Free Shoot the Woman First by Wallace Stroby

the dark. Larry bent over the duffel in the shadowed garage, still and silent. Charlie Glass, shot through the face, falling across her.
    After a while, the pain in her back and hips began to fade. She was calmer now; the shaking had stopped. She turned off the water, toweled dry, wiped steam from the mirror and twisted to look at her back. There was a softball-sized bruise under her right shoulder blade, purple in the center, yellow at the edges. Not enough pain for a broken rib. She’d been lucky.
    She dressed in sweatpants and T-shirt, then unzipped the duffel and spilled money out onto the bed. She pulled up a chair and began to count.
    A hundred and sixty thousand in the bag. So the count they’d done at the house had been good. Eighty thousand of it was Larry’s share. It belonged to his people, if she could find them.
    She went to the window, looked out at the night. Cordell and his partner were out there somewhere. Her fatigue was giving way to anger, at what they’d done, at herself for not reading the signs beforehand. For being too slow, for letting it all fall apart around her. For the deaths of two good men.
    But there was nothing she could do about any of that now, nothing more to be gained here. She’d gotten away clean, with her share of the money. It would make no sense to go after them for the rest, even if she could find them. And there was little chance they’d come after her. They were amateurs who’d gotten lucky. They wouldn’t know where to start.
    It was over. Time to go home.
    She put the money back in the duffel, then stretched out on the bed, turned off the light, knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She still lay like that, eyes open, when pale dawn filled the window.

 
    EIGHT
    Burke lost his last three hundred betting the pass line on a black kid in his twenties who’d been shooting hot for the last fifteen minutes. Players were elbow-to-elbow at the table, had migrated over from other games, drawn by the shouts, hoping to get in on the streak while the kid was still golden.
    Burke watched the red dice bounce across green felt, strike the far wall, and fall back. Snake eyes.
    â€œ Got damn,” the kid said, and a moan seemed to come up from the other players. The stickman raked in the chips, Burke’s three black ones among them, said, “New shooter,” and looked at him. Burke was on the kid’s left, so the next roll would go to him. He shook his head.
    He’d walked in the door with three grand, had started strong at roulette, then blackjack. An hour later, he’d been up five thousand, but then the whole thing had started to go south on him. He’d moved on to craps, hoping to catch some of the kid’s fire, but had brought his bad luck along with him.
    Burke turned away, got out his cigarettes. A hollow-eyed man in overalls and John Deere cap elbowed past him, took his place at the table.
    Burke moved through the casino toward the bar, music and electronic sounds blaring from the banks of slot machines. He lit his tenth Newport of the day, snapped the lighter closed, dropped it in the pocket of his suit coat, fished out his silver money clip. Two twenties and a five. Time to call it a night.
    The barmaid was a heavy blonde in a white shirt, red vest, sleeve garters. He took a stool, and she set a tin ashtray in front of him. “Maker’s Mark,” he said, “ice,” and put a twenty on the bar.
    The barmaid brought his drink, took his money. He tapped ash from the Newport, looked at his Rolex. Nine P.M. , but it felt like midnight.
    When the barmaid brought his change, he pushed two singles toward her, took a pull from his drink. A voice close by said, “Easy to lose track of time in here, isn’t it?”
    He looked to his left. Two stools down was a woman in her early thirties, red hair piled high, green shimmery dress, small spangled purse under one arm. Working girl, he thought. The suit drew