AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Many thanks to all the readers of this story, and thanks to lovesgod12, Princess Bunny, and FirstFandomFangirl for commenting on Chapter 2! Chapter 3 below concludes this story, but please look for my cowboy tale, The Fire Within a Ninjago Soldier, to which I plan to add a new chapter each Monday.
Merry Christmas to all!
Chapter 3
Cole kept dreaming, switching his sleeping position so that he was now on his back...
"He's gone, Anne! You can come out!" Cole shouted to the saleswoman in the stall as he ran out the restroom door.
Maybe running wasn't a good idea, he thought as he entered the main furniture area and faced a line of police officers, all pointing their weapons at him.
"Hands up!" one officer said. His voice sounded like the voice on the bullhorn. He must be Lieutenant Pierce, Cole guessed.
"Wait!" Betty shouted from behind the line of police. "He's not the gunman!"
Cole motioned to the restroom door, from which Anne had just emerged. "Yeah! The guy went down the fire escape and took my girlfriend hostage!"
With the new bit of information Cole just provided, the officers sprang into action. Some hurried out of the furniture department, some ran into the restroom, and some came up to talk to the earth ninja, but he had other plans which did not include standing around and talking.
"I'm going to save her!" he yelled back at them as he ran out of the furniture department and toward the escalator. There was no time to waste. That scumbag had just taken away the wonderful girl who had brought him so much happiness these last few months, and Cole wasn't about to let the guy hurt one hair on her head. So Cole planned to reach the bottom of the fire escape before they did, in order to introduce that creep to the earth ninja's fist.
The downward escalators happened to be empty, going down to the seventh and the sixth floors, so Cole could navigate three steps at a time. But then he encountered some people going down the escalators to the fifth and fourth floors from there, as the building was being quietly evacuated.
"Excuse me! Pardon me!" he apologized as he hurriedly passed them by.
On the fourth floor, he could see that the downward escalators were quite full of people at that point and he really couldn't shoulder his way past them. So to bypass them, he stepped onto the railing and nimbly surfed past the escalator riders down to the third floor and again down to the second floor, where he then jumped off the railing.
Cole spotted Kai and Sam in the crowd. They were leaving the jewelry department.
What were they shopping for in that area? he wondered.
He had no time to dwell on that, however, for he was haphazardly forming a plan in his mind, and he was going to need both of them to help carry it out.
Like a salmon swimming upstream, Cole struggled to move in the opposite direction of the exiting throng of people to reach his teammate and his girlfriend.
"Guys!" Cole greeted them upon reaching them. "Come with me to the ladies' room! I'll explain on the way!"
"Um, Cole," Kai began as he grabbed Sam's hand and guided her in their quest to keep pace with the earth ninja as they headed to the second floor women's restroom. "There's something wrong with what you just said, but first, did you hear the building is being evacuated? I heard there was a hostage situation up on the eighth floor, in the furniture area."
"Yeah! Brooke and I and a saleswoman were the hostages, and now the jerk is taking Brooke down the fire escape!"
"Oh, no!" Sam gasped. She became frightened at the plight of her university roommate.
"I've got a plan to save her. We're gonna stop him from reaching the ground," Cole puffed, just slightly out of breath from the constant hustling, as they reached the restroom. "Sam, can you see if any ladies are in there?"
Sam ducked in and returned a few seconds later. "It's empty."
"Good. Now, come in here with me, Kai, 'cause you and I-"
"Go into a LADIES' room?" Kai incredulously asked.
"Yes!" Cole exasperatedly answered, grabbing his teammate's arm and dragging him in as Sam followed. "I figure Brooke and that dirtbag haven't made it down this far yet, 'cause fire escape stairs can seem flimsy, and he's gotta help Brooke climb down as well as climb down himself."
Cole strode over to the window and opened it - now that he knew how - as he continued. "So we're gonna hide under the fire escape stairs leading to this floor and wait for him. I'll tackle him and you grab Brooke."
Kai objected. "You don't think I'm strong enough to tackle him, big guy? I think I should tackle him and you should grab Brooke."
"Fine. But let's hurry."
While the men climbed out the window, Kai suggested to Sam that she evacuate the building. She assured him that she would and that she would keep herself safe, then wished them good luck, and gave Kai a good-luck kiss, before she closed the window after them so that Jerry would not suspect anything was amiss.
The ninja brothers perched themselves on a hidden underpinning of the fire escape stairs between the third and second floors, and they waited. They observed that more and more police cars were arriving and parking along the street. The officers that got out were positioning themselves behind their squad cars and aiming their guns at...the fire escape.
"Maybe I should have thought this out more carefully," Cole ruefully whispered.
"Ya think?" Kai chided him in a return whisper.
But they had no more time to argue, for they could hear the metal clang of footsteps above them. Soon they could hear Brooke's wails of fear as Jerry unceremoniously yanked her, step by step, down the flimsy stairs.
"Move faster, girl!" they heard him growl at his hostage.
Cole's eyes narrowed at the treatment his girl was receiving at the hands of that jerk.
The gunman and his captive reached the third floor landing, almost to the point where Cole and Kai could pounce on them. But then the footsteps stopped.
Except for Brooke's rapid breathing, the ninja brothers heard only silence for a minute, until Jerry said, "Change in plans, girl. We're going back up, this time to the roof." The multitude of police cars obviously made him nervous.
Cole's eyes widened. His plan was foiled.
But he was not about to let that scumbag take the hazel-eyed beauty up to the roof. The options for rescuing her would be severely limited there.
Cole signaled to Kai, and on a silent count of three, the earth ninja and the fire ninja swung themselves agilely from their hiding place up to where Jerry and Brooke stood on the third floor fire escape landing.
"Surprise, Jerry!" Cole shouted, drawing back his fist and punching the criminal in the jaw. Even though Kai was supposed to be the one walloping Jerry, Cole couldn't resist one smack.
Jerry staggered but did not fall down, however, so Kai was going to have his chance at doing some pummeling. Cole planned to come back and help him, if he still needed help by then. But first, the black-clad ninja grabbed the waist of his favorite brunette, her mouth still open in amazement at seeing him.
"Hold on to my neck!" he told her. He held her tight as he nimbly leaped from the third floor landing to the second floor landing.
Then, as Cole was jumping from the second floor landing to the ground, a gunshot rang out. In the struggle between Kai and Jerry for the gun, the weapon had discharged.
A searing pain erupted in his lower leg, so instead of hitting the ground upright while avoiding a large Christmas decoration hung on the storefront, they crashed into the decoration and knocked it over before he crumpled to the sidewalk, landing on his back with Brooke falling on top of him.
Cole looked up at her, trying not to show pain. "Are you OK, Brooke?"
"Oh, sweetie, I'm fine! Are you OK?" Brooke scrambled off him to kneel by his side. She cupped his face with her hands, looking at him worriedly.
Cole bit his lip to help cope with his pain. "Well, not totally OK, but I'll get through it, with your help," he smiled weakly, reaching up to guide a loose tendril of her brown hair behind her ear.
He felt something in her hair behind her head. Retrieving it, he held it close to his face and studied it. It apparently had come from the storefront Christmas decoration. He began to laugh.
"What's the matter?" Brooke asked him, clearly puzzled.
"It's mistletoe!" he exclaimed.
Her expression of puzzlement turned into a smirk. "And your point is…?" she teased.
"Come here, babe!" he grinned invitingly.
She lowered her face to his and their lips touched. They had exchanged many kisses since they began their relationship, but today, on a day when they both faced the barrel of a gun, her kiss was especially exquisite.
"You're all I want for Christmas," he murmured as their lips parted.
Brooke sat back on her heels, smiling at him as she took the hand of her hero into hers.
Cole became aware that all sorts of sirens were sounding. To him, the police sirens indicated that Kai had done his job of subduing that creep, and the guy was now being transported to a holding cell in the downtown police station. The ambulance siren indicated that medical help was coming for him.
The emergency personnel came and put him on a stretcher. As they loaded him into the ambulance, Cole realized he was still holding the mistletoe, but he wanted to give it to Brooke.
"Brooke, take this!" he called.
"I can't quite reach it!" she called back.
Cole stretched out his arm farther, and farther...and then there was a crash...
Cole woke up to find himself on the floor of a dark room. The bedroom he shared with his brothers. It was the middle of the night.
Cole realized he had been dreaming. He guessed he had rolled out of his bed as he dreamed he was stretching out his arm.
He climbed back in his lower bunk. He couldn't decide if he would classify his dream as a bad one, because of the scary stuff, or a not-so-bad one, because it ended with everyone being safe, and he even got one of Brooke's sweet kisses.
One thing was for sure, he told himself as he fell back asleep. The next time they decided to go shopping at Hayward's Department Store, he was definitely going to avoid the eighth floor!
**** The End ****