I just realized how this story needs to thematically end.
The cult leader was Winslow. Of course he was. And, away from his shop, the guy reeked of cultist. Old blood, and sweat stinking of crazy. Norm would have had nightmares featuring that smell, except that the Bureau had a pill for that.
There had been three of them in the room, and the bastards had guns of their own. They couldn’t shoot worth a damn, unsurprisingly, but taking two of them down had cost Norm a bullet to the side during the shootout. More like a furrow that didn’t get an artery, but it hurt enough like a motherfucker to tempt the agent into not putting a bullet in the shooter’s head. It’d serve him right to die of that gut wound, he thought, but then he did for the bastard anyway. You never know when they’ll pop up again, he rationalized. Smarter this way.
Winslow hadn’t been armed. He had put up his hands like a good little prisoner even before the gunfight was over, too. “I’ll go quietly,” he told Norm — and then doubled over from the agent’s snap-kick to the stomach.
Before Winslow could straighten up, Norm shoved him into a chair, using the cultists’ own quick-zips to secure him. “It ain’t up to you how you go, asshole,” he told him. “How much do your minions love you?”