ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) by Jason R. James Page A

his eyes again, Jeremy was lying on his back on the cold floor. Kate
was kneeling over him. He remembered his first thought, wondering if she had
given him CPR again and feeling embarrassed that the answer was probably yes.
She helped him sit up, and, for a second, everything in the mall was spinning.
Then he took a deep breath and steadied himself. That’s when he saw the
soldiers.
    They
were everywhere, spreading out across the mall like ants, each one in their
gray camouflage with their weapons up and ready. Jeremy looked to his side and
four of the soldiers had surrounded his attacker. It was hard to see, but they
were either zip-tying Hot Shot’s hands and ankles together or they were
starting an IV. Maybe it was both.
    Then
two more soldiers approached him and Kate, their weapons leveled. Jeremy
thought they asked for their names, but he saw Kate nodding, so he did the
same. Then one of the soldiers grabbed him under the arm, lifting him to his
feet, and they were both escorted out of the mall. They were loaded into the
back of an SUV.
    *****
    “Do
you recognize that man in the picture,” McCann said, calling Jeremy’s attention
back.
    “Yeah.
That’s the guy from the mall.”
    McCann
rubbed his chin as he looked down at the carpet. “We know that man, your
attacker, as ‘Hot Shot.’”
    Jeremy
nodded. “Yeah. That’s what he kept calling himself. ‘Hot Shot.’”
    “He
has plenty of other aliases—probably a new name for every day of the week—but
when someone wants him for a job, they go looking for Hot Shot. He’s a hired
gun, Jeremy. A trained assassin.”
    Jeremy
kept staring at the image. “Where is he now?”
    “He’s
somewhere safe. You won’t have to worry about him again.”
    All
at once, Jeremy could see the big picture, like a connect-the-dots that wasn’t
finished; his mind was racing to fill in the gaps. “If he’s an assassin—he knew
my name—in the mall he was looking for me. He had a picture of me!”
    McCann
looked up. “Because you were his target, Jeremy. That man was hired to kill
you. And that’s why you need to tell us everything you remember about last
week.”
    Emily
Cross sat forward on the couch, and Jeremy could hear the panic in her voice.
“Last week? You mean about his accident? That man wanted to kill Jeremy because
of his accident?”
    McCann’s
eyes stayed fixed on Jeremy. “Tell us what happened, son.”
    Jeremy
shrugged. “I got hit by a bus.” He watched the colonel’s face as he spoke, but
McCann didn’t change. He made no reaction. There was no smirk of disbelief.
    Emily,
however, spoke up at once. “You didn’t get hit by a bus, Jeremy. You almost got
hit. Dr. Patel told you—”
    “No,
Mrs. Cross,” Kate interrupted. “I was there. I saw it. Jeremy got hit by that
bus.”
    “We
saw it too, Mrs. Cross,” McCann said. “We studied the footage from the traffic
camera, and Jeremy definitely got hit by that bus. He got hit, but he was the
one left standing. Those are the facts.”
    “That’s
crazy!” Emily snapped, sitting back hard against the couch.
    Jeremy
looked at his mom, and for the first time, he thought he could really see her.
He could see the person she was. He could see that she believed everything they
were saying—she had to now—but she was too scared to admit it. Scared of what
it might mean for her son. More scared of what it might mean for her. And then
Jeremy realized what she was—all of her anger and judgment and guilt—it all
came from the same place. She was afraid. She spent a lifetime as the wife of
Dr. Jonathan Cross. Another lifetime as his mother. Now his dad was gone. What
if something happened to her son? What would be left of Emily Cross? Who would
she be? And for the first time since his dad died, maybe for the first time
ever, Jeremy felt sorry for her.
    McCann
turned to Jeremy. “It was your accident that put you on our radar. The only
problem is, we weren’t the only ones