Chapter 5 - The Lion’s Den
David didn't wait for the police. He had been sitting in his SUV in the parking lot twenty minutes early, monitoring his phone’s security alert app synced to the school’s front gate.
He pinned Karen against the lockers, his forearm pressed firmly against her collarbone, his face inches from hers. His breath came in ragged, furious gasps.
“Touch that door again,” David growled, his voice so terrifyingly low that the entire hallway went silent, “and they will be carrying you out of here in a stretcher.”
Karen clawed at his arm, her composure completely shattered. “David! You’re ruining my life! My father’s firm is falling apart because of your mother’s rumors! Just let me talk to the boy! He’ll tell the judge I didn't mean it!”
“He is a seven-year-old child that you tried to freeze to death!” David roared, shoving her back as three city police officers rushed down the hallway, their boots thundering on the linoleum.
“Hands behind your back! NOW!” the lead officer commanded, drawing his taser and aiming it directly at Karen’s chest.
The fixer in the leather jacket tried to back away slowly toward the emergency exit, but two more officers tackled him to the floor near the trophy case, pinning his arms and snapping cuffs onto his wrists.
Karen was slammed face-first against the locker doors. The steel handcuffs clicked shut around her wrists with a heavy, final sound.
“David! Help me! Dad!” Karen screamed as she was dragged down the hall, her expensive hat falling onto the floor, crushed under the boots of the arresting officers. “You can’t do this to me! I am a Pendelton!”
“You are a criminal,” Principal Miller said coldly, standing beside my father.
David didn't watch her get dragged away. He turned to my classroom door, nodding to Miss Sarah through the glass.
The lock clicked open.
David rushed inside, dropping to his knees under the teacher’s desk where I was still huddled, my arms wrapped tightly around my head.
“Leo,” David whispered softly, reaching out slowly so he wouldn't startle me. “It’s over, buddy. She’s gone. She’s in handcuffs. She’s never coming back.”
I slowly uncovered my eyes, looking at my dad’s face. He had a red scrape on his knuckles, and his suit jacket was torn, but his eyes were filled with the same fierce, unyielding protection I had seen on the balcony night.
I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
“She tried to take me, Dad,” I whimpered. “She tried to take me away.”
“Over my dead body,” David swore, lifting me up into his arms and holding me tight against his chest. “Over my dead body.”
Eleanor entered the classroom a moment later, escorted by the school’s security chief. She looked at the smashed hat on the hallway floor, then at my father holding me, her face setting into a expression of lethal triumph.
“The District Attorney just called my line, David,” Eleanor announced quietly, her tone steady and triumphant. “The grand jury has seen the school security footage from the front lobby. They have upgraded Karen’s charges from felony child endangerment to attempted kidnapping, witness intimidation, and felony child abuse. There will be no bail this time. Arthur Pendelton’s money cannot save her now.”
May you like
David held me tighter, looking out the classroom window at the dark snow clouds rolling away, letting a brilliant ray of golden afternoon sunlight cut through the glass.
“Good,” David said softly. “Because we’re just getting started.”
