The Ranger

by Angi Morgan

  Blaine had already reported the robbery in progress and had been advised to wait for backup. He wasn’t a fool; he could see that he was easily outgunned since he carried only his Glock and an extra clip.

  But he left the driver’s door hanging open on his rental car and ran across the parking lot crowded with customers’ cars. How many potential hostages were inside that bank? How many potential casualties were there, with the way the robbers were firing those automatic weapons? Blaine couldn’t wait for help—not when so many innocent people were in danger.

  Ducking low, he shoved open the doors and burst into the bank lobby. “FBI!” he called out to calm the fears of the screaming and crying people.

  But his entrance incited the robbers. Glass shattered behind him, as bullets whizzed over his head and through the windows, falling like rain over the customers lying faces down on the tile floor. The interior walls, which were glass partitions separating the offices from the main lobby, shattered, as well.

  More people screamed and sobbed.

  Blaine took cover behind one of the cement-and-steel pillars that held up the high ceiling of the modern building. He held out his hand, advising the customers to stay down as he surveyed them. Except for some cuts from the flying glass, nobody looked mortally wounded. None of the shots had hit anyone. Yet.

  “Campbell,” the security guard called out from behind another pillar. “You picked the right time to show up.” The older man, who was also a friend, had called him here with suspicions that the bank was going to be robbed. Obviously Blaine’s former boot-camp drill instructor’s instincts were as sharp as ever. He had been right—except about Blaine.

  He was too late. The robbers already carried bags overflowing with cash. If only he’d arrived earlier, before they’d gotten what they wanted...

  He couldn’t arrest them all on his own.

  “Stay down!” one of the robbers yelled, as he fired his automatic rifle again.

  A woman cried out as another robber tangled a gloved hand in her dark hair and pulled her up from the floor. She was close to one of the wrecked offices, so maybe she worked for the bank or had been meeting with one of the bank officers. She turned toward Blaine, her eyes wide with fear as if beseeching him for help.

  But before he could take aim on the robber holding her, the security guard, armed only with a small-caliber handgun, stepped from behind his pillar. “Let her go!” Daryl Williams shouted as he fired at them.

  “Sarge, get down,” Blaine shouted.

  But his advice came too late as a bullet struck the security guard’s chest and blood spread across his gray uniform. The woman shrieked—either in reaction to Sarge getting shot or because she was afraid she might be next.

  Blaine cursed, stepped out from behind the pillar and fired frantically back. One of the mask-wearing bank robbers spun around, as if Blaine had struck him. But he probably wore a bulletproof vest because he didn’t drop to the floor as the guard had. Instead the robber hurried toward the back of the bank with the other zombies. One of them dragged along that terrified young woman. But now she stared back at Sarge instead of Blaine, her gaze full of fear and concern for the fallen security guard. Blaine scrambled over to his friend’s side. The man wore his iron-gray hair in a military cut. He may have retired from the service, but he was still a soldier. “Hang in there, Sarge.”

  “Assist...assist.” Daryl Williams tried to speak through the blood gurgling out of his mouth.

  “I already called it in when I pulled up and heard the shots. Help is coming,” Blaine promised, even though they both knew it would be too late.

  Williams weakly shook his head. “Assist...manager...”

  “The hostage?”

  Daryl nodded even as his eyes rolled back into his head. He was gone.

  And so was the woman. Of course Sergeant Williams would want Blaine to rescue her—the civilian. Remembering the stark fear on her pale face, Blaine snapped into action and hurried toward the back of the bank. Alarms wailed and lights flashed as the security door stood open to an alley. If it closed, he wouldn’t be able to open it again. That must have been why the robbers had taken their hostage out the back, so she could open the security door for them. But why not leave her? Why take her along?

  Blaine caught the door before it swung shut and pointed his gun into the alley. Bullets chiseled chips off the brick around the door as the bank robbers fired at him. If they had a getaway car parked in the alley, they obviously hadn’t driven it away yet. He couldn’t let them leave with the hostage or else nobody would probably ever see the young woman again. He had barely seen her long enough to give a description beyond dark hair and eyes.

  Blaine risked a glance through the crack of the door and more bullets pinged off the steel. But he caught a glimpse of white metal—a van—as the side door opened. Another door slammed. The driver’s? He couldn’t let them get the hostage inside the vehicle, so he threw the bank door all the way open and burst into the alley. A shot struck him in the chest, but he kept going despite the impact of the bullet hitting his vest.

  After his honorable discharge from active duty, he had thought the last thing he would miss was the helmet. He had hated the weight and the heat of it. But he could actually use one now—to protect himself from a head shot. More bullets struck his vest.

  He returned fire, his shots glancing off the side of the van before one shattered the glass of the driver’s window. Hopefully he’d struck the son of a bitch. But he didn’t wait to find out; instead, he reached out for the hostage that one of the damn zombie robbers was pulling through the open side door. He caught the young woman’s arm and jerked her backward as he fired into the van. The engine revved, and the vehicle burst forward, tires squealing.

  But just in case the occupants fired back at them, he pushed the hostage to the ground and covered the young woman with his body. And that was when he realized she wasn’t just terrified for herself but probably also for the child she carried.

  She was pregnant.

  The van kept going, but someone fired out the open back doors of it. And more bullets struck him, stealing his breath.

  * * *

  MAGGIE JENKINS’S THROAT was raw and her voice hoarse from screaming, but even though the robbers—dressed in those horrible zombie costumes—were gone, she wanted to scream again. She didn’t want to scream out of fear for herself but for the man who lay on top of her. His body had gone limp as the breath left it.

  He had been shot so many times. But he’d kept coming to her rescue like a golden-haired superhero. And then he’d covered her body with his, taking more shots to his back.

  He had to be dead. Why had he interrupted the robbery in progress and risked his own life? He had claimed to be an FBI agent, but why would he have been alone? Why wouldn’t he have waited for more agents and for local backup before bursting into the bank?

  “Please, please be alive,” she murmured, her voice no louder than a whisper. She grasped his shoulders—his impossibly wide shoulders—and eased him back. Something cold and metallic hung from his neck and pressed against her chest. A badge.

  So he really was a lawman. But how had he known the bank was being robbed? When the robbers rushed the bank, she hadn’t had the time or the nerve to push the silent alarm beneath her desk before bullets had shattered the glass walls of her office.

  Maybe one of the tellers or Mr. Hardy, the bank manager, had pushed an alarm. Whatever the FBI agent had driven to the bank hadn’t had sirens or lights. She hadn’t even known he was there until he pushed open the lobby doors. But, then again, she had hardly been able to hear anything over all of those gunshots. Her ears rang from the deafening noise.

  But now she heard his gasp as he caught his breath again. He stared down at her, his face so close that she picked up on all the nuances in his eyes. They were a deep green with flecks of gold that made them glitter. His body, long and muscular, tensed against hers. He moved the hand that was not holding his weapon to the
asphalt and pushed up, levering himself off her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He was apologizing to her? For what? Saving her life? Maybe shock had settled in, or maybe his good looks and his concern had struck her dumb. Usually she wasn’t silent; usually people complained that she talked too much.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Her hands covered her stomach, and something shifted beneath her palm. She sighed with relief that her baby was moving, flailing his tiny fists and kicking his tiny feet as if trying to fight off his mother’s attackers.

  But it was too late. This man had already fought them off for her. Of course her baby shouldn’t be fighting to protect her; it was Maggie’s job to protect him or her...

  “Are you all right?” the man asked again. He slid his gun into a holster beneath his arm, and then he lifted her from the ground as easily as if she were half her size.

  “How are you alive?” she asked in wonder.

  He reached for his shirt and tore the buttons loose. The blue cotton parted to reveal a black vest. The badge swung back against it.

  She was no longer close enough to read all the smaller print, but she identified the big brass-colored letters. “You really are an FBI agent? I thought you just said that to scare the robbers.”

  And she’d thought he had been a little crazy to try that when the robbers had had bigger guns than his. But maybe announcing his presence had scared the robbers into leaving quickly because they’d worried that backup would come.

  Where was it, though?

  “I’m Special Agent Blaine Campbell,” he introduced himself.

  “How did you get here so quickly?” she asked, still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t a superhero. “How did you know the bank was being robbed?”

  He shook his head and turned back to the building. “I didn’t know that it was being robbed today. Sarge—Daryl Williams—called me a few days ago with concerns.”

  She gasped as she relived the security guard getting shot, flinching at the sound of the shot, at the image of him falling. He hadn’t been wearing a vest, but he’d stepped out from behind that pillar anyway—undoubtedly to save her. “Is Sarge okay?”

  The agent shook his head again, but he didn’t speak, as if too overwhelmed for words. He had called Mr. Williams Sarge, so he must have known him well. Maybe Mr. Williams had once been his drill instructor, as he had been her fiancé’s six years ago. The older man worked only part-time at the bank for something to do since he retired from the military.

  If only he hadn’t been there today...

  If only he hadn’t tried to save her...

  The tears that had been burning her eyes brimmed over and began to slide down her face. She had just lost her fiancé a few months ago, and now she had lost another connection to him because Sarge had really known him. Not only had he trained him, but he’d also kept in touch with Andy over the years. He’d worried about him. He’d known that Andy shouldn’t have joined the Marines; he hadn’t been strong enough—physically or emotionally—to handle it. He had barely survived his first two deployments, and he had died on the first day of his last one.

  Sarge had come for Andy’s funeral and never left—intent on taking care of Maggie and her unborn baby since Andy was now unable to.

  Strong arms wrapped around her, offering comfort when she suspected he needed it himself. Blaine Campbell had lost a man he’d obviously respected and cared about. So she hugged him back, clinging to him—until tires squealed and the back door of the bank burst open to the alley.

  Guns cocked and voices shouted, “Get down! Get down!”

  Fear filled her that the robbers had returned. She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t look at them again, couldn’t see those horrific zombie costumes again. When she and Andy had been in middle school, his older brother had sneaked them into an R-rated zombie movie, and she’d been terrified of them ever since, even to the point where she didn’t go to Halloween parties and even hid in the dark so no trick-or-treaters would come to her door.

  But they kept coming to her.

  Had they returned to make certain she and the agent were dead?

  Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Childs

  ISBN-13: 9781460378724

  The Ranger

  Copyright © 2015 by Angela Platt

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