Prologue
She noticed him immediately. She had been taught.
His appearance made her pause in her stroll back to the mall. She remained approximately three feet inside the hallway that led to the restrooms near the food court at Shoreline Mall. She could watch him, but he would have a difficult time seeing her. She had been taught.
Other patrons of the mall lingered at tables in the food court or stood in lines at one of the food vendors' counters. If anyone else had noticed the man wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying the duffel bag they hadn't reacted as she had. She had been taught.
She continued watching from the hallway as the man stopped just inside the doors leading to the west parking lot of the mall. He wasn't leaving as she had hoped. He was positioning himself between the people in the food court and their quickest exit. This could all be staged. Some sort of drill or test of security response to an active shooter, but her instincts told her otherwise. Her right hand reached inside her purse as the man slowly lowered the duffel bag to the tile floor, squatted with his back to the food court, and began to unzip it. She kept the man in her peripheral vision as she glanced over to the food court and looked up, taking in the whole environment. She had been taught.
Through the glass half-wall that provided a barrier for the Mezzanine level of the mall, she could see more than a dozen shoppers strolling across her field of vision, most distracted by their cell phones or focused on their next purchasing objective. She returned her attention to the man and saw him just rising after retrieving several items from the bag. While she had hoped that the intentions of the man were not as she had suspected, she saw that he had donned a balaclava over his face before standing. This, coupled with the sight of the automatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine and the pump-action shotgun dispelled any doubts. She used her left hand to lower her sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. She then removed her right hand from her purse and held it at her side. Patience. She had been taught.
This was real. It took only seconds, but her instincts were verified as the half-wall barrier to the Mezzanine level exploded into thousands of pea-sized particles of tempered glass when the gunshot round struck it. As glass particles rained down on startled customers in the food court, several people on the Mezzanine level screamed in pain and fell to the floor, struck either by shotgun pellets or flying glass. When the man lowered the shotgun, leaving it dangling from the strap over his shoulder, and prepared to fire the automatic rifle into the stunned crowd in the food court, she reacted. She had been taught.
Bracing her left shoulder against the wall at the opening of the hallway to the food court, she took aim from twenty feet away and fired three perfectly grouped shots below his body armor, into the man's groin area. She heard the bullet casings clinking on the tile floor after each shot but ignored them as she watched the shooter fall immediately to his knees, dropping the assault rifle to the floor. As he bent over in agonizing pain, the strap of the shotgun slid down his arm, but he ignored it. She strolled quickly over to the man and kicked the automatic rifle out of his reach. She had been taught.
Keeping her back to the food court and the security camera that she knew was there, she pulled on the strap of the shotgun until the man's arm moved enough for her to extract it completely. She slid it out of his reach as well before finally gazing into the man's eyes. She knew that all he would be able to see in the reflection of her sunglasses would be his own eyes and the pool of blood that was spreading out beneath him. While the bullets from a P380 automatic were not as large as those from a nine-millimeter, three hollow points in the area where she had aimed would almost certainly hit the Femoral artery. Her aim had been true, and the results were evident. She had been taught.
His eyes were losing focus as the life drained out of his body. She stepped away from the spreading pool of blood, placed her pistol back into her purse, and walked quickly through the glass exit doors to the parking lot. Without hesitating at the sound of rapidly approaching sirens, she located her car, slid into the driver's seat, backed out of her spot, and headed for the mall exit. She would be clear of the scene before anyone could get a description of her. She had been taught.
Chapter One
"Any instructions for the new volunteers?" asked the intake clerk.
Dr. Kathryn Frances Brandt paused to answer, "No, just take them through the typical orientation. Show them how the chip reader works and which units to use for the quarantine of specific animals."
As a volunteer herself, Katie knew that she had no authority to give instructions to any of the staff at the Humane Society shelter, but she accepted that as the weekend veterinarian her status would be viewed as superior to the rest of the staff, even the full-time employees.
Katie wheeled her beach cruiser bike out of the storage room off the shelter's lobby and steered it towards the door.
"Call me on my cell phone if any emergencies come in, Tina. Remember, Dr. Pettigrew will be covering for me in the morning."
Tina, the intake clerk for the shelter nodded and then simply waved goodbye to the back of Katie's head as the door closed behind her.
Katie removed her tortoiseshell glasses and replaced them with her sunglasses, placed her bicycle helmet over her short brown hair, and closed the strap connector under her chin before putting her backpack over her shoulders and mounting the bike. She checked the time on her cell phone, then slid it into the side pouch of the backpack and began the fifteen-minute ride home. Her appointment with the potential renters was more than an hour away, so she could make this a leisurely ride and still have time to shower before they arrived.
As she pedaled the beach cruiser towards her condo in Irvine, she was thankful once again that her brother had urged her to start riding it as an alternative to driving around on the day-to-day trips that she made. The weather in Southern California was usually quite conducive to riding a bike; neither too hot nor too cold and when there weren't dedicated trails to ride on, the streets were wide with bike lanes that took her virtually everywhere she needed to go. For those rare occasions when she needed a motor vehicle, she still had the pick-up truck sitting in her garage.
Katie unlocked the gate to her patio and rolled her bike into its customary position. She checked the time again to ensure that she had enough for a shower before her appointment and saw that she was ahead of the schedule that she had set for herself. She entered her condo through the sliding glass door from the patio and locked it once more behind her. She removed her sunglasses, unpacked her backpack, and put her riding helmet inside it before storing it in the hall closet and heading to the master bedroom.
Sitting on the end of the bed to untie her high-top tennis shoes, Katie could see her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. The bike helmet always made her short hair look sweaty and disheveled, which had never been the case when her hair was longer. Sure, her long hair might look damp and flattened against her scalp where it had been under the helmet, but it would recover quickly to the silken, wispy waves of naturally highlighted brown locks that she had always treasured. She prayed that it would be in the same condition when it finally grew back.
She tossed her shoes onto the floor of the open closet, then unbuttoned the white safari shirt that she wore untucked over the top of her khaki cargo shorts. She examined the right sleeve of the shirt to verify that the stain treatment she had applied while at the shelter had removed the small drop of blood that had landed on her while treating the kitten with the torn claw. She saw a slight trace of the blood remaining, so she set the shirt aside rather than placing it into the laundry hamper to remind her to treat it further before washing it.
Katie emptied the pockets of her cargo shorts onto the top of the dresser before unfastening them and letting them slide to the floor. Lifting her left foot out of the bundle, she used her right foot to bring the shorts up to her hand and then tossed them into the hamper.
Examining herself in the mirror once more, she began to pull the sports bra over her head. The spandex material by itself made removing the sports bra tantamount to strenuous cardio-vascular exercise, but with the sweat from her bike ride thrown in, she felt that she had entered into an Olympic event by the time she had pulled it completely over her head.
Massaging the ridges left on her lower chest, sides, and back by the material of the sports bra, Katie lamented on her fading tan lines. Her complexion had always allowed her to tan easily, but she had not had the luxury of sunbathing or even wearing a bikini outside for months. She lowered her underwear to the floor and saw the same fading tan lines above her neatly trimmed pubic hair and around her thin waist. Her face, neck, and forearms were still tanned, but there were no distinctive lines associated with this because of the variety of clothes that she wore these days when she went out in public.
She picked up her discarded panties and dropped them into the laundry hamper as she walked into the master bathroom. While waiting for the water in the shower to warm, she stood in front of the vanity and ran her fingers through her hair. She watched as her arm motions made her firm breasts rise slightly. This caused her to contemplate when the last time was that she had performed a self-examination of her breasts, so she decided to do one while she was soaped up in the shower. She stepped into the large walk-in shower and lowered her head under the refreshingly warm stream of water.
~~~
Katie's cell phone chimed to indicate a text message right at the scheduled time of her appointment.
