He waited.
"Okay," Sarah was saying. Her voice was steady. It was steadier than Damien would have believed possible. "Okay, honey. I'm opening it. See? I'm opening it right now. It's all right."
She pressed the key. The drawer popped open with a ding.
The kid flinched at the sound.
"Put it in a bag. Put it in a bag!"
"I'm going to reach under the counter for a bag. Okay? I'm just getting a bag."
"Do it!"
Dominic slid out of the booth.
He did it slowly. He did it with both hands visible and open at his sides. He stood up the way an old man stands up after a long meal, with a small grunt, one hand on the edge of the table. He did not turn toward the register. He turned toward the restroom hallway, the way a man would if he needed to use the bathroom and had decided that, gun or no gun, he really needed to go.
The kid swung toward him. "Hey! Hey! Sit down! I said nobody move!"
Dominic stopped.
He raised his hands, slowly, to about the height of his shoulders. Palms out. Fingers spread.
"Easy, son," he said. "I'm just an old man. I'm not going to do anything."
His voice was low and calm and kind. It was the voice he had used with Damien on the floor of this same diner. It was the voice, Damien realized, that he must have used a hundred times, in places a lot worse than this, with people a lot more dangerous than this frightened kid.
"Sit down!"
"I will. I'll sit right down. I've got a bad knee, though. I'm going to sit down at the counter here, closer to you, so I don't have to walk all the way back. That okay?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He took two slow steps toward the counter, still with his hands up, and sat down heavily on a stool. He was now about six feet from the kid. He had put himself between the gun and the window booth with the young couple in it.
The kid's eyes darted between him and Sarah.
"You're doing fine," Dominic said quietly. "You're doing just fine. Nobody's going to try anything. Nobody here wants anybody to get hurt. You don't either. I can tell you don't."
"Shut up."
"All right."
"Just shut up."
"I'm shutting up."
Sarah had found a paper bag. She was emptying the register into it, one stack of bills at a time, slowly. Her hands were not shaking at all.
The kid was breathing hard. His eyes were wet. Up close, Damien could see things he had not seen before. The sweatshirt hung off him like he had lost weight fast. There were sores at the corners of his mouth. His sneakers had holes in both toes.
He was not a robber. He was just a kid who was out of everything.
"What's your name, son?" Dominic asked.
"I said shut up."
"I know. I'm sorry. I just like to know who I'm talking to."
The kid didn't answer for a long moment.
Then, so quietly that Damien almost missed it: "Tyler."
"Tyler. I'm Dom." Dominic's hands were still up, still open. "Tyler, can I tell you something? Just one thing, and then I'll be quiet."
Tyler didn't say no.
"There's about three hundred dollars in that register on a Tuesday night. Maybe less. I know because I've been coming in here for six years. Three hundred dollars. And there's a camera right there above the pie case." He nodded toward it, slowly, without moving his hands. "That camera's been watching you since you walked in. They're going to know your face by morning. Three hundred dollars isn't going to get you far enough to matter. You know that, don't you?"
Tyler's face crumpled a little.
"I just need—" he said. "I just—"
"I know. I know you do." Dominic's voice was almost gentle now. "But you haven't done anything yet that can't be undone. Nobody's hurt. You can still put that thing down on the counter and walk out that door, and right now that's all this is. A kid who had a real bad night. But if that thing goes off, Tyler, even by accident, even if you never meant it, then this is the night that decides the whole rest of your life. And it'll decide it for the woman you shot too. And her two boys. And her grandkids."
Tyler looked at Sarah.
Sarah looked back at him. She had stopped emptying the register. She set the paper bag down on the counter between them and folded her hands.
"I've got four grandkids, honey," she said softly. "The littlest one's three."
Tyler's hand was shaking so hard now that the gun was moving in wild circles.
And then it was over.
Damien never saw Dominic move. One instant the old man was sitting on the stool with his hands at shoulder height. The next instant his left hand was wrapped around the top of the pistol's slide and his right hand was around Tyler's wrist, and the barrel was pointed at the floor, and then it was pointed at the ceiling, and then it wasn't in Tyler's hand at all. It was in Dominic's, and Dominic had already dropped the magazine out of it onto the counter and racked the slide to eject the round in the chamber, which skittered across the Formica and fell into the pie case with a tiny clink.
Tyler stood frozen, staring at his own empty hand.
Dominic set the empty gun on the counter, well out of reach, and turned the kid gently around by the shoulders.
He did not throw him. He did not twist anything. He just guided the boy down onto the stool he had been sitting on a moment ago and kept one hand resting on his shoulder.
Tyler started to cry.
It came out of him in big ugly sobs, his whole skinny body shaking with them, and Dominic stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and didn't say anything for a long time.