Two were carrying what Lee thought were assault rifles – maybe M16s, could’ve been AKs, too. Two had handguns. One shot the janitor in the head.

Another released a spray of fire taking out all the security cameras, while another tossed tear gas canisters onto the floor.

“Get down! Throw your phones across the floor now!”.

Women screamed and some started crying. As the clip-clap of phones hitting the floor echoed, one of the armed men jumped onto the counter and let go a line of fire where all the bank staff were crouching.

“Don’t touch any alarms or you’ll die!” he said.

One of the men ignored the cash in the tills, seized two of the terrified tellers and took them at gunpoint into the vault with sports bags, ordering them to be filled with cash.

Lee thought the gunmen moved like a military squad.

He estimated maybe twenty people were flat on the floor.

He glanced to one side and saw the younger couple, one man with his arm around a woman. He saw a white-haired woman, her hands trembling as she tried to keep them above her head.

Lee tried to slow his breathing. Before he could move one of the gunmen suddenly shouted.

“What the –”

One of the hostages, a teenager, was recording the robbery with his cell phone. The gunman flew to the kid and shot him dead. More people screamed and cried.

When the gunmen reached for the dead kid’s phone, he exposed the spider tattoo on the back of his hand.

Lee memorized details as the attackers shot at more people, hitting Lee in his arm and thigh, before they fled with bags stuffed with cash.

In the aftermath he lay there bleeding, choking for breath, his eyes burning as he tore strips from his shirt to help one woman who’d been shot in the neck.

But she’d lost too much blood.

She didn’t make it.

That was the last thing Lee remembered before he passed out.

-Chapter 29-

Ice Lake, Washington

Lee had been shot.

Ren would never forget that day. She’d nearly went out of her mind when the deputy had told her.

She climbed into her truck and drove straight to Seattle, saying a prayer with every mile until she’d arrived at the hospital where they’d taken Lee.

Eileen was at his side.

“I wish I could’ve done more,” Lee bit back on his tears when he thought of the people that had died around him.

He was sitting up, his voice strong as he recounted what had happened. Ren and Eileen were overcome as he continued.

“I survived all my time in Afghanistan, being shot at, facing snipers, booby traps, mines, and every kind of assault, only to come home and walk into a war zone in my own neighborhood. I can’t believe it.”

Neither could Ren.