant was only open on the weekends, therefore it was impossible for Ramp to have eaten there. It was a pretty weird thing to lie about, and Brick turned around to say so just in time to see Ramp drawing a gun.

Ramp pointed it right at Brick.

“Gun! Fuckin’ move!” Junior lunged forward, reaching for Brick’s shoulder to push him out of the way.

The gun fired.

Chapter Nineteen

Brick almost fell over from the force of Junior’s shove, and he saw Junior hit the floor. Ramp kept firing until the gun was empty, and Junior didn’t move.

Ramp had a gun.

Ramp had just shot Junior.

What the fuck, what the fucking fuck?

Ramp appeared just as shocked as Brick, and he stared at Junior’s fallen body.

Junior wasn’t moving, and Brick couldn’t tell where he’d been hit—chest, maybe?—but he couldn’t stand here and wait for him to bleed out. He couldn’t shut the door because Junior’s legs were in the way, but Brick had to get help.

He had to do something,

Brick smacked the panic button on the security panel on the wall.

That got Ramp’s attention, and he glared at Brick. He pulled another magazine from his pocket and went to reload.

“Fuck!” Brick twisted around to bolt, and he had to make a split second decision of whether to run upstairs or flee to his office.

It was in that precise moment that Brick had a brilliant epiphany.

He remembered where he had hidden his gun from himself, and he frantically sprinted to his office. He could hear Ramp scrambling behind him, but he didn’t dare look back to see how close he was.

Brick slammed his office door closed and then grabbed the samch’ung jang cabinet, heaving it in front of the door to block it. He opened the top cabinet, retrieving the revolver from inside where he’d hidden it weeks ago. He ran over to his desk, dropping the gun next to his keyboard and quickly grabbing the bullets out of the drawer from where he’d stashed them earlier.

Ramp shot through one of the glass panels of the door that wasn’t blocked by the cabinet, and Brick shouted as the window behind him shattered.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why the hell was Ramp trying to kill him over some shitty lie about what restaurant he’d eaten at?

The police should be on their way by now since Brick had hit the panic button. He couldn’t get to his phone because he’d left the damn thing in the living room, but it was okay. It was fine. He had his gun. He had his bullets. He had everything he needed except…

The key.

The motherfuckin’ key.

“Fuck!” Brick roared as he frantically pulled out all the drawers of his desk in search of the elusive key.

He would probably never understand what his demented plan had been to hide the bullets in the living room and the gun in here, and he was terrified of what that might mean for the key.

Was it in the kitchen? Had he stuck it in the toilet tank? Just for fun, perhaps he’d put it outside on the front porch.

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