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I tried to think despite my fear. The man didn’t look like Mortensen. He must’ve been a third guy in the conspiracy. The guy in the brown Honda. That meant Gabby was still in danger. Mortensen would kill her.
Crak!The man shot inside the room at an angle.
“Ahh!”I cried out like he’d hit me. In the next moment, the man began walking toward the room to finish me off. The suppressed muzzle of the gun inched into my view. His right hand was wrapped around the handle.
Now.
I lunged and brought the glass shard down hard on his hand, slicing across the row of bones. The man shouted in pain. Blood squirted from the gash in a gruesome fan.
He dropped the gun. I dropped the bloody shard.
I barreled into him with all of my strength, tackling him. I landed the first punch, then the second. He connected with a right that rattled my skull, but I jabbed him under the jaw, again and again until he lost consciousness.
I staggered to my feet, my chest heaving. The gun lay on the floor. I couldn’t kill him, but I had to immobilize him.
I picked up the gun and shot him in the lower leg.
I ran down the hall to the exit, pocketing the gun.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I flew through the doors, my hand bleeding. I looked wildly around for Gabby. I didn’t see her. The demonstrators had migrated to the east side, shouting, chanting, and pumping signs. Media jostled them with video cameras and boom mics. My father and mother were in the crowd, with him a head taller.
Suddenly the crowd surged to the building. I looked to my left and saw Gabby far from me, at the other side of the crowd. She was climbing up on a raised platform with a bullhorn.
I scanned the crowd for Mortensen. I spotted him, moving around the back of the crowd. I had a gun, but I couldn’t shoot safely.
“Gabby, get down!” I shouted, frantic, but she couldn’t hear me.
Mortensen stopped. I sensed he was in position to shoot. He was too far from me, but not from my father.
“Dad, behind you!” I screamed, waving my hands to get his attention.
My father spotted me, pivoted, and suddenly plowed into Mortensen like the power forward he used to be. He took Mortensen to the ground. A gun went off with a deafening report and flew into the air.
“Active shooter!” “It’s a shooter!” “He has a gun!” The crowd erupted into terrified chaos. People ran in all directions for their lives. Cameras and phones hit the ground. A young woman was almost trampled. My mother started screaming, almost knocked over in the melee.
I weaved to her, scooped her up, and shielded her with my body. The frantic crowd buffeted us. We fought our way toward my father. The crowd was clearing fast. A police cruiser veered around the corner, its siren bursting into sound.
My father was on top of Mortensen, punching him. The two men grappled. Mortensen punched back, hitting my father in the head, then scrambled out from under him, and ran. Men in the crowd chased him into the parking lot. Cops leapt from cruisers and followed on their heels.
“Dad!” I reached my father, my heart pounding. I threw myself on the ground. “Dad, are you okay?”
“I got him,” my father said, smiling. He turned over, dazed and sweaty.
I looked down in horror. His white shirt was in tatters. Dark red blood oozed from his gut, spreading on his chest. His breathing was ragged.
“Paul!” my mother screamed, kneeling at his side.
“Dad!” Gabby cried.
My father’s eyes rolled back in his head.
In the next moment, he lost consciousness.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
My mother, Gabby, and I sat huddled together, numb and stricken in the ER waiting room while my father was in surgery. Everything that happened after he got shot had blurred into a single horror. He’d bled so profusely that I’d used my jacket as a compress. An ambulance arrived quickly, and EMTs intubated him in the parking lot, then whisked him to the hospital with my mother. Cops had arrested Mortensen and the guy I shot, then I’d taken a distraught Gabby to my car. We’d raced to the hospital, where they dressed the cut on my hand.
