scooting my chair over about half a foot. Which put me out of sync with the other chairs and luckily hid me quite well behind Bourne’s head.
I slumped down even farther in my seat and closed my eyes.
I had no clue how far into the interview we were when Bennett kicked me.
I looked over at him with a glare.
“They’re talking to you,” he murmured.
My eyes went to the front where a woman was smiling serenely at me.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I asked.
My voice sounded awful.
“I said, what is it like working with your cousins on the SWAT team?” the lady asked.
Was her name Meredith?
“It’s like working with your cousins.” I shrugged.
What more was there to say?
I mean, they were my cousins. And I worked with them.
Bennett snorted beside me, covering his mouth with his hand to hide his smile.
I wasn’t sure what the funny shit of my statement was, but apparently it caused all the guys to be amused.
“Is that so?” Meredith asked. “It’s not different? You don’t worry about either of them at all?”
I looked over at Louis to see him batting his eyes at me.
“Louis is one of the snipers. I don’t necessarily see him get into many close contact situations to be all that worried about him,” I admitted.
I might feel differently if he were beside me, but I doubted it.
I felt the same way about Ford, my other cousin.
I didn’t worry about any of the SWAT team members any more or less because they were related to me.
“So, Louis got married to your daughter?” the reporter asked.
Since I was assuming she was no longer speaking to me, I chose to close my eyes again.
My head really wasn’t any better, and I knew that I was seriously running a fever now. I could feel my fuckin’ cheeks heating the longer I sat in the most uncomfortable chair in the world. What the hell did they do? Go shop at a fuckin’ bar to find these chairs? Didn’t they know that the tall chairs had to have some sort of footrest or the circulation was cut off to your goddamn legs?
“He did,” Bennett said from my side.
I leaned my head back on my shoulders and rolled out my neck, causing an audible crack to sound as I pivoted it this way and that.
When I straightened my head moments later, it was to find the reporter once again staring at me.
“I have the flu,” I said. “And these chairs are extremely uncomfortable.”
Her lips twitched.
“I asked if you felt like you had some big shoes to fill when it came to your father,” she said, this time much more sweetly.
I thought about that.
“My father is out of this world,” I said. “I’m not sure that I’ll ever get close to filling his shoes. In fact, he wears size fourteen, and I’m a size thirteen.” Appropriate laughter filled the air, but I shook my head. “I’ve had a really good life. My father has made damn good sure of that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fill his shoes, so to speak, but I’m going to give it my best shot.”
Meredith was smiling after I said that.
Luckily, after the last time, she never directly spoke to me again, and the cameraman that was filming kept his camera pointed somewhere else.
Still, I had fucking rivulets of sweat running down my face from the hot fucking lights, and I was shivering by the time we were done.
“I just ask that you sign these calendars.” Meredith grinned. “We’re going to have a little auction ourselves. Did you know that they’re still selling out calendars on that website? We had to special order these.”
I didn’t see the point. It was now September and the end of the year almost. What was the point of a new calendar now?
I looked at the stack of calendars that she wanted us to sign and nearly groaned.
Goddammit.
That was the last thing that I wanted to do.
My entire body felt like a giant throbbing ache.
Fuckin’ A.
I plopped down in the most comfortable chair in the training room and waited for the calendars to be brought to me.
And eventually they were.
I was the last one to finish.
The last one to leave.
And the last one to walk into Walgreen’s an hour after that, ditching my gun belt at the station before I left, knowing that I couldn’t fucking stand to have it on another second.
And of fuckin’ course, the ibuprofen and Tylenol were at the back of the goddamn store.
I’d just picked up two industrial-sized bottles of both medicines when a squeaking shuffle had me glancing up.
Right into the barrel of a shotgun.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
My heart froze in my chest. The breath stalled in my lungs.
I also mentally cursed myself for not having my gun belt on.
But, with my attention not being as sharp today as it usually was, I decided that having it on might’ve made me an instant target.
“Everybody on the ground!” the man with the shotgun and the squeaking shoe bellowed.
I didn’t waste time getting on the ground.
The pill bottles made a pounding crack as I dropped them and moved to the ground as he aimed the shotgun around the room.
A poor old woman that’d been standing in the prescription line with her walker and a cast up to the top of her thigh whimpered.
“Down!” the man ordered, pointing his gun fully at her.
That was when I realized the man’s eyes were darting around too fast. His movements were twitchy, and his arms had puncture holes in the bends.
Fuck.
A druggie.
A desperate druggie.
Fuck and double fuck.
I took a glance around, ignored my throbbing head, and counted the number of hostages.
There was a woman with a baby in the far corner. She looked vaguely familiar.
In the middle of the aisle I was standing in there were five people that were in line, including the old lady, that were now lying on the floor.
And on the very, very edge, almost hidden underneath the ‘drop off’ prescription counter, was a beautiful ebony-haired woman. Her bright, cornflower blue eyes were staring at the druggie with the shotgun as if she was sizing him up.
Her fingers were clenching and unclenching, and she was opening and closing her eyes as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
Then, right before my eyes, I saw her mouth open, horror wash over her face, and then, “Pew, pew, pew.”
The druggie pivoted toward her and aimed his gun. But not at the pew-pew lady, but at the old lady that was now whimpering in pain.
The pew-pew lady’s eyes squeezed shut as if she wanted to rip the words out of the air and shove them back into her mouth where they belonged.
I army-crawled closer, accidentally causing the pill bottles that I’d dropped to crack with the pills tumbling around inside.
“He’s moving!”
I froze when I heard a woman’s voice—no, a teenager’s voice—from the side of where I was.
I whipped my head to the side and saw a young woman, probably around fourteen or fifteen, standing at the edge of the aisle with a smug look on her face.
The guy with the gun whirled around and faced me.
“Don’t fuckin’ move!” the druggie boomed.
Then, for good measure, he dragged me farther into the open aisle until I was only feet away from the pew-pew chick.
I allowed him to only because I wasn’t sure what the girl had on her. If she had a gun, I didn’t want to try to disarm the shotgun guy and make her take steps to protect the druggie.
But, just as suddenly as he’d had my shirt, he dropped it and once again turned his attention back to the cashier.