A new headline flashes across the screen.
SEVERAL CONFIRMED DEAD AT SCENE
Both coffee cups hit the floor, shattering into pieces on impact.
Chapter Eleven
TAKE IT OFF
I watch the clock.
One more hour.
Still no news.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drumming my restless fingertips against the surface. Evelson and Kaufman are long gone. They left me here alone as soon as we saw what happened during the raid. I’m not sure where they went.
I’m not sure I care.
There’s no room in my head for anything except a single thought. It’s more of a prayer, actually, repeated to the heavens over and over until the words lose all meaning. Until they’re nothing but useless syllables strung together with fragile hope and a shaky sense of faith.
Please be alive.
Please be alive.
Please be alive.
I couldn’t watch the news coverage anymore. The networks are spinning a bogus story about a gas leak in the condo complex — whether the result of an FBI coverup or sheer journalistic ineptitude, it matters little. They don’t have the answers I’m so desperate for.
Before they took off for the scene, Kaufman and Evelson told me there was an ambush at the apartment. They didn’t know the details — just that, as soon as the SWAT team stepped through the front door, they unknowingly triggered a special gift left behind by the Evanoffs.
The whole room exploded.
And, with it, several FBI agents.
Please not him.
Please not him.
Please not him.
I drop my face into my hands, struggling to breathe. Struggling to believe this is my new reality. Kidnappings and firefights and explosions. Fraud and blackmail and death.
My life has become an action movie.
But it’s so strange… because those onscreen heroines I’ve spent years watching in films, cheering for in theaters… they’re pictured on the front lines, battling it out blow by blow with the bad guys. They lead the charge into every fight, their courage never faltering. And in the end, they always, always, always walk away victorious.
I’m learning the hard way that real life is nothing like the movies.
There are no assured victories. No easy paths to defeating your enemies. No soaring scores to spotlight the importance of a particularly poignant moment.
Sometimes, the heroine isn’t perfect.
Sometimes, she’s not a born warrior at all.
She’s just a normal girl, pulled from the sidelines into the fray.
And maybe she doesn’t fight battles against dragons or Vikings or vampire lords. Maybe the biggest battle she ever has to endure is also the hardest one of all — the battle to hold on to the thin thread of hope that things will work out in the end. Even if there’s no award-winning script to guide her way. Even when the fortunes appear dire. Even when the odds are stacked against her.