Flash #9

Word count:17,734.
Let's see what is going on at the Community Center where Ellen and Mac work:

Ellen takes out the packet of information to be gathered for the in-take and settles into her seat. Just then, she hears a male voice in the hall, loud and aggressive. Marie looks like a rabbit cornered by a dog.
“You okay?” Ellen asks.
“I think that’s my boyfriend,” she whispers. “He’s mad at me…about something. And....he didn't want me to come here today.”
The voice happens again, this time cursing.
“Maybe I –” Marie starts, but Ellen stops her.
“You stay right here.”
There is more yelling, which makes Ellen worry that -- what ever it is, Josh the security guard doesn’t have it under control. She picks up her phone and dials Mac’s extension. He doesn’t pick up and her bad feeling deepens.
“Don’t move,” she instructs Marie and goes for the door.
As Ellen turns towards the reception desk, she sees Mac talking to a big guy in an even bigger down jacket and no Josh to be found. The guy's hands are out as if to defend himself and she can see the muscles of his jaw tighten. Mac looks calm to her, but then again he always does in a crisis, it's what he is trained to do. She is thinking of leaving him to it, of stepping back into her office to check on Marie when – she sees it. The guy has a knife in his hand.
Ellen grabs the phone in the hall and hits intercom.
“Emergency up front,” she hears her voice say over the loud speaker.
Her mind is still trying to work out whether the knife is fake or real, when Mac goes to grab it. In one quick motion the guy snakes the other way, turns the knife to face downward and it disappears, unbelievably, into Mac’s chest.