Page 40 of Misunderstood Hacker

Brock rose to his feet. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good. I need you stay here. I’ll go check it out.” Brock grabbed the glock out of his waistband.

The need to protect Brock’s mom overwhelmed me. “I am not staying here by myself, waiting to find out if something happens.”

“I don’t have time to argue about this, Jessica. Stay.” Brock took off at a dead run toward the house.

* * *

Brock

I needed to get back to the house and assist Mom. I had the feeling she would try to protect herself and the farmhands. Hopefully, the noise of the cars coming down the road gave her fair warning. Praying that Jessica listened to what I said, I took off at a dead run toward the house.

Once I got close,I hunched down and shuffled around the side of the house.When I reached the kitchen, I peered through the windows. Mom was sitting on a chair at the dining room table. A short, chubby guy with long, greasy hair had a gun pointed at her. He didn’t look like any of the photos I had pulled on Jessica’s previous case. This man looked like a hired thug. From the fire in Mom’s eyes, she was livid.

I could hear the man talking inside. He had a South American accent and was demanding to know where Jessica and I were. Mom kept playing dumb as if she hadn’t seen us. When the man pulled back and hit her, I couldn’t wait any longer. I broke through the door. Another man reacted and trained his gun at me while the first man reached down and pulled Mom in front of him like a shield.

“Give us the girl, and nobody will get hurt,” the man with his gun trained on me said.He had long, straggly brown hair and a scar down the right side of his face.

There was no way I was going to tell them Jessica was near. I noticed a flash to the side of the window.Jessica had not listened and had followed me back to the house. I needed to get this under control before they saw her.

I shifted my gun from the man who had his trained on me to the man holding Mom. But I couldn’t get a good shot. He was cowering behind her.“Why don’t you face me like a man instead of being a coward, hiding behind an elderly woman?”

The evil glare Mom gave me would have sent some men running for cover.

He was about to respond when a squeak came from the living room.The men looked at each other questioningly, and I knew immediately that it had to be Jessica.Before they could move toward the door, Jessica walked through it with Mom’s shotgun in her hand.

The man holding Mom backed into a corner so she was still in front of him. “I told you to stay at the lake!”

“I read a report on the Bureau of Justice’s website a couple weeks ago that said seven percent of all home burglaries experience some form of violence. I couldn’t sit back and let something happen to your mom.” Jessica shifted her gun to point at the man closest to her.“Looks like the statistics were right in this case.”

I really didn’t need her to point out the obvious.We had to figure out a way to get out of this mess.Jessica had her gun trained on the man not holding Mom.Maybe if I could get the guy talking, he would make a move, and I could get a shot.

“You’re not going to make it out of this alive,” I told him. “We outnumbered you, and I called the police. They will be here soon.”

The man holding Mom pointed his gun at Jessica. “If she comes with us, nobody will get hurt.We’re here for the bounty on her head. That’s all.”

Mom went limp in her captor’s arms, causing him to lose his grip on her. She reached for her hip, and a moment later, I heard the sound of a gun. Understanding what my mom had just done, I pulled the trigger and dropped the other guy.

“Now I have blood all over the floor.I wish, when people showed up like this, they would let me know ahead of time so I could put down a tarp.”

Jessica was still holding the gun, shaking. I walked over to her and took the gun from her hands. I pulled her into my arms, and she started to weep. “I almost got your mom killed.”

Before I had time to respond, my mom replied, “Oh, dear, don’t worry about me. It’s been a few years since someone has tried to kill me. It really gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it?” Mom turned back to the body she was dragging out of the kitchen door.

“Did your mom say people have tried to kill her before? Why? She’s so sweet.”

On the outside, my mom looked like the sweetest person, like a little old lady you wanted to wrap up in a hug.“Mom worked for MI6 before I was born. She was one of their top assassins. Every so often, someone tries to take her out.”

“I’ll have the farm hands dispose of the body. Brock, go grab the cleaning supplies.”

We spent the rest of the night cleaning and listening to Mom’s stories from her time in MI6. We decided we’d head home in the morning. We needed to stop these men from hurting anyone else.

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