Yet Astrid seemed frozen, unable to move, unable to do anything except cry out in anguish. Lilly turned to see her assailant move calmly and steadily toward them, gun in hand. The hood on his sweatshirt was pulled up and, with his head slightly bowed, his appearance reminded her of the grim reaper.
“Please don’t hurt my daughter,” she shouted through the shattered window. “I’ll give you whatever you want.” She grabbed her expensive cell from the dash, a gift from her parents. “You can take this. It’s worth over a thousand dollars.” As his hand reached up and removed his sunglasses, she forced herself to look him in the eye. “Please.”
That’s when she recognized him. “Mr. Berger?” she said, confused. “Why are you doing this?”
This man was her important client at the bank. He had visited in person the previous day, wishing to transfer his bank accounts overseas before returning to his native country of France. She had handled the paperwork, shaken his hand, chatted to him about his family. Why did he now want to kill her?
Mr. Berger pointed his gun at her window, and with the sound of Astrid’s screams resounding in the car, a bullet cracked the air.
Agent David McQueen heard the unmistakable bang of a gun being discharged as he raced to the intersection of Harewood and Filton. The car was being driven by his FBI partner, Goldie Simmons, and she had wasted no time in rushing them to the scene with the siren blaring. Through his phone’s speaker he had been listening to the screams and cries, but they had abruptly stopped. He prayed they weren’t too late.
Goldie tore around the corner of Filton and instantly slammed on the brakes to avoid colliding with a blue compact car blocking the street, a gray van stopped behind it.
“That’s our guy,” David said, seeing a hooded man in the road, weapon in hand. “That’s gotta be Henderson.”
He jumped from the car, identifying himself as an FBI agent and ordering the man to lie on the ground. As expected, the suspect turned and fled back to his van without allowing David the chance to get a good look at his face. This guy had been successfully evading arrest for more than ten years and David had a very old score to settle.
“You’re not getting away this time,” he muttered, pulling out his gun and aiming at the van’s tires.
“Help! Help! I think my mom’s been shot.”
A young girl of no more than sixteen suddenly flung herself from the blue compact and ran toward him, arms flailing, her long black trench coat flapping in the wind. She reminded him a little of his own daughter, Chloe.
David couldn’t risk shooting now. He reholstered his weapon and called out to Goldie in the car.
“Stay on Henderson’s tail,” he said, watching the vehicle race toward the busy road out of town. “You’ll have to get to the freeway via Harewood but do what it takes to find the van again. Don’t lose him.”
“You got it.”
As Goldie turned the car and screeched away, David put his hand on the girl’s shoulder to comfort her. “Is your mom Lilly Olsen?”
“Yes.”
He approached the car and bent to survey the scene inside, bracing for the sight of blood, but instead he saw an apparently uninjured blond woman with a flat palm on her forehead, breathing heavily in the driver’s seat. In the other hand she clutched a cell phone, her fingers trembling around the black casing.
“Are you hurt, ma’am? Your daughter said you’d been shot.”
She held up the cell phone, her face etched with an expression of pained shock.
“It saved me,” she said. “I was holding it in front of my face.”
The cell was all smashed up, a bullet lodged in the metal, creating a small hollow as though a tiny volcano had erupted in the center.
Then she seemed to gather her thoughts and remember what was important. “Astrid! Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, ma’am. She’s right here.”
“Please tell me what’s going on.”
David unclipped the radio from his belt. “I’ll request a police car to take us to your home. There’s a lot of explaining to do.”
David stood and watched Lilly Olsen comfort her daughter in the living room of their home, stroking her hair and holding her hand. The teenager had understandably reacted with shock and distress after their terrifying ordeal, but after twenty minutes of soothing, David was beginning to lose patience. As a father of two grown girls, he had plenty of experience as a parent, and he felt that Lilly was treating Astrid with too much mollycoddling. If anyone knew where that would lead, it was David.
“Miss Olsen,” he said. “I appreciate the fact that your daughter needs you, but we have important matters to discuss here.”
She ignored him for a few seconds, continuing to stroke her daughter’s hair while sitting on the couch. Then she turned to him. “I realize that you’re here to help us, but my daughter always comes first, so give me a minute or two, okay?”
David gritted his teeth and glanced exasperatedly at Goldie, who had returned from her chase empty-handed. The van had gotten away, and that meant Lilly remained in grave danger.
“You’re safe here, honey,” Lilly repeated to Astrid. “And nothing bad will happen now.”
David stopped himself from interrupting and contradicting her. It was dangerous to tell teenagers that nothing bad happens in life. It was better to tell them that the world was a cruel place and to give them strong boundaries to mitigate the risk.
Astrid rose from the couch. “I’m going to call Noah and tell him why I’m not in school today.”
“No phone calls,” David said. “Not until I say so.”
Lilly rose also and smoothed down her shirt. “She just wants to make a quick call. There’s no harm in that, surely?”
“I said no phone calls.”
“You can’t stop me calling whoever I like,” Astrid challenged. “I’m not in jail.”
“No, you’re not in jail,” David said slowly, reminded of the arguments he used to have with Chloe, the big bust-ups that would result in her storming from the house and spending the evening with her totally unsuitable boyfriend. “But I need you to listen to me and do what I say.”
“Who put you in charge of me?” the teenager said, sliding her eyes from David’s to her mother’s, correctly identifying the weakest link in this scenario. “Mom, can I call Noah?” Her bottom lip wobbled, and she rubbed one eye like a tired toddler. “I just want to tell him I’m all right.”
Lilly nodded. “Sure, but don’t give him any details about what happened today. Tell him you’re not in school because you’re sick. Okay?”
Astrid glared at David with a hint of triumph before strutting from the room, and his hackles rose. Disobedience was something he could no longer abide in young adults. As a widowed single dad raising two girls, he’d made the mistake of believing that you could reason with teenagers, that you could give them some freedom and be prepared to compromise. But that was before Chloe ended up in a car wreck with her drunk boyfriend and suffered irreversible brain damage as a result. Prior to the accident, she had gone off the rails, become totally unmanageable, and David blamed himself for her downfall. If only he had set stronger rules when she was younger. If only he’d come down harder. And now Lilly Olsen was making the same mistake.
“Teenagers need a firm hand, ma’am,”