He was turning around to walk back to the front lobby and wait for the late bus when he heard a muffled scream.  Rushing around the corner, he saw Julia struggling with the bodyguard.  He had her arms pinned to her sides and one hand over her mouth as he dragged her towards the door.  A white van was parked right outside, its sliding door open.  A man with a mask over his face was crouched in the back.  It took Leo a half second to realize something was seriously wrong, and then he was running right at the man holding Julia.

He let his backpack and most of the books he was carrying fall to the ground.  As they slid along behind him, he tightened his grip on his history textbook.  The kidnapper dressed as a bodyguard started to let go of Julia when he saw Leo, but after all the speed training for basketball, Leo covered the distance in a flash.  The weighty textbook slammed into the man’s face, knocking him off Julia and into a wall.  As Leo hit him again, the man’s sunglasses broke and fell halfway off his face, revealing eyes filled with anger.

He was about to strike a third time when the man grabbed his arms and pushed him backwards.  The kidnapper was well muscled under his suit, so the shove sent Leo spinning.  The brick wall at the other end of the hallway rose up to greet his face.  The crack of his skull hitting stone rang in his ears and his vision flashed black and then white.  As the haze started to break up into individual points of light dancing in front of his eyes, he shook this aching head.

Spinning around, he saw Julia trying to pull herself off the ground and wiping blood from her lips.  The disguised kidnapper was pointing a gun right at him as he stood over them both.  Leo’s arms and legs felt heavy, and the only thing he could do was keep slouching against the wall.  He shut his eyes as the man’s trigger finger starting to move, flinching when he heard the shot.  Leo waited for the pain with his eyes closed as tightly as he could.  Maybe the pain wouldn’t come.  Maybe he’d just drift off.  That wasn’t quite right though, because his head was still killing him.  He counted to three and then opened his eyes.

The gun was still pointed at him, but as he watched, it slipped from the man’s grasp and clattered to the floor.  The kidnapper clutched at his chest, and when he pulled his hand back, his fingers were stained with red.  As he collapsed to the ground, another man dressed almost exactly the same rushed into view.  Julia screamed and tried to pull herself away.  Leo struggled to rise, but the new arrival holstered his weapon and held up his hands.

“Ms. Estelle, it’s Agent Felix.  You remember me right?  We need to move you away from this door right now.”

Julia did seem to recognize the agent now that she’d gotten a look at him.  As soon as she stopped struggling, he scooped her up and started running back towards the front of the school.  The masked kidnapper in the van obviously wasn’t happy with how events were unfolding.  He disappeared for a moment and returned with some kind of large, automatic weapon.