Keeping his eyes and his gun on me, Owen tried to knock her down. She just backed away from his shove. All that happened was she staggered a little. Angry, he grabbed her by the hair, forgetting, or not knowing, that it was a wig. It came off in his hand and she was a blonde again. I thought he was going to shoot out of pure frustration. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, like Christmas lights going on and off, on and off. “Too deep,” he mumbled, half a sob. He backhanded her. She managed to lessen the force of the blow by backing away again. Even so, twenty, thirty years ago, he would have knocked her into the wall. We were getting old.

She still clutched her bag.

Frustrated by the girl, and even more by his own weakness, Owen pulled the trigger.

A shot in an enclosed space is loud. Go to the range. Take one shot without ear protection. It’ll be a quarter hour before you carry on a conversation normally. It wasn’t at anybody. Just at the wall.

We all froze.

“You,” he barked at Allie, “down on the ground.”

She moved slowly to her knees.

Owen went to his desk. Pulled open a drawer. Took out a glass bottle. He unscrewed the top. Awkwardly because his right hand still held the gun. When the lid was off, he just dropped it. He held the bottle up for all to see. “Acid,” he said. He looked around the room. He spotted the wig that had tricked and embarrassed him. Keeping the gun moving between the two of us, but mostly at me, he walked over to the limp wad of fake hair and splashed some of the liquid on it. It sizzled and stank as the acid ate through it. It scared the hell out of me and I assume Allie felt the same.

“You. Bitch. Lie down.”

She didn’t move.

“Owen, come on, come on,” I said. “You don’t want to…this isn’t you.”

“I’m in too deep. Too deep. One of you, or the two of you, are going to say it and I’m going to record it, how you killed the motherfucker, and how much money you made from it. Either she’ll talk because she doesn’t want to be a scarred lab specimen for the rest of her life, or you’ll talk to protect her, or she’ll talk after I start shooting you. You,” he said at Allison again, “you little whore,” pronouncing it who-er like they did in the neighborhoods when we were young. “Do it! Lie down. You’ll be much happier if I start at your feet instead of your face.”

Whimpering, fearful, she lay on her back, looking up. Still clutching her handbag.