Story code: ST-000627
Part 3: The Prohibited Person
Marcus shoved her through the heavy, fire-rated door of the back office and slammed it shut. The total darkness was absolute for exactly two seconds before Marcus clicked on his tactical penlight. He had covered the lens with his thumb, letting only a thin bleed of crimson light illuminate the cramped space. Red light preserved natural night vision. If he had to go back out into the main shop, he couldn’t afford to be blind.
Elaine stumbled against a stack of cardboard inventory boxes, gasping for air, her hands blindly searching for purchase.
“Get against the wall and stay low,” Marcus ordered, his voice dropping to a harsh, barely audible whisper. He knelt beside his desk, his fingers quickly spinning the dial of his personal quick-access safe.
“Are you calling them?” she asked, her voice hitching. “You have a landline in here, right?”
“Line is dead. Cell is jammed.” The heavy steel door of the safe popped open with a heavy metallic clack. Marcus reached past his backup handguns and pulled out a short-barreled AR-15. He slapped a thirty-round magazine into the well and racked the charging handle. The mechanical *clatter-shick* seemed deafening in the tiny room.
From the front of the store, a loud, agonizing screech of tearing metal echoed through the wall. The attacker was working a heavy crowbar into the tracks of the steel security grate.
Marcus leaned against the edge of the desk, keeping his eyes on the office door while addressing her. “You said military crates. If they’re moving military hardware, what kind of armor are they wearing? Level III? Level IV plates? Do they have night vision?”
Elaine hugged her knees, her eyes wide in the red gloom. “I don’t know! They just had coats!”
“You said they flashed badges at the port,” Marcus pressed, his mind racing through tactical scenarios. “What kind of badges? State Police? Federal?”
“Just badges! Gold ones!”
Marcus paused. He tilted the red beam of the penlight slightly, catching the terrified, shifting glint in her eyes. The adrenaline that had spiked his heart rate began to temper into a cold, hard skepticism. He listened to the screech of the pry bar again. It was rhythmic, brute-force labor.
“A coordinated smuggling ring doesn’t send one guy with a crowbar to pry open a reinforced storefront,” Marcus said slowly, the pieces failing to interlock in his mind. “If they were dirty cops or military contractors, they would have hooked a chain to the grate and ripped it out with a truck. Or used a thermal cutting torch on the locks. And a trained professional doesn’t miss a stationary headshot from ten feet away, even through laminated glass.”
The pry bar slipped with a loud *clang*, followed by a muffled curse from the front alley.
“Who is out there, Elaine?” Marcus asked, stepping closer to her, his shadow looming large against the wall. “If I shoot a cop-dirty or not-my life is over. If I shoot a federal agent, I go to Leavenworth forever. Tell me exactly who is trying to kill you.”
Elaine squeezed her eyes shut. Her chest heaved, and a wet, choked sob tore from her throat. “It’s not the police.”
“Who?”
“The 15th Street Kings,” she wept, the lie finally cracking, leaving her sounding incredibly small. “It’s just a gang. It’s a street gang.”
Marcus lowered the rifle a fraction of an inch. “Why is a street gang hunting a megaphone-wielding anti-gun protester?”
“Because of Leo,” she gasped, burying her face in her hands. “My son. He’s fourteen.”
Marcus knew she had a son. She had two. Or, she used to. The older one had been killed in a drive-by shooting two years ago, a tragedy that had birthed her relentless crusade against the local gun stores. “What did Leo do?”
“He’s testifying,” Elaine cried, the words spilling out in a frantic, desperate rush. “Tomorrow morning. He was in the passenger seat when David was killed. He saw their faces. The DA subpoenaed him. I begged them not to, I begged them to hide us, but they said his testimony is the only way to lock the shooter away.”
Another violent scrape of metal echoed from the front. The grate was bending.
“They found us at the safehouse an hour ago,” she continued, her voice trembling violently. “They cornered us in the parking lot. We barely got to the car. I drove into the city to lose them. I hid Leo in the trunk of my sedan two blocks from here in an alley. I told him not to make a sound.”
Marcus stared at her, utterly bewildered by the sheer insanity of her choices. “If a gang is actively hunting a state witness, why didn’t you drive straight to a police precinct? Why come to my back door in the middle of the night with a stack of cash? Why not just buy a gun legally yesterday if you knew the trial was tomorrow?”
Elaine looked up at him, her graying hair wild, her face completely stripped of the righteous arrogance she wore every Tuesday and Thursday. There was nothing left but raw, maternal terror.
“I tried,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Last week. I drove three counties over to a big sporting goods store. I filled out the forms.”
Marcus frowned, the reality dawning on him. “NICS denial.”
“I failed the background check,” she hissed, tears spilling over her cheeks. “Three years ago, right after David was murdered, I found the boy who drove the getaway car. I waited outside his house. I beat him with an aluminum baseball bat until the neighbors pulled me off.” She let out a bitter, wet laugh. “Aggravated assault. Felony conviction. I am a legally prohibited person, Marcus. I can’t buy a gun. I can’t own a gun. The law says I have to sit there empty-handed and let them slaughter my last living child.”
She scrambled up to her knees, reaching out and grabbing the heavy nylon fabric of his tactical vest. Marcus didn’t push her away.
“I know you build them,” she pleaded, her fingers digging desperately into his gear. “I’ve dug through your dumpsters for my protests. I’ve seen the discarded aluminum shavings. I know you mill eighty-percent lower receivers in the back room. I need a ghost gun, Marcus. No serial number. No paperwork. Because if I manage to survive tonight, I still have to walk Leo into that courthouse tomorrow morning, and if I am caught carrying a registered firearm as a felon, I go to prison, and he goes into foster care.”
A deafening, metallic snap echoed through the building. The bottom locks of the front security grate finally gave way.
Marcus stood frozen in the red light, the heavy, serialized AR-15 in his hands. He stared down at the woman who had spent six months publicly demanding the government strip away his right to sell weapons, realizing she was now begging for an illegal, untraceable firearm because that very same government had legally stripped away her right to defend her family.
Before Marcus could formulate an answer, the massive pane of reinforced glass at the front of the shop shattered inward with the concussive roar of a bomb. The assassin was inside.