Chapter 5 - TargetedThe realization hit me like a freight train. My parents’ insane act of revenge hadn't just destroyed a living room; it had inadvertently botched a major illegal transaction.
"If the cartel thinks my parents ruined their pickup..." I gasped, the air leaving my lungs.
"They won't just go after your parents," Miller said urgently, standing up. "They’ll look at the history of that house. They’ll look at who was tied to it. They’ll look at you."
Before I could digest the horror of his words, the fire alarm in the police station began to blare. Red emergency lights flashed across the walls, drowning the precinct in a deafening siren.
WEE-WOO! WEE-WOO!
Officers scrambled from their desks, drawing their sidearms. "What's going on? Is it a drill?" someone shouted.
"Dispatch says a car caught fire in the sally port right outside the holding cells!" an officer yelled, running past Miller’s office. "Smoke is filling the basement!"
"Stay here, Maya!" Miller commanded, pulling his gun and sprinting out the door toward the holding area.
I stood alone in the office, panic paralyzing my limbs. Through the glass window of the office, I watched as smoke began to billow down the hallway. Officers were rushing to evacuate the holding cells.
Through the haze of black smoke, I saw my parents and Clara being led out in handcuffs by two officers. But behind those officers, moving silently through the chaos, were two men wearing tactical gear and gas masks.
They weren't police.
I watched in terror as one of the masked men pulled a suppressed pistol and fired twice into the ceiling. The sound was muffled—thwip, thwip—but the panic was instant. Officers scattered for cover, mistaking the smoke and sudden chaos for an active shooter situation.
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The masked men didn't shoot the officers. They grabbed Clara and my mother, throwing heavy black sacks over their heads, and dragged them out through the rear emergency exit. My father tried to fight back, but one of the men struck him across the face with the butt of a rifle, leaving him crumpled on the floor as they vanished with the women.
They hadn't come to break them out of jail. They had kidnapped them.
