Junior Year Box Set

I heard the three amigos scream out in fear and knew I had to protect them. The van blocking our path was only six feet away, so I didn’t hesitate as I exploded off the sidewalk. I think the gunman was surprised when I used the Bo staff like a spear and drove him back into the van. His arms flailed as he tried to catch himself, and the gun fell back into the van with him. I dropped down into a fighting stance and kept an eye on the driver to make sure he didn’t get out.

The van on the street suddenly took off when they saw my security was armed. It flashed past in my peripheral vision as it left. I looked into the van in front of me, and my blood ran cold. There was a second person in the back who was also armed. He raised his gun and pointed it at me. The driver took his cue from his partner on the street. Just as it looked like I was going to be shot, the van lurched forward, and I heard the explosion of the gun as it went off. Fortunately, he shot just as the driver punched the accelerator. The bullet flew over my head, and I let out a sigh of relief as I watched the van race away.

I turned back and found Yuri and Roc hovering over Phil. I saw blood, and my gut instantly tightened. ‘God, please let him be okay’ ran through my head as I rushed to see what was wrong. His knees, elbows, and forehead all had road rash where he’d slid across the concrete.

“I thought you’d been shot,” I blurted.

“Something worse happened. You knocked me down,” Phil complained.

“We can talk about this later. Let’s head back to the hotel,” Fritz worried.

We picked up the pace as we ran back to the hotel. Once we got back to my room, everyone seemed to collapse into themselves. I was happy to see Paul leave and come back with the first aid satchel Tami had made for my security team. I’m sure she imagined she was a trauma doctor, with all the stuff she had in that bag.

No one said anything as we all tried to process what had just happened. I was now glad I’d listened and hired security. Up until this moment, I’d considered them more as crowd control and someone to hang out with. I shouldn’t have, because of what Trip had gone through, but that had been a terrorist attack. How often would you ever find yourself in the middle of something like that?

The realization was sinking in that someone had just tried to either kidnap me or rob us. With how they seemed to be organized, it wasn’t a simple robbery. It scared me that my friends may have gotten seriously hurt just because they were hanging around me.

I looked around at the group. Fritz had been watching me to see how I’d react. Paul was calm, but Chuck was shaken. I could tell that both Paul and Fritz had both been in situations like this before, just by how they carried themselves. Phil looked to be okay, but Roc and Yuri were breathing hard.

“I don’t even want to be in the room when you have to call my mom and tell her what just happened,” I said to Fritz.

He gave me a pained look, but my teammates burst out laughing. It was the nervous kind of laughter people have once they realize that they just escaped death. As soon as they stopped laughing, their body language was better.

“Chuck, you stay here. Paul, you’re with me,” Fritz said.

I figured he wanted to call the police and give my dad a heads-up. I doubted Fritz had a death wish and would make the mistake of calling my mom. Once they left, I figured I had better talk to the guys.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“What just happened?” Phil asked.

“Those men had guns,” Yuri stated.

“Are you okay?” Roc asked. “I think they were there to take you.”

“My security team was there to stop that,” I said.

“But that last man in the van shot at you. You’re not a Jedi who can use your big stick to deflect bullets,” Yuri said to remind me I’m human.

I gave him a weak smile.

“As much as I would like to claim that I’m a Jedi, I know I’m not. If he’d gotten off a clean shot, I’d have been in real trouble. I realize I was lucky,” I said softly.

“How can you not be freaking out?” Roc asked.

“Dude, he’s my brother. He might have been scared, but he’d never show it,” Phil said.

If I had a hairline, my eyebrows would have disappeared into it. I could tell that Phil meant every word of what he just said. I wondered if others thought I was some kind of superhero, incapable of being afraid in the face of danger.

“All I could do was watch,” Yuri admitted. “You, on the other hand, jumped up and whacked the guy with your staff and pushed him back into the van. I was completely useless.”

“You did what you were told to do, and that helped a lot! You forget that Cassidy has trained me to defend myself. I did that because I knew you three were safe if the rest of us did our jobs. If I had to worry about you jumping into the middle of it, I would have been terrified. What I saw was that you didn’t jump up and run. You listened to direction under extreme pressure. I know I can count on the three of you,” I said.