Chapter Nine #2
The can came out of the first man’s holster. He lifted it to spray silly string toward Abdul’s security cameras. The goop looped and clung to each lens, rendering them useless.
Kira wondered if she could pull out her phone and surreptitiously tap the camera. She glanced over at Ty to see if he would give her a clue about what she was supposed to do, but Ty had his hands up and wide, saying, “Nobody wants any problems here,” to the man by the door.
Ty must have picked that guy out as the leader, even if he wasn’t the biggest one in the shop.
The pickaxe guy slammed his tool down into the glass covering the engagement rings.
With the first sound of splintering glass, the heat of Kira’s anger froze, forming a hard ball of terror that dropped down, filling the cradle of her pelvis where it sat heavily on her bladder.
Abdul ran from the back room, and seeing the armed men, his face flamed red, then flushed white.
Rory shifted to sit between Kira’s feet, seeming to notice everyone and everything, watching for his moment.
The man with the silly string, done with that task, flicked open what looked like a pull-string canvas laundry bag. He reached into the diamond case and scooped everything into the bag’s opening.
The man with the pickaxe walked from case to case, slamming his tool over and over again until the heavy glass gave way.
This was planned and practiced, roles meted out.
They seemed like the two worker bees.
Then there were the two security bees.
One of the security bees trained his rifle on Ty’s chest.
Ty angled his gaze down as if he were looking at his shoes, as if he were being subservient. But Kira knew that he was every bit as focused and assessing as Rory was. This was the same thing he did the night the terrorists attacked, and London was shot.
Abdul twitched his head toward Ty, then Kira, and in the same motion, pivoted to race back to his office, slamming the door behind him.
The pickaxe guy threw himself over the counter and came to the office door. There, he tried to wrench the knob open. Failing, he crashed his shoulder into the door, then slung his axe over his head and slammed it into the door frame by the lock.
Kira’s legs were jelly. They wobbled underneath her, and she tried to lock her knees out so that she wouldn’t slip to the ground, because as she’d learned in the past, the ground made her vulnerable.
As the man with the bag reached into the next case to scoop up the gold, Kira took two steps sideways and out of his way.
Rory hopped like a rabbit as she moved.
Kira figured she needed to present as little friction as possible, and the guy seemed fine with her decision.
But with each step, Kira peed a little, making her panties wet and uncomfortable. It made her aware of her lack of control. She wanted to press her thighs together because peeing down her leg would be a sign of fear and give these men too much power.
And there was Rory.
Please don’t let me pee on Rory.
Of all the very bad things that could go wrong in that moment, why Kira focused on that, she had no idea.
They weren’t calling her out by name.
They weren’t making her stand in the front of the room as the terrorists had done to London.
No one had their gun to her head.
The rifle guy was very close to Ty, trying to intimidate him and keep him under their control.
Who wouldn’t be intimidated by this situation?
Ty might be trained to yank that rifle out of the man’s hand and fight, but that guy was one of four. And they were all armed.
Kira wanted her anger back. It was a much more comfortable emotion.
She tried to manifest it. She thought about how much she hated that Ty shoved her away from him. They should be in this together.
When they were in Tanzania, and the insurgents attacked the compound that London and her husband William Davidson owned, she and Ty worked side by side as they fled.
When they were in D.C., and the terrorists attacked the ballroom, shooting London with William dropping unconscious by her side, Kira and Ty survived together.
That wasn’t true.
Kira, Lula, and the Iniquus wives escaped, leaving the men behind to survive or not.
She only left Ty at that point because Lula said that if Kira stayed, she’d be a distraction to Ty, a liability.
Is that how he saw her in dangerous situations?
Good, the anger was climbing back up her legs, stiffening her spine as it rose up her vertebrae.
She was so angry that these men were destroying her friends’ hard work, ruining her happy time finding a gift for Ty’s mom, furious that they would train a rifle at Ty.
And she knew that if her anger spilled out, it would put everyone in danger.
She had nothing to do but stand there and quiver and seethe.
Suddenly, the air cracked with a sharp scream from Abdul’s office.
Rory was stiff with anticipation, wanting Ty to release him so he could race into the fray.
The three robbers paused their tasks and focused toward the back, assessing.
As the quiet descended again, they continued with their tasks.
The man guarding the door and watching the parking lot yelled, “Two minutes.”
The guard who had been standing with his gun trained on Ty said, “Can we take her with us?”
The man at the door flicked a glance Kira’s way. “Why not?”
Kira was the only “her” in the room.
Up until that point, it seemed to be an agreement between everyone: Let the men take what they wanted, and no one would try to stop them.
If they tried to take Kira with them, everything would blow up. These men had no idea of the latent power that was in the room.
Ty and Rory would fight for her.
And people would die.
Ty might just die.
See? She was a liability.
At that moment, there was another scream in the back, and Ty must have made some hand signal because as the three robbers in the front shifted their attention toward the sound, Rory leaped toward the man who had covered Ty with his gun and sank his teeth into the man’s arm.
The scream that robber’s throat emitted sent bitter cold waves racing across Kira’s scalp.
Rory shook the man’s arm until the rifle dropped to the ground.
Ty leaned down, grabbing up the gun as he rolled and landed on his feet. Stepping forward, Ty pointed the gun at the door guard’s head. “Down on your knees,” he yelled to the door guard over the sound of the man howling and begging for relief from Rory’s bite.
Split seconds, Kira’s mind had trouble keeping up.
Everything came back into focus when the man next to Kira dropped the loot bag, fumbling with his rifle sling to draw his weapon around.
Kira grabbed the rifle on his back and tugged it down with all her weight, so he couldn’t bring it forward to shoot. As the man spun to force her to release her grip, Kira spun along with him.
She was well aware that there was still a gunman out of reach.
The man with the pickaxe dragged Abdul from his office by his hair.
Kira saw that Abdul’s face was bloody and swollen.
The fourth guard lowered the gun toward Kira.
How Rory knew that was happening, she had no clue. In the blink of an eye, Rory released the man on the ground and leaped with one bound from the center of the store, over the case, to latch onto the gun arm of the newly arrived threat.
Kira pulled harder on the rifle in her hands, wondering if she should tip it toward the guy on the ground to try to shoot him.
But she decided she had no idea what would happen, and there might be ricochets that might hit Ty.
Besides, that man had curved into the fetal position, gripping his arm to his chest and sobbing loudly.
Now, Ty held control of the room.
With a few commands, all guns were in his possession, all robbers lay in a neat line, face down, with their hands laced behind their heads, their legs bent at the knees, feet crossed at the ankles.
Rory sat in front of them, and every robber knew that Rory was salivating for the opportunity to chomp into them.
Kira didn’t know what role to play here, so she stood where she was.
The police sirens shrilled into the parking lot and raced to the front of the store. Wheels clipped onto the sidewalk as the officer slid from under the steering column and hid behind their engine. Using their megaphone from their car, the officer called, “Durham P.D. Weapons down. Hands up.”
“Kira,” Ty said, “put your hands up and go outside and let the officer know what happened.”
Walking gingerly over the shards of glass, feeling the splinters crunch under her feet, Kira made her way through the store that had just minutes before been a work of art, a beautiful room.
Abdul had spent many hours of effort to make it lovely for people when they came in.
It was destroyed, and she was heartsick for Abdul, devastated for Nu’ma.
Kira moved slowly at the door, using her hip to open it wide and slide outside.
There, she explained that these were men who had come in dressed as ICE, and that they had been ready to be compliant until the axe came in, and they started silly stringing the cameras, and that her boyfriend was a soldier from Fort Bragg, and he and his working dog had taken control of the room, that the owner had been hurt and needed an ambulance, and that there were four men, all of them had been armed with a rifle and a handgun.
The police officer was reluctant to go in because he was alone. “Get behind the engine. We’re waiting for backup.”
Kira was furious. “My boyfriend is inside holding a rifle on the four robbers.”
In a growly, ‘don’t you dare tell me what to do” voice, the officer said, “Ma’am, I am not going in there without backup.”
And so she stood next to the squatting officer and waited for more sirens and more squealing tires to race toward the scene.
When the police had amassed enough backup to feel comfortable, Ty handed authority over to them.
While the police zip-tied, patted down the robbers, and confiscated the weapons, Ty moved over to Abdul and rendered first aid while Kira called Abdul’s wife to tell her not to come to the store; to stay away for now.
With Rory lying at her feet looking like he’d had the best day ever, and Ty doing a masterful job of field dressing Abdul’s wounds, Kira was struck by how even-keeled Ty and Rory were.
It had been the same in Tanzania when Omar was killed. It was the same in D.C. when London was shot. There was hyperfocus and adrenaline, then calm and professionalism.
And that frightened her. It frightened her because Ty was used to this. Just another day at the office. It reminded her that Ty did hard things in dark places.
Kira just wanted him safe. Selfishly, she needed that.
Yet, he was fine.
She, on the other hand, was left horrified by the evil in the world.
And then, there was also the abiding current of anger that Ty had shoved her away.