Chapter 6 - The Secret Weapon
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. The roar of the bus engine outside, the chatter of commuters around us, the flickering fluorescent lights overhead—everything collapsed into a tiny, hyper-focused point.
I looked down at the brass bird-of-prey handle on my cane.
My late husband, Thomas, had been a master machinist for the naval shipyards before he retired. When he built this custom cane for me fifteen years ago, after my first knee surgery, he didn't just carve wood. He was a paranoid, protective man who believed his wife should never walk the city streets defenseless.
"Ten seconds," Adrian snarled, his fingers twitching on the trigger device. "Move!"
"I am an old woman, Adrian," I said, my voice dropping into a register so low and quiet he had to lean his head down toward my mouth to hear me. "I move slowly."
"Move NOW!"
As he bent his head down, his ear came within two inches of the top of my cane.
With a sudden, explosive motion that went against every physical limit of my seventy-two-year-old body, I twisted the brass head of the cane forty-five degrees to the right and slammed the tip of the shaft down against the terrazzo floor.
CLICK-SNAP!
A blinding, violent arc of 50,000-volt blue electricity shot out from the brass beak of the cane, striking Adrian directly behind his left ear.
Thomas had concealed a high-capacity stun-gun circuit inside the hollowed oak shaft, powered by a lithium cell built into the rubber tip base.
Adrian’s entire body went rigid instantly. His eyes rolled back into his head, his jaw locked in a silent, agonizing scream, and every muscle in his torso contracted violently. The electric arc hummed like a angry horn—BZZZZZZZZT!
The remote control slipped from his paralyzed fingers, dropping toward the floor.
Before the small black box could hit the hard stone, I swept my left leg around—ignoring the searing agony in my hip—and caught the remote on the top of my orthopedic shoe, kicking it thirty feet across the slick floor, straight under the heavy steel wheels of an incoming luggage cart.
CRUNCH!
The plastic casing shattered beneath the cart’s heavy rubber tires, pulverizing the circuit board and red toggle switch into useless dust.
Adrian collapsed like a sack of wet bricks, hitting the terminal floor with a heavy, hollow thud, his limbs twitching uselessly as residual electrical pulses rippled through his nervous system.
Around us, the crowd gasped. Passengers scattered in panic, screaming as they saw the giant man groaning on the floor.
Outside, the Greyhound bus hissed, released its air brakes, and backed smoothly out of the bay.
Through the glass window, I saw the silver vehicle turn slowly toward the highway entrance, pick up speed, and melt safely into the flow of morning traffic—heading west toward Chicago, carrying Lucy and Emiliano far away from this nightmare.
I stood over Adrian, breathing heavily, resting my hands back on the brass handle of my cane, which was still faintly warm to the touch.
Security guards in bright yellow vests came sprinting across the concourse, radios blaring, batons raised.
"Don't move! Nobody move!" the lead guard shouted.
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I looked down at Adrian, who was lying on his side, gasping like a fish out of water, his eyes terrified, unable to move a single muscle in his body.
"Call an ambulance for this man," I told the guards calmly, adjusting my cardigan. "He seems to have had a sudden, terrible physical reaction to minding his own business."
