Chapter 16 - The Shield
“If I’m going down,” Evelyn shrieked, her finger tightening on the trigger, “you don't get your family back, Alexander!”
Time slowed to a crawling nightmare.
The federal agents raised their rifles, but Evelyn had positioned herself with Doctor Thorne directly in the crossfire.
Alexander lunged forward with a desperate, gut-wrenching roar, but he was ten feet away—too far to close the gap before the hammer fell.
Emily didn't think. She didn't calculate the risk.
With the same fierce, unyielding protective instinct that had driven her to her knees in the dirty water yesterday, Emily threw herself over Mason, using her entire body as a human shield, wrapping her arms around the boy’s head and turning her back to the barrel of the gun.
*BANG!*
The gunshot exploded in the enclosed parlor like a cannon strike.
A sharp, searing line of fire ripped across Emily’s left shoulder, tearing through the gray fabric of her uniform and drawing a bright crimson spray across the polished wainscoting.
Emily gasped in agony, clutching Mason tightly to her chest, refusing to let the boy fall.
Before Evelyn could fire a second round, Alexander crossed the distance like a thunderbolt.
His fist slammed into Evelyn’s jaw with the force of a sledgehammer, sending the gun flying into the roaring fireplace. Evelyn’s head snapped back, her body crashing violently onto the coffee table, shattering the glass into a thousand glittering shards.
Alexander pinned her to the floor with his knee, his eyes black with murderous fury. “You will never touch my family again.”
Two FBI agents rushed forward, pulling Alexander off the groaning, bleeding woman and twisting Evelyn’s arms behind her back with brutal, metallic clicks of steel handcuffs.
“Mason! Emily!” Alexander whipped around, his voice ragged with terror.
He dropped to his knees beside them.
Emily was trembling, her left hand pressed against her bleeding shoulder, but she was smiling through the pain. In her lap, untouched, unharmed, four-year-old Mason looked up at her with enormous, tear-filled eyes.
Mason reached his small, gentle hands up, touching Emily’s pale cheek.
“Emily brave,” the boy whispered clearly, his voice ringing through the silent, smoke-filled parlor. “No hurt Emily.”
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👉 Alexander pulled both of them into his arms, burying his face in his son’s hair while medical sirens wailed up the coastal drive—heralding the arrival of an ambulance that carried someone Alexander thought he would never see again.
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