Scion (47 page)

“If your hand moves any closer to your gun, I’ll be your killer but if you hand me the gun, I’m your only hope!”

“I thought you said they wouldn’t come in?” she asked, the tension was palpable.

“I was wrong!” he replied simply. “But if we don’t move now, a lot of innocent people are in danger!”

Swanson considered the threat and Butler’s concern for the other diners and made an instant decision that she’d have to live with for the rest of her life, however long that would be.

“Run!” he said.

“What the fuck do you mean run?”

“Back door, hit it and run for our lives.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said as they both stood up and Butler led the way towards the restrooms. They watched as the five men, as one, moved towards the diner’s entrance. Chan raised his hand to his mouth. He was communicating with someone, whoever was covering the back, Swanson thought.

Before she had a chance to tell Butler, he swept past her, hit the emergency bar on the fire escape with his back and turning through one hundred and eighty degrees, raised his hand, and in one swift and seamless move, removed Swanson’s Glock from her holster and shot the two men waiting for them in the alley to the rear. Swanson stood helpless; her backup weapon was in her Audi parked out front.

The noise of the Glock was followed quickly by the front door of the diner crashing open. All hell had broken loose. Swanson was not unaccustomed to firefights but was used to a significantly larger force than the opposition and usually benefitted from having her own weapon.

Butler grabbed her free hand and catapulted her through the door with him. The two ambushers were down. Butler handed Swanson her weapon while retrieving one from the ground as they sprinted down the alley. The first shots rang out just as they cleared the corner.

“Fuck!” screamed Swanson, her adrenaline pumping to levels she had never before thought possible.

Butler just kept running. He wasn’t kidding, she thought, his plan is exactly what he said, run.

“I’ll call for backup!”

Butler shook his head. “You don’t understand, we can’t trust anyone!”

“We can trust the FBI,” she replied indignantly.

“The same guys that handed me over to two killers!”

Swanson was about to reply but two bullets zipping past her head stopped any further discussion. Butler skidded to a stop, spun and dropped down to one knee, again all in one fluid motion. The shooting position allowed him to fire off four accurate shots that stopped the two pursuers in their tracks. They both slumped to the ground. From a distance, it was hard to tell how badly they were hurt but from the lack of screams, Swanson could only assume the hits were fatal.

“Who the fuck
are
you?” she asked in awe. He was fifty-four but ran faster and shot better than anyone she had ever trained with, and she had trained with some seriously tough guys.

“Let’s go, and will you please lose that cell phone - they’re tracking it!” he asked firmly but politely.

“Shit!” Swanson threw the phone towards the pursuers without a second thought. This shit was real.

After another ten minutes of running, Swanson was ready to drop. She could run a half marathon with ease but not at the pace at which Butler ran. He eased up, and she bent over, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground.

“Sorry about that,” said Butler, “but I wanted to be sure we’d lost them. I assume two followed on foot while the others retrieved a car. We probably lost them when we ditched your phone.”

Swanson looked up at him briefly. Her breath was slowly coming back and her stomach had relaxed.

“Now can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” she struggled between breaths.

Butler looked around again. They were in the middle of a park under a bandstand; even from above they couldn’t be seen. They were as safe as they were going to be anywhere.

“You’ve heard of America’s Trust?”

“Of course, everyone has.”

“Two years ago, when I was working a case, I stumbled across something. Two months later, I was fired. I’ve been looking into it ever since. America’s Trust is a sham. America as we know it is on the brink of extinction.”

Please go to Amazon to continue reading America’s Trust – Available May 31
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