Page 22 of Deadly Hacker

He fired two shots, one in the gunman’s left leg and one in his right arm. The criminal dropped to the floor, howling with enraged agony. His gun clattered a couple feet away, and Officer Finley dove forward to kick it under a teller’s booth.

“Don’t move!” Finley shouted, pointing his pistol at the man on the shiny marble floor.

As soon as they caught a whiff of safety, many of the hostages got to their feet and bolted to the front, bursting out into the blinding sunshine. As the hostages poured out, cops came rushing in.

Leaving Finley to pin down the gunman, Rad dashed to the staircase and shut the door, pressing his back against it while he scoured the GPS tracker on his phone. Emma Jean was still blinking, a little brighter now. But the signal was so garbled, so inconsistent. Rad knew that it would be a much clearer signal up in the gym. She had to be somewhere else.

Somewhere underground.

He took the stairs in threes and reached another keypad-operated door that read BASEMENT - EMPLOYEE ACCESS ONLY. Rad quickly found the correlating code and typed it in. The door swung open and he ran inside, moving faster than his eyes could adjust. But he didn’t care. He could feel that she was close, and he couldn’t stop until he saw her again.

In the darkness and the cobwebs, he heard muffled singing and clapping. He followed the sound to another locked room in the corner of the basement. This door, however, didn’t have a keypad. It had a traditional manual lock. He couldn’t get in without breaking it, which would take a little time.

But perhaps he could be allowed in.

Rad knocked on the door. The singing stopped. There was a shushing sound, then silence. The hacker leaned close against the door and said, “It’s Uncle Rad. I’m here for Grace.”

The lock clicked and Rad jumped back as the door opened with a bang. Emma Jean’s beautiful face was right in front of him. The look of relief that washed over her gorgeous features made Rad’s heart stop.

When she threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest, he wondered if she could feel his heart speed right back up. He held her tightly, patting her back and whispering words of comfort.

He saw the children and a couple of parents sitting in a circle on the floor in the storage room. It all made sense. Emma Jean was entertaining the kids and comforting the parents while she kept them safe down here in the basement.

It didn’t take long for the police to filter down into the basement, too. They rushed past Rad and Emma Jean to help move the kids and parents to safety and possible medical attention.

In the midst of the chaos, Rad understood one thing for certain: though it was early days, Emma Jean was the one. The girl he’d thought could never exist. The girl who made him want to be more, to be better. And he was going to do whatever it took to keep her in his arms, just like this.

CHAPTER10

EMMA JEAN

“Thank you for being here.I think I speak for us all when I say how good it is to see everyone happy and healthy in this room today,” Stacy said to open the meeting. “But what transpired here on Friday is no casual matter.”

It was the Monday following the most terrifying Little Tykes’ Day Emma Jean could ever have imagined, and the whole gym team was gathered together in the meeting room to discuss what had happened. Stacy’s usual cheery attitude was dampened. She was pissed. Emma Jean knew that everyone reacted differently to major stress events, and Stacy was the angry kind.

“I want to understand how on earth this could’ve happened. Quinn, Kaylee: it was your responsibility to keep our organization and our team safe. I know it’s been difficult finding someone to fill Franklin’s position, but your negligence could have cost lives,” Stacy said.

Quinn and Kaylee looked miserable, with deep bags under their eyes, swollen from crying and staying up all hours of the night doing damage control. Emma Jean felt a surge of sympathy for them. After all, it wasn’t like they had expected something so awful to happen.

“Well, we have been holding interviews nearly every day for the past couple of weeks,” Quinn spoke up meekly. “We even narrowed the pool down to a few promising candidates.”

“Unfortunately, one of those candidates turned out to be the same man who brought a gun to Saguaro Bank on Friday,” sighed Kaylee.

“How could you allow such a massive lapse in judgment to occur?” demanded Stacy.

“To be fair, the man showed no signs of danger during the interview process,” said Quinn. “And he made up his entire resume. After a little more digging, we found out that none of his glowing references were real.”

“But it wasn’t until after you gave this man a thorough tour of not just the gym but the entire building that you did your due diligence,” Stacy accused. “Why?”

“In their defense,” Emma Jean broke in, unable to stop herself, “Quinn and Kaylee were no doubt following protocol based on the hiring process from when Franklin started working here. Franklin was our security guy for many years, right? So it’s safe to say the protocol is a little out of date.”

“But is it not your job to keep up with modern standards?” Stacy hurled at Kaylee. “And if it was going to be so much trouble filling Franklin’s role, perhaps we should’ve considered that before approving his retirement.”

Emma Jean spoke up again. “Well, I’m relieved that our sweet Franklin was already safely at home with his family on Friday. He was a wonderful employee, but I think we all know that his job was almost more of a formality. He was great at welcoming people to the gymnasium and keeping us in the loop about guests, but he was never really trained in combat or defense. It would be a horrible tragedy for him to be injured or killed by that gunman right on the cusp of retirement. None of us ever expected something so scary to happen here, of all places. And it’s not Quinn and Kaylee’s responsibility to maintain security throughout the building. They only have control of our floor. Right?”

Stacy sighed. “Yes. You have a point.”

“Franklin was working here long before Kaylee and Quinn were even hired,” the yoga teacher went on. “He set the previous standards. Not them.”

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