Shadow Dancer (Shadow, #1)

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Jack continued to sit in the waiting room in agonizing, excruciating pain. He hated to wait, but waiting to see his daughter after such an ordeal was absolute torture. He sat there, flicking through an Adventurer Travel magazine, not paying any mind to the words just glancing at the pictures and flicking the pages loudly, hoping to catch the eye of a sympathetic nurse or doctor, but none of them paid him any attention. He continued flicking through a feature about farmers in Sweden when he heard the sound. A bone-rattling, teeth-clenching death curdle of a scream. He had heard this scream only once before, when Tristan had broken her leg when she was thrown from her horse a few years back. He recognized her voice immediately, even at maximum register. Tristan sounded desperate. She was in trouble.

Tossing his magazine onto the floor, Jack ran as hard and as fast as a six-foot five-inch man could run with arthritis of the knee. He barreled down the hallway towards the source of the scream. A security guard followed behind him, walking quickly, with his hand on his belt.

“Sir! You can't go back there!”

Jack ignored him, hell-bent on finding where the noise came from. It was faint, so it wasn't from her room, or the radiology department which was directly down the hall. Being an expert hunter, he was used to memorizing sounds, tracking patterns, determining the source of a sound. He allowed this part of him to take over, not allowing anyone or anything to slow him down. He had a guard and a nurse chasing behind him, trying to stop him from going into the restricted area that was considered a hard hat construction zone.

“Sir, please! Let us check the noise out! It's too dangerous!”

Jack continued to ignore them, plowing through the double doors that led to the temporarily closed psychiatric ward at St. Benedict’s Hospital for the Infirm. All of them, even the guard, halted at the doors, and watched as Jack ran down the hall towards a strange silhouette just under the exit sign.

“Let her go!” Jack said, grabbing his gun out of his holster.

Kendricks had a firm grasp on Tristan, holding her across her collar bone with one hand, and the other firmly holding his pistol in the air with the other, as he hid his body behind Tristan's.

“Not a chance.”

“Let her go before you get yourself shot!”

Kendricks raised an eyebrow as a laugh escaped from his mouth.

“Let go of my daughter!” screamed Jack. Kendricks, no longer smiling, bolted for the door, dragging Tristan along. She kicked her good leg, and attempted to bite Kendricks on the arm that was secured across her collarbone, but it did no good. Kendricks refused to halt until he heard an ominous sound from behind him. Jack had cocked his gun, aimed right at Kendricks' head. He would just need to squeeze his trigger finger an eighth of an inch, and a bullet would be lodged in Kendricks’ skull.

Kendricks called his bluff. Swiftly, he squeezed his trigger before Jack could, sending a bullet flying, whirring and blurred through the hallway, and square into Jack's right leg, effectively shattering his knee cap, rendering him momentarily useless. He didn't even wait to see Jack's grimace or see him fall to the ground, he bounded through the exit doors, hauling a crying and screaming Tristan behind him.

“No! Dad!!!”

Tristan couldn't breathe. She watched as her father fell to the ground, his leg blown out from underneath him, his face grimacing in pain. Still, he tried to get to his feet but couldn't, screaming Tristan's name as she was dragged against her will through the exit door, taken from him again. The nurse and the security guard had begun to make their way back to the security desk to contact the police when they heard the sound of the gun shot. Wide-eyed and afraid, they looked at each other, and the nurse ran to call the police, as the security officer ran towards the sound of the shot.

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