Chapter 14 - The Library WindowThe sound was not like movies.
It was sharper. Smaller. More final.
Children screamed.
Glass rained across the carpet.
Richard threw himself over Lily and Maria, driving them behind a low bookshelf as the plainclothes officer shouted commands from the entrance.
“Down! Everybody down!”
The man in the baseball cap ran.
Dana tackled him before he reached the second door.
He hit the floor hard, the weapon skidding beneath a table of picture books.
For three seconds, the library was only crying children and alarms.
Then Lily whispered, “Mom?”
Maria’s hands flew over her daughter’s body. “Are you hit? Lily, answer me.”
“I’m okay.”
Richard shifted, pain exploding through his shoulder.
Maria saw the blood first.
“Oh my God.”
Richard looked down as though the wound belonged to someone else. The bullet had torn through his upper arm, missing the bone but not the flesh. Blood darkened his sleeve.
Lily stared.
“You got shot,” she said.
Richard tried to smile. “Apparently.”
Maria pressed her scarf against the wound. “Hold this.”
He did.
Her hands were steady now. Fear had become action.
Police swarmed the library. The shooter, a hired man with no identification and a burner phone, said nothing. But the message was clear.
The unknown enemy had moved from threats to bullets.
At the hospital, Ethan heard about the shooting from nurses who did not realize he understood every word.
When Richard returned bandaged and pale, Ethan refused to look at him.
“Hey,” Richard said softly. “I’m okay.”
Ethan stared at the wall.
Lily stood near the doorway, twisting her fingers.
“He’s mad,” she said.
Richard sighed. “He has every right.”
Lily walked to the bed.
“Your dad pushed us down before the glass exploded,” she told Ethan. “He was fast for an old rich guy.”
Ethan’s eyes flicked toward Richard.
Richard almost laughed. “Old?”
Lily ignored him. “My mom says when somebody gets hurt because of you, you say sorry but then you change what happens next.”
Maria, standing behind them, looked startled hearing her own words returned to her.
Ethan blinked once.
No.
Lily leaned closer. “You don’t want him to say sorry?”
Two blinks.
“You want him to change what happens next?”
Two blinks.
Richard sat beside the bed.
“I will,” he said. “I promise.”
Ethan finally looked at him.
That evening, Detective Mills identified the shooter’s phone records. One number appeared repeatedly before the attack. It had also contacted Colin Dray two months earlier.
The number belonged to a shell company tied to Malcolm Reese.
But Malcolm was in federal custody.
Which meant either he was still controlling events from inside, or someone above him had been using him too.
Nora Bennett reviewed the shell company documents and found a name hidden in old vendor contracts.
Evelyn Hart.
Richard recognized it immediately.
His former wife.
Ethan’s mother.
The room went silent when he said it.
Maria looked toward Ethan’s sleeping form.
“His mother is dead,” she said.
Richard’s face had turned gray.
“That’s what Colin told everyone.”
Detective Mills narrowed his eyes. “Everyone?”
Richard sat down slowly.
“Six years ago, after Ethan’s diagnosis, Evelyn disappeared. There was a boating accident. No body was recovered. Colin handled most of the legal aftermath.”
Maria stared at him.
“You let your assistant handle your wife’s death?”
Richard closed his eyes.
“I was with Ethan in intensive care.”
Lily whispered from the doorway, “Maybe Ethan’s mom is the bad voice.”
No one wanted a child to be right.
May you like
But by midnight, the voice analysis came back.
The distorted caller was female.
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