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From my phone, I heard, “9-1-1 operator, what is your emergency?”
“Shots fired at my location, suspect on premises.”
Another gunshot and the door budged. Parsons pushed and the chair gave a half inch.
“What about you?” Logan asked, talking over the operator as the woman asked for more information. She had to have heard the gunshots.
“I have an idea.”
Only part of an idea, but Logan couldn’t be caught in the crossfire.
“Go,” I ordered him. “Lock the door and don’t stand next to it.”
The door started to give under Parsons’s weight.
“Parsons,” I shouted as Logan did as I told him, “the police are on their way. Leave the premises.”
He was ranting about Logan—everything Logan had done to him, taken from him. I hadn’t met the man, but clearly he’d snapped. Maybe around the time of the arson fire? Had the police talked to him a second time? Did he know he was a suspect?
He’d come from upstairs. Maybe he’d come here to steal directly from Logan, then learned that Logan had changed all his passwords.
Dim, recessed lighting along the corners of the room provided basic illumination. A long narrow bar was built against the back wall with a refrigerator, popcorn machine, and ten different kinds of whiskey.
The operator kept talking and I slid my phone toward the front of the room. It stopped about two-thirds of the way down. Then I ran behind the bar and crouched. The bathroom door was on the right; Logan had thankfully closed it behind him.
I had one chance.
Parsons finally pushed the door open. I could hear Brittney sobbing in the background, begging Parsons to leave with her now. I blocked her out. Parsons stormed in, looked around.
“Where the fuck are you, Monroe? You ruined my life! You took everything from me. Everything! Now the police are looking for me, all because of you.”
Parsons was clearly rewriting reality in his head as he somehow blamed Logan for his embezzlement and general life failures.
The operator said something indistinct, and Parsons rushed to the front of the theater, raised his gun, and fired multiple times into the backs of the leather chairs.
I flipped on the lights and said to Parsons who stood twenty feet away, his back to me, “Drop your weapon! Hands up or I will shoot!”
I wouldn’t hesitate to fire if he turned his gun toward me, but I didn’t want to kill him.
The next ten seconds moved excruciatingly slow.
Parsons didn’t move. He didn’t drop his gun, but he didn’t turn to face me. He stood as if frozen, staring at the blank screen. Was he thinking if he could turn and get a shot off before I did? Considering if he should drop his gun and surrender? If he could stand there and wait me out?
Then Brittney ran into the room and made a beeline toward Parsons. “Brad, let’s go, please.”
“Get out of the way,” I shouted as Brittney put herself between me and Parsons.
“You’ve ruined everything,” Brittney screamed. “Everything! Just leave us alone. Come on, baby,” she said to Parsons. “Let’s go.”
She put her arm around him and steered him toward the door. I kept the bar between me and them as a shield, my gun still focused on Parsons, watching his hands for any movement that he was going to shoot.
He let Brittney steer him out, his expression full of loss and defeat. But the gun remained tight in his grip. They walked out of the theater and I lost sight of them.
I went to the door, cautiously looked both ways, didn’t see them. I considered going after them—Parsons definitely had a screw loose and he had a gun—but I’d committed to protecting Logan, so that meant sticking to him until Parsons was apprehended.
I knocked on the bathroom door. “Logan, you good?”
“What happened?”
