Page 100 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

The gymnasium doors were heavy. Metal. I could hear voices on the other side. A man’s voice, low and controlled. And then a voice I would recognize in a hurricane, in a bombing, in the complete and total silence of the void.

Chloe.

“Please,” she was saying. “Please, just let her go. She is a child. She is six years old. Whatever you want, take it from me, but let her go.”

I eased the door open. One inch. Two. Enough to see inside.

The gymnasium was large. Open. Basketball hoops at either end, bleachers pushed back against the walls. In the center, a man was standing with a gun pressed against the side of Emma’s head.

Jonathan Marshall.

I had never seen him before. But I knew it was him. The expensive clothes, out of place in a school gymnasium. The controlled posture, the arrogance that radiated off him like heat from a fire. And the face. Clean-cut. Handsome in the way that certain men are handsome, the kind that comes with money and maintenance and the absolute belief that the world exists for your benefit.

Emma was in front of him. His hand gripping her arm, his gun against her temple. She was not crying. Her face was white and her eyes were enormous but she was not crying, and the bravery of that, the impossible courage of a six-year-old standing still with a gun to her head, nearly brought me to my knees.

Chloe was ten feet away. On her knees. Her hands up. Pleading. Her face streaked with tears and her voice cracking and the raw, animal terror of a mother watching her child in the hands of a monster.

One more man stood to the side. Armed. Watching the doors. Watching Chloe. I marked his position. Filed it. Planned.

I caught Chloe’s eyes.

She saw me. Through the crack in the door. Her eyes widened, a fraction, a movement so small that only someone looking for it would see it. I held her gaze. Put my finger to my lips.

She understood. Her face did not change. Her voice did not waver. She kept talking, kept begging, kept holding Jonathan’s attention while I positioned myself.

I slipped through the door. Low. Along the wall, behind the bleachers, moving with the silence that had been trained into me in places where sound meant death. The second man was facing Chloe. His back was partially to me. A mistake. A fatal mistake in a combat zone, and this was a combat zone now.

I reached the edge of the bleachers. Twenty feet from Jonathan. Fifteen from the second man. Emma was between me and Jonathan, her small body a shield he was using without shame, and the angle was tight. Tighter than I wanted. But I had made tighter shots in worse conditions with more at stake. No. Not more at stake. Nothing had ever been more at stake than this.

I aimed.

The shot hit Jonathan in the right shoulder. His gun arm. The impact spun him sideways and his grip on Emma loosened and his gun fell from fingers that had gone nerveless.

“Emma, run!” I shouted.

She ran. Straight at me. Her legs pumping, her green eyes locked on mine, running the way children run when they see their parent, with total commitment and total trust.

Jonathan was on the ground. Clutching his shoulder. His face contorted with pain and fury. But he was not done. His left hand found the gun. Lifted it. And as Emma ran toward me, he fired.

The shot hit Emma’s foot.

She screamed. The sound of it was something I will carry for the rest of my life, the scream of my daughter in pain, high and sharp and cutting through the gymnasium like a blade through my chest. She stumbled, fell, and I was there. I was already there, already moving, already closing the distance, and I caught her before she hit the ground.

I scooped her up with both arms. She clung to me, her face buried in my neck, her body shaking, her foot bleeding. I held her against my chest and turned my body so that I was between her and Jonathan, shielding her with everything I had.

Chloe was running. She hit us at full speed, her arms going around both of us, her body adding another layer of protection around Emma. Her face was destroyed with fear and relief and the particular agony of a mother who had watched her child get shot.

“Mama,” Emma whimpered. “My foot hurts.”

“I know, baby. I know. We are here. We are right here.”

The second man was on the ground. I did not remember when that happened. The police must have entered through the back. Officers were flooding the gymnasium now, weapons drawn, voices shouting commands. Two of them converged on Jonathan, who was sitting on the floor with blood seeping through his shirt and a look on his face that made my stomach turn.

He was laughing.

Low and quiet and controlled, the laugh of a man who had lost the battle but believed he had won the war. He looked at Chloe. Then at Emma. Then at me. And his eyes, flat and cold and empty of anything that resembled human empathy, held mine with the kind of challenge that comes from a man who believes he is untouchable.

“She will always be mine,” he said. “You can shoot me. You can lock me up. But she was mine first. And the girl. The girl has my last name on a paper somewhere. You are nothing. You are a lumberjack playing house.”