her voice.
For the first time since closing the door behind them, Daniel turned to look at Jordan. It was dark, but he could see that she had somehow managed to curve the side of her mouth into a smirk.
Daniel took a deep breath, and brought himself to maximum pump.
“What’s the point of joining a group that protects people if you’re only willing to save the people who have the money to pay you?” She asked him.
“We’re a personal security force,” Daniel countered with one last attempt to get her off the idea of him rescuing everyone in the store.
“Maybe they are, but I know you better than that. You’re good, you want to help people. I see it in you. It’s not in your nature to stand by and let these things happen. You want to be better than everyone else. Well if that’s true then prove it, because a better man wouldn’t hide in a bathroom.”
Daniel dropped his head between the two arms that held his gun out in front of him. She had to go there. She always went there. Even after all these months with no contact she still knew the exact buttons to press.
“I’ll be fine in here,” she added, knowing already that she had won. “Just sneak back out and take ‘em down.”
“No,” he responded, only this time more tactfully that stubbornly. “That’s too risky. They have to think I was in here alone. Take this.”
He reached over and handed Jordan his Glock. He wasn’t a very good shot anyway.
“Lock the door behind me, and if anyone tries to come through you shoot them,” he instructed.
“I don’t know how to use this thing!” Jordan whispered in a panic.
“Just point and shoot,” he told her calmly, cupping her hands in his as she gripped the gun.
He then reached behind her and flushed the toilet, then turned on the sink. He waited five seconds before turning off the sink and turning toward the door. He unlocked and opened the door, stepping out into hallway and making sure to close the door behind him. He turned to see a confused bandit pointing a shotgun directly at his chest.
Daniel slowly stepped forward and threw his arms up in the air.
“Whoa, what’s going on here?” He decided to play overly dumb. The idea that someone could have been in the bathroom for that long and not heard everything going down in the store seemed positively absurd.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The robbery’s leader asked from over by the door.
“Get down!” The man with the shotgun yelled, extending it out over the counter, just a foot or so from Daniel’s face.
That was exactly what Daniel wanted.
Remembering what Elise had taught him, Daniel quickly swung his arm down and grabbed the barrel of the gun while simultaneously moving his head in the opposite direction. The man fired.
Daniel felt the heat from the barrel on his hand as the rounds went into the wall behind him.
Daniel then pulled the gun over the counter. The man maintained his grip on the gun and started to come over with it.
Expecting this, Daniel threw his other arm forward in the direction of the bandit’s face, palm up. He felt the man’s nose cartilage disintegrate underneath his palm as he pushed his arm through the man’s face until it reached full extension.
The man screamed and immediately let go of the weapon, throwing his hands over his nose as he gushed blood onto the floor. He then tried to get to his feet but was too woozy to do so and instead fell back over onto his side.
The blonde sales clerk yelped as some of the robber’s blood got on her blouse.
Daniel quickly turned the gun around, cocked it, and aimed it at the leader of the group, but he had already grabbed one of the hostages off the floor and was holding them up in front of him with his gun tip stuck into their ribcage.
Daniel looked to the third crook and saw that he had his automatic weapon trained on Daniel.
Now what?
“Nice moves cowboy,” the leader spoke. “But did you forget there were three of us?”
Daniel kept the