Today's Reading
"What the hell, Mom?" he demanded.
"Someone tried to kill you," she grunted, winded by falling that hard. "You two stay behind the podium. I'm going after the shooter. Stay down."
She rolled off Mitch, untangled her legs from Nancy's, and pushed clumsily to her feet. God, she hated tight skirts and high heels. She never wore them in the field for this exact reason. She ran awkwardly in the stupid stilettos to the far edge of the stage and the table with her purse. Her hair had come out of its carefully coifed granny bun and tangled around her face.
Someone tried to kill my son.
That truth roared through her like a wildfire and, where it passed through, left blackened certainty in her heart that this was somehow her fault.
She grabbed her bag and ran for the steps at the side of stage leading down to the floor of the theater, reaching inside the bag to grip her Ruger SR40c, a compact but powerful handgun. The shooter would race down the stairs to the lobby any second. She had to get there first. Spot the shooter and follow him or her. Take them out. Nobody shot at her boy and lived.
A strong hand grabbed her arm, spinning her partway around. "Have you lost your mind?" her mother hissed.
"A gunshot. At Mitch. Have to go—" She yanked her arm free from her mother's grip and bolted forward. Except as she emerged from behind the heavy velvet curtains onto the stage itself, she abruptly saw hundreds of eyes riveted on her in avid interest.
The press. All those video cameras. No way could she pull out a highly customized shooter's weapon and flash it in front of all these people. Even she wasn't that suicidal. Thirty years of iron discipline, of always—always— maintaining her cover, belatedly kicked in. Reluctantly, she let go of the pistol still in her purse and drew out her empty hand.
A rectangle of light up on the balcony flashed and then disappeared. The shooter was getting away. Swearing luridly under her breath, she skidded to a stop.
She wouldn't catch the shooter now if she tried. And if she sprinted out of here, it would no doubt make the evening news. Supremely frustrated, she glared at everyone and no one in particular.
"Someone just tried to shoot my son," she said grimly.
Except it was just as likely the shooter was her enemy and not his. Not that she dared to say those words to the press. Or to Mitch, for that matter.
An excited buzz went up. The more savvy reporters in the bunch, likely the ones with combat experience, ducked away from the glare of the lights and looked over their shoulders warily.
A pair of hotel security guards aggressively stepped out of the wings of the stage, and one of them said, "Ma'am, nobody shot at your son."
Irrationally enraged, she glared at him. "Oh, yeah? Let's go look for the bullet I heard fly over our heads." She pointed at the other one. "You. Do your job and protect my family. Get my son and his wife under cover. Now."
One of the men peeled off to where Mitch and Nancy crouched behind the podium.
Still furious, she stomped for the back of the stage, glaring the other security guard into following her. She glanced over her shoulder to track the rough trajectory of the bullet from balcony to podium to back here.
"Do you have a flashlight?" she asked the dubious guy following her.
He dug a small penlight out of his pocket and handed it to her.
It took a minute, and the hole was lower than she'd expected—the shooter must've rested his weapon on the back of the last row of seats in the balcony instead of shooting around them from the floor the way she would've—but she found the finger-sized round hole in a wood panel. She felt the hole, and sure enough, its margin was still warm to the touch.
Someone tried to kill my son.
This time, when the wildfire of panic passed, steely determination to find the shooter and take him out rolled through her. Nobody messed with her family and walked away from it alive.
The security guy's eyes widened as he, too, touched the hole and felt the heat. He pulled out a cell phone to talk urgently into it.
"The shooter's long gone," she told him in disgust. "Your people won't find him. But I would like to take a look at the security footage of the hotel lobby for the past few minutes."
"That's a job for the police, ma'am."
...
