Another TSA agent stepped into his path. “Everything alright, sir?”

“Yeah,” Derik improvised. “Just forgot my wallet at the coffee shop.”

The TSA man raised a finger to the radio in his ear, nodded at something.

“I’m going to need you to come with me, sir.”

Derik heard a footfall behind and to the right of him. Another agent moving in for backup.

Shit.

Bobby felt his agitation. Derik could feel it rebounding, magnifying, the boy vibrating on edge now.

“Uh, I should really go get my wallet.”

“Sir.” The TSA man’s hand dropped to the taser at his hip. “You need to come with me.”

My boy, Derik thought. They’re gonna take Bobby away from me. They’re gonna lock him up.

Derik sighed, then nodded in resignation.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say, man.”

The TSA agent relaxed fractionally. Then Derik’s booted foot lashed out, taking the man in the ribs and sending him flying through the air. Derik swung hard with the duffel even before the first man hit the ground, slamming the fifty-pound weight of it into the agent behind him, sending the man staggering back.

No one was going to take his boy.

Then Derik had a screaming Bobby over his shoulder and he was running, hyper-muscled legs propelling him at a frightening sprint, enlarged heart sending a flood of superoxygenated blood to power his mad dash.

Shouts rang out. People jumped out of his way. Bobby was screaming like a banshee, “AAAAGH! ARRRRR! AAIIEEEE!” and scratching and clawing at him. The main doors were two hundred yards away. One fifty. Just a hundred yards away!

The taser barbs took him in the lower back mid-stride. The muscles of his back and legs seized up, and he and Bobby crashed to the ground, sliding across the tile floor in a heap.

Derik forced his arm to move, reached back and yanked the barbs out of his flesh. He got them out as the TSA men closed on him. He was on his feet in a heartbeat. His right fist cratered a man’s face, took the man off his feet.

Bobby screamed again, “AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!”

The terror and rage and chaos of it filled his mind.

Another one came at him with a baton and Derik broke the man’s arm. Two men tried to wrestle him to the ground and Derik snapped one’s knee like dry kindling and sent the other flying with a concussive smash to the side of his head.

They weren’t going to take his boy!

Bobby was on the ground, dazed. Derik hoisted the boy over his shoulder and ran like hell.

Eighty yards.

Fifty yards.

Thirty yards.

We’re gonna make it!

Then the shots rang out, and Derik felt the bullets punch through his chest, again and again and again, and he fell, and fell, and fell until the floor met his face.