Chapter 15 - The Shot in the Dark
Three shots went off in less than two seconds.
I hit the floor and covered my head.
Someone screamed.
Flashlights cut through the darkness.
“Hands! Show me your hands!”
I heard Evan running.
Then a body slammed into metal shelving.
Another shot.
A grunt.
The emergency lights flickered on.
Brooke was on the floor near the wall, holding her shoulder. Blood seeped between her fingers.
Dad’s chair had tipped over.
I crawled toward him.
“Dad.”
“I’m okay,” he gasped. “Get Brooke.”
Even after everything, that was who he was.
Officer Hale appeared from the hallway with a cut above his eye and one arm hanging stiffly.
“Claire, stay down!”
Detective Reed ran past us with two officers.
Evan had disappeared into the rear loading area.
Brooke stared at me.
“I didn’t know he would shoot me.”
The sentence was so absurd I almost laughed.
“You thought he was only going to shoot the rest of us?”
Her face crumpled.
“I messed up.”
“That’s what you call this?”
She started crying.
I wanted to hate her cleanly. It would have been easier.
Instead I remembered the little girl who once punched a bully for stealing my lunch money.
That girl was gone, but knowing she had existed made the woman in front of me harder to understand.
Paramedics rushed in.
They freed Dad and treated Brooke.
Then a crash sounded outside.
Reed’s voice came over the radio.
“Suspect stole a vehicle. Heading east.”
Evan had escaped.
Police cars tore away from the warehouse.
Dad gripped my wrist before paramedics lifted him.
“Claire,” he whispered.
“What?”
“The money isn’t the worst thing Evan did.”
I leaned closer.
Dad’s eyes filled with anger.
“He caused the explosion at the Baltimore facility.”
I froze.
Three years earlier, a Bennett Medical warehouse fire had killed two employees.
It had been ruled an electrical accident.
Dad shook his head.
May you like
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Then his eyes closed.
