Sunday at Polaris Fashion Place. I am watching Abby twirl in her newly bought blue dress. The scent of butter cookies and the sound of jazz music are rare luxuries for a staff sergeant on leave like me. The world is perfect. The restroom door just closed when Abby suddenly squeezed my hand, her fingernails digging deep into my skin.
“Mom, shh,”
she whispered, her eyes wide with terror. Through the gap under the door, a pair of oversized polished leather shoes moved slowly and stopped right in front of us. The space froze. My motherly instinct vanished, replaced by a trained killer instinct. My heart rate did not increase. It slowed down, ice cold. I pushed Abby back, my right hand instinctively searching for the gun at my hip. Even though it only touched thin air, the smell of danger was thicker than the scent of disinfectant. A lowmale voice spoke coldly reporting over the phone.
“Target acquired Maisie Barnes’s daughter. She is wearing a blue dress.”
He is hunting us. Who sold out my secret schedule? And why does that person want to steal the only thing that keeps me human? I felt the oxygen vanish from the small tiled stall, leaving only the metallic taste of adrenaline and the sharp chemical sting of bleach. This wasn’t a random mall creep or a lost soul. This was a professional hit on my reality. I felt my jaw lock, my facial muscles setting into the mask I wore during three tours in Iraq, the face of a woman who had seen the abyss and survived it. My fingers calloused from years of handling heavy equipment and cleaning carbon off M4 bolts gripped my smartphone with a deathly stillness. I didn’t scream. In my world, screaming is a waste of vital breath. It’s the sound of the defeated. Instead, I operated with the cold detachment of a hunter. With the steady hands of a marksman, I switched the phone to video mode and lowered it toward the floor. Through the narrow gap under the door, the screen revealed a highdefin nightmare. Charcoal wool trousers, Italian silk socks, and the reflection of a man who looked like he belonged in a corporate boardroom in downtown Columbus, not a women’s restroom. He began to tap his knuckles against the metal stall door. A rhythmic mocking sound that vibrated through my soul.
“Tink, tink, tink.”
“Abby, I have some candy for you, sweetie,”
he whispered. The artificial sweetness in his voice made my stomach churn with visceral disgust. It was the sound of a man who viewed my 8-year-old daughter as nothing more than a line item on a highstakes spreadsheet. Intelligence gathering was complete. I had his face, his voice, and the confirmation of his lethal intent. Now I needed a sitrep. We were compromised. The perimeter was breached, and the only path left was a tactical extraction. I looked at Abby. I didn’t see the little girl who loved glitter and dancing anymore. I saw a soldier’s daughter. I gave her the silent hand signals we used during our stealth games back at the base. One finger over my lips. Silence. Two fingers pointing toward the door. Move. Stay low. She nodded, her small chest heaving with silent, terrifying sobs. But she didn’t let a single gasp escape. She understood that mommy wasn’t playing anymore. I waited for the precise second he turned his back to the sinks to check his phone again. This was the window. I lunged toward the empty stall next to us and kicked the metal door with every ounce of my combat trained strength. The loud bang echoed through the restroom like a breaching charge, shattering the predatory silence.
“Hey, who’s there?”
I barked, injecting a calculated note of civilian panic into my voice to mask my true intent. The man lunged toward the sound of the decoy. In that heartbeat of distraction, I scooped Abby up into a fireman’s carry, threw open our door, and sprinted. We burst through the restroom exit like ghosts escaping a burning building, our feet pounding against the polished marble of the mall floor. I didn’t stop until we were engulfed by the thick, oblivious crowd outside the Macy’s department store. We were safe for 5 minutes. But the soldier in me knew that a threat deferred is not a threat destroyed. I didn’t flee to the parking lot. That would be playing his game. I marched Abby straight into the mall security office. The head of security, a portly man leaning back in his chair with a half-eaten pretzel on his desk, looked at my short cropped hair and rough hands with a bored, condescending smirk.
“Take a breath, ma’am. It’s probably just some guy who got turned around looking for the family room,”
he said, waving me off.
“I didn’t waste breath on, please.”
I pulled my military ID from my wallet and slammed it onto his desk with a force that made his soda can jump and the desk rattle.
“I am Staff Sergeant Barnes, United States Army. There is an adult male currently stalking a minor in the second floor lady’s room. You will pull the security footage for the restrooms immediately or I will call 911 and report you for obstructing a federal investigation and harboring a predator. Do I make myself clear, Sergeant?”
The color drained from his face as he realized he wasn’t dealing with a hysterical housewife. He saw the fire in my eyes, the kind of fire that only grows in the dark.
“Yes, ma’am.”
10 minutes later, the monitors flickered. We watched as Brian Hartman was cornered by two Columbus PD officers near the north exit. He didn’t struggle. He simply adjusted his silk tie, his face a mask of arrogant indifference. As the officers led him away in handcuffs, he spotted me standing near the fountain, clutching Aby’s hand so hard it was white. He smirked, a smile of pure unadulterated venom. He leaned toward the arresting officer, but his eyes were locked on mine, piercing through the distance.
“I’m a private investigator on a legal assignment,”
he shouted, his voice ringing out across the atrium, drawing the eyes of every shopper.
“And her?”
he pointed a handcuffed finger at me, his voice dripping with contempt.
“She’s no victim. She’s a wild animal in a uniform. Look at her. Short hair, rough hands, smelling like grease, and gunpowder. That kind of woman doesn’t know how to be a mother. I’m doing that little girl a favor by getting her away from a freak like this.”
The words felt like a physical slap to my face. The surrounding shoppers clutching their shopping bags and Starbucks cups began to whisper, their eyes scanning my appearance with sudden cold judgment. He wasn’t just trying to kidnap my daughter. He was trying to assassinate my character, my service, and my very soul. He thought his money and his suit made him superior to a widow who had bled for this country. He was wrong. This was my ground and I was going to stand it until the very end. If you feel the fire in Maisy’s heart right now, if you believe that no mother should ever be judged for the uniform she wears or the sacrifices she makes for her family, please show your support. Hit the like button to stand with her and tell us in the comments, have you ever been judged unfairly for who you are? Just type stay strong below if you are ready to see Maisie fight back for her daughter. Your voice is her strength. The fluorescent lights of the Columbus Police Department hummed with a sterile buzzing energy that graded against my nerves like sandpaper. I sat on a hard plastic bench, my arm wrapped tightly around Abby. We were safe, or so the paperwork said, but the air in this room felt heavy, tainted by the lingering scent of old coffee and desperation. I watched the hallway, my eyes fixed on the heavy steel door of the processing area. Then he appeared. Brian Hartman wasn’t wearing handcuffs anymore. Walking beside him was a man who looked like he had stepped off the cover of a legal journal, sharp suit, leather briefcase, and a smile that cost $500 an hour. This was the rich man’s get out of jail free card. The lawyer whispered something to the desk sergeant. A brief exchange that turned the officer’s professional stiffness into a submissive nod. Hartman adjusted his silk tie, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me. He didn’t look like a man who had just been caught stalking a child. He looked like a victor. He walked toward the exit, but as he passed our bench, he slowed down. He leaned in just enough for me to smell his expensive cologne, a mixture of mint and something metallic.
“My client is very concerned about her granddaughter’s safety,”
Hartman said, his voice a low, oily purr.
“She thinks the military environment is a bit too coarse for a young lady. She thinks you’re staining the girl with gunpowder.”
For Complete Cooking STEPS Please Head On Over To Next Page Or Open button (>) and don’t forget to SHARE with your Facebook friends.
