Jake instantly took in the scene playing out before him. Cal Granderson, in his campus police department uniform, was wrestling with a husky Hispanic man over a gun. The second guard was off to the side in front of the snack bar, nervously jerking both his gaze and his pistol back and forth between the desperate struggle and the prisoners he wanted to keep under control. Jake figured the shot had come from the gun the two men were fighting over, but he didn’t see any blood on Granderson or the other guy, so he hoped the bullet had gone wild.

The way Granderson and his opponent were twisting and staggering around, Jake couldn’t risk taking a shot in their direction. But the second guard was a different story, so he called, “Hey!”

The man turned his head first, to look over his shoulder, and then his eyes widened as he spotted Jake standing there drawing a bead on him. He tried to jerk around and bring his gun to bear, but the Glock in Jake’s hands had already spouted flame. The 9mm slug smacked into the middle of the guy’s forehead and blasted right on through his brain to hit the suddenly blood-splattered wall on the other side of him. His knees buckled, dropping him into a crumpled heap.

Granderson and the man he was fighting with had to have heard Jake’s shot, but neither could afford to take their attention away from their battle. Granderson had both hands clamped around the man’s wrist. He wrenched on it, trying to get him to drop the gun, but as he was doing that, the man used his free hand to hammer punches at Granderson’s head. Granderson hunched his shoulders as much as he could, trying to protect himself, but his head was bleeding from several cuts that had been opened up already.

This would have been a good time for the now-unguarded hostages to rush forward and overwhelm the gunman through sheer force of numbers. Considering the way that most of them were hiding under the snack bar tables, though, whimpering and crying because guns were going off, Jake knew that wasn’t going to happen.

He bounded forward and chopped the gun in his hand down at the head of the man fighting with Granderson. The blow landed with a solid thud. Granderson grabbed the man’s gun and jerked it free. He slashed upward with it and crashed it against the man’s jaw. Jake heard bone crunch. The man staggered back a step and sat down hard, making grotesque noises as he clutched at his shattered jaw. Jake shut him up and laid him out with a swift kick to the head.

Then he nodded to Granderson and said, “Good work.”

Granderson didn’t seem to be in a mood to accept the compliment graciously. He said, “I had him! I would have put both those bastards down if you hadn’t stuck your nose in, Rivers!”

“You’re welcome,” Jake said wryly.

- Chapter 41