The Madison Jennings Series Box Set

by Kiara Ashanti

  “Tian Rhee. This is my son, Gyeong, though most people call him George. These are his two friends, Dale and Mako.”

  “OK, George. Just what sort of shitstorm did you find yourself in today?”

  George moved back over to the desk. “Umm, we hacked into the security feeds at the theaters.”

  “Is this happening at other locations?” Bullneck asked, interrupting.

  “No, sir. I don’t think so. Just the Palace.”

  “Putting aside that you broke a dozen federal laws, why would you be hacking into the theater? Free tickets?”

  “No! We, we were trying to see which theaters had the most and best-looking girls,” answered Mako. Saying it out loud made it sound way lamer than when they had hatched the idea.

  None of the officers could hold back chuckles. Mr. Rhee, however, put his hand to his forehead in embarrassment.

  “There’s a lot of death happening at this theater. Is there any way to cut off the feeds and isolate the feed for law enforcement? We need to see what’s happening, but the public does not need to see this.”

  George understood the sentiment, but the words still made him bristle. Cops, always trying to control the flow of information. “No, there isn’t. I sent the feeds out without hiding the code. Even if we cut the ones we set up, others on the web will have already hijacked the signal. I’d have to cut it totally in order to stop it. Even then, some could, probably would, just use my code to get in themselves.”

  Bullneck folded his arms and considered what George had just said. His face did not display happiness at the news. “Can the terrorists see this?”

  “I don’t think they’re web surfing right now,” Dale said, full of teenage snarkiness.

  “Now’s not the time to be a smartass, Dale,” said Mako before anyone else could respond.

  “Sorry . . . you know how I get when I’m nervous.”

  Bullneck glared at the teen a moment longer. When Dale turned away from the heated stare, he focused back on the monitor. “Bring back up all the cameras. We need to see what they are doing now in as many areas as possible.”

  George bent down and clicked a few keys. Several camera shots of the halls could be seen now with the main lobby feed in the middle of the monitor. The shooters were roaming the halls, looking for targets or checking for survivors. Fast movement in the video feed in the lower right caught his attention.

  “Holy shit!”

  Chapter Ten

  Zavier moved quickly to the theater entrance. He could hear gunfire ringing out in the Palace’s hallways. The knowledge cracked open a volcano of icy fear.

  Maddie was out there. He promised Tina he would get her, but the truth was she could be already lost to him. Before his imagination could pull him down that drain, Zavier slammed the cap on it and screwed it tight. He could not allow that possibility to take root.

  He looked out the four-inch window to see if there was a guard in front of it. But the angle was bad. He could see straight out to the right side of the door. The left side was a blind spot. If a shooter was waiting there to cut down anyone that ran out, he could not see him. The evidence on the floor outside the door, however, proved that was exactly what the shooters had done. Icy fear for Maddie again coursed through Zavier’s veins. Again, he quashed it.

  Gun at his side, and ready to draw or retreat, he eased the door open. Slipping through, he moved to the corner of the entrance alcove, using the wall as cover from anyone that walked by.

  “Please don’t,” a desperate voice sounded off in the hallway to his right.

  Zavier moved around the cover of the wall. A shooter was sighting down a rifle at a man and woman on the ground who were shielding two young boys with their bodies. The shooter’s face showed no emotion. He looked calm, collected.

  It was the face of commitment.

  A face Zavier had seen on more than one insurgent moments before they killed a young woman or child unlucky enough to have been born in the wrong religious sect or before blowing themselves to Paradise. He could do nothing for those already dead. But he could save Maddie and the family in front of him.

  Zavier quick stepped over to the shooter’s position. The man was so focused on his targets, he did not notice Zavier until he was right beside him. The shooter had a second to register his surprise before a single shot to the side of the head sent him to the Paradise he no doubt craved.

  Zavier was certain there would be no virgins waiting for him.

  Exclamations more appropriate to a football game than bearing silent witness to a terrorist slaughter burst from the mouths of the teenage boys and two of the officers as they watched the black male move lightning quick and shoot the gunman.

  “Dude, he owned that guy. Shit,” said Dale.

  Bullneck reached for his radio again as he watched the black male on screen step a few feet ahead of the people on the ground. A moment later he was directing the couple and the two kids toward the theater he had exited from.

  “Dispatch?”

  “They see it, man,” said George over his shoulder. “Everyone saw that.”

  “Go 567. Over.”

  “Be advised we have an armed African-American male, most likely a civilian, in the theater.”

  “SWAT has arrived at the location and set up a command center. They have a feed.”

  The words came out in a rush and mashed together.

  “Yo . . . is he staying? Oh man, he’s not leaving. He’s going into the theater,” said Mako, excitement mixed with disbelief cracking his voice.

  George was more subdued. “Who the hell does he think he is, John Wick?”

  The black male moved down the hall quickly until he moved out of the view field for the camera at that location.

  “Follow him,” said Bullneck flatly.

  Zavier moved quickly down the hallway, navigating between the bodies of men, women, and children. The hallway’s walls were covered with blood spatter and bullet holes, and a coppery scent with an underlay of burnt powder permeated the air.

  It hurt to breathe it in knowing that this was happening in America and that one of those bullets might find its way into Maddie. But not breathing was not an option, and neither was speculation. Zavier kept his mind focused on the task at hand, which for the moment meant being ready for more hostiles. Thus far, he had not encountered any more shooters in the hall. He counted that as luck that would fade soon. He had no doubt that each theater had more shooters.

  He stopped as he reached the hallway’s edge, right across from the women’s restroom. It was at the end of the main hallway to the lobby. He would have to cross that space to search it for Maddie. Doing so would leave him exposed.

  He did not mind a gun fight. He had plenty of rounds and supreme confidence in his shooting accuracy, but he needed to find Maddie and get her out. This was not his Die Hard moment.

  He squatted and glanced around the corner. He did not see anyone but could hear voices further down the main hallway. He double-checked behind himself and then darted across the hall into the women’s restroom.

  He stifled a groan when he stepped inside. The walls were covered in bullet holes and blood. Glass and plaster-colored red littered the floor. Women and girls lay dead and bleeding alongside the detritus of the walls, ceiling, and mirrors.

  Hot, fluid anger filled Zavier. Anger at the utter evil that would shoot and kill helpless children. Rage toward people that would cut down soccer moms on Christmas like soldiers in the field. Fury that he would have to quickly and callously search the bodies to make sure none were Maddie.

  He could not push away the fear and possibility that he would see her young body covered with blood among the dead lying before him. Steeling himself, Zavier moved through the bodies, searching and ignoring the adults. For no decent reason, he silently cursed the popularity of The Ranger Apprentice series. Maddie was wearing an Apprentice T-shirt like damn near every other preteen in the theater.

  In the last stall a small, brown-haire
d body lay crumpled in the corner. The Apprentice T-shirt was soaked with blood. Zavier’s hand began shaking as he moved into the stall. He tried to breathe deep to calm himself, but it was no use. His breaths came rapid and shallow. He reached out and pulled the face toward him.

  A long sigh of relief issued from him. It was not Maddie. The thought had not ended before shame covered Zavier like a wet blanket. It may not have been Maddie, but the child was someone’s Maddie. The self-admonishment cleared his thoughts and brought him back to the task at hand, albeit with a new objective. He would get Maddie out, but then he would stay and kill every single gunman he found.

  Zavier stood and turned to leave the stall. He stopped as a thought, more a revelation, scrolled through his mind. “Dumbass,” he muttered.

  Maddie may have insisted she was too old to be led to the restroom with her mother, but she hated public restrooms. She wouldn’t have come to the main one. The baby station bathroom, he thought.

  He moved to exit the restroom, right into the path of a rifle pointing at his face.

  Chapter Eleven

  Zavier jumped backward as automatic gunfire ripped through the space where he had just been standing. Chunks and splinters of drywall exploded into the air. Zavier slipped to the floor, frantically squirming backward. He pointed his gun at the entrance, firing two shots. The shots were blind at best. He had to keep his eyes squinted tight in order to keep debris out of them. If drywall dust got in his eyes, he would be essentially blind.

  If he was blind, he was dead. Then, Maddie would share his fate.

  He only had a moment before the shooter would enter the restroom. Frantic, Zavier scanned the room, seeking an idea to get himself out. Trapped like a rat.

  The cliché statement sprung to the forefront of his mind. The Palace restrooms all had single entrances. There was no way out unless he could walk through a wall.

  The gunman’s shadow moved, signaling his imminent entrance into the restroom. Zavier fired two more rounds. The gunman moved away from the entrance, taking his shadow with him, but Zavier knew he would not be gone long.

  The shooter could wait him out and then enter with reinforcements. Whatever Zavier was going to do, he had to do it now.

  He looked up at the ceiling. The foam coverings were missing, no doubt shot to hell when the people in the restroom had been attacked. The pipe fixtures looked firm. Up it would be, but first he had to distract the shooter.

  Taking a step back, he nearly rolled his ankle as his foot stepped on something. Catching himself, he glanced down and saw a large canister of pepper spray.

  “Allah Akbar!” the shooter rang out.

  Zavier was out of time and options. Without thinking about the worthiness of the idea springing into his head, he kicked the pepper spray canister to the back corner of the entranceway. He shot once in the middle of the wall to keep the shooter back, then sprung onto the toilet and up into the ceiling. He steadied himself on a pipe, took aim, and fired.

  The double crack of the fired shot and resulting flash from the bullet penetrating the tail end of the pressurized container startled the shooter, who had begun rushing into the restroom. The canister exploded toward the entrance, spewing its caustic fumes.

  Zavier did not wait around to see if the cloud of pepper spray had dropped the shooter to the floor. He trusted the science of the spray to do its job, and he needed to move if he did not want to become a victim of his own brilliant idea.

  Again, an unwanted thought intruded into his mind: the image of hero John McClain, scurrying into the elevator shaft in the first Die Hard movie. Except McClain did not have to hold his breath or keep his eyes nearly shut to avoid sprayed capsaicin from getting in them. Zavier had to do both.

  He also had to pray the pipe fittings actually held.

  “Get out of there!” screamed Bullneck as the group looked at a shooter walking toward the restroom they had just watched the unidentified black man walk into.

  “He can’t. The restrooms only have one way in and out,” said George in a monotone.

  A collective intake of breath occurred as they watched the black male start to come out and then jump back inside a moment before the shooter let loose with his gun. The monitor showed a sea of white as the bullets chewed up the wall.

  “He’s toast,” started Dale, but then he leaned forward when he saw the shooter scramble backward. “Shit, what did he do?”

  Bullneck smiled grimly. “The asshole missed. Now we have a standoff. If he goes in, he’s likely to get taken out by whoever that is. But our friend in the restroom can’t get out either.”

  On screen, the shooter pulled an object out of his pocket and spoke into it. A moment passed, and then he nodded and dropped the object to the floor. He raised his rifle and started running toward the restroom.

  “Shit, he’s really done now,” said Dale.

  “Assuming he doesn’t miss this time, otherwise it’s one more asshole terrorist gone.”

  “Officer . . . I realize the moment is tense, but please. Your language,” said Mr. Rhee.

  “Really, Dad. Really?”

  Before Bullneck could respond, a flash on screen jerked everyone’s attention back to the monitor and the events playing out on it. The shooter only made it halfway in before stopping and dropping to the ground, clawing at his throat.

  “What the hell?” said Mako. “What happened? Did the other guy shoot him?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Bullneck’s partner. “Sarge, don’t it look exactly like how a perp drops when we spray ‘em?”

  “Kinda does.”

  George punched a few keys on his keyboard and zoomed in on the video. “I can’t tell if that cloud is the chewed-up wall or spray. Though why he would use spray instead of his gun is a mystery to me. Whatever he did, I don’t see him coming out the entrance.”

  A finger appeared next to George’s head, pointing to another screen.

  “Two guys with guns are headed toward the bathroom. Zoom back out,” said Bullneck.

  George quickly complied and saw the two new shooters enter the camera’s view. They headed toward their companion but stopped about three feet from the entrance. They backed up and then doubled over.

  Mako looked at the screen and then turned to the room, his eyebrow squished in confusion. “They look like they’re coughing.”

  “Definitely pepper spray,” said Bullneck.

  George looked at the officer, confused. “Yeah, but where the f—” Remembering his father was present, he choked on his words before continuing. “Where did he get it or even shoot it? He had no line of sight.”

  “Hell if I know, whiz kid,” said Bullneck. “I just want to know where our guy went.”

  A millisecond after the question rolled off his tongue, something entered the camera’s view from above the bent-over shooters.

  Zavier crouched-walked in the ceiling above the restroom toward the hallway. He moved gingerly to make as little noise as possible and to keep from falling through the ceiling. The brackets holding the pipes and electrical ducts were stronger than most people thought but still not engineered to hold the weight of a six-foot man. With each step, he struggled to keep his weight evenly distributed between the pipes and struts. He was careful not to step on any plastic tubing because he knew for certain they could not hold his weight.

  He could hear the shooter crying in agony from the noxious pepper spray. It gave him a reference point on how far above the main hallway he had moved. Shouts and then hacking coughs sounded off directly beneath him. Help had arrived for the shooter.

  Zavier stopped moving and considered his options. He would be safer if he stayed above the hall. Safe, but slow. And if he made a sound there would be nowhere to hide from the shooter firing into the ceiling at him. He also couldn’t find Maddie from above. At some point, he would have to retreat to the ground.

  He froze. Taking a steadying breath, Zavier focused on finding the exact location of the coughing he heard beneath
him. Two steps to my left.

  Praying he had it right, he carefully stepped over to that spot. Positioning himself above it, he took a deep breath and plunged through the foam tiles.

  He landed feet first on the bent-over back of a shooter. The shooter screamed out in pain and surprise, alerting his companion. His eyes widened as he saw Zavier and his partner crumble to the floor.

  Zavier saw the shooter’s shotgun begin moving toward him. Rolling right, he pulled the shooter on top of himself and curled into a ball. The shotgun blasted through the air. He felt a sting on the side of his face, but knew the shooter had misjudged his aim, badly. At this range, the body on top of him would not provide enough protection from a shotgun blast. He took advantage, pulling his own gun. Zavier fired three shots.

  Two took the shooter in the torso, while one bullet ripped through his knee, sending him to the ground. He was still alive, but had dropped the shotgun. Zavier pushed the dead shooter off and scrambled to his feet. He strode over to the gunman, who started reaching for the shotgun. Zavier brought his leg back down like a kicker trying for a sixty-yard field goal, striking the man viciously across the side of the head. Bending down, he grabbed the shooter’s hair, pulled his head back, and chopped his gun down on his throat. Once, twice, Zavier struck, finally hearing a satisfying crunch of bone.

  Blood mixed with tears caused by the remnants of floating pepper spray obscured Zavier’s vision, but he looked down the hallway to make out what he could. Thus far, it was clear that no other shooters where heading in his direction. He glanced over at the fallen shooter in the restroom’s entranceway. He preferred to dispatch him by hand, but he couldn’t afford to get any closer—too much pepper spray filled the air. He holstered his gun and picked up a shooter’s discarded rifle. He took aim, and with one shot, he now had one less terrorist to worry about.

  Zavier wasted no time celebrating. He was not here to kill terrorists. He figured there was only one reason more shooters had not converged on him: They probably believed the additional shots they were hearing were coming from other members of their cell. That would not last. He needed to find Maddie. He scanned the area, his eyes settling on the baby-changing restroom down the hall.