“Something wrong, Ms. Sloan?”
Lindsey shook her head. She made herself begin to unpack her tote, but her hands were trembling. She refused to look up, imagining she could feel Steven’s eyes on her as she worked.
He’s into you,
Justin had said. Was that what this was about? A manifestation of that crush?
Despite her intentions, she lifted her eyes from the books she was taking out of her bag and found Steven’s gaze still focused on her. She looked at Jean, whose head was down as she thumbed through the notebook she’d removed from her backpack.
When she shifted her eyes back to Steven, his lips lifted at the corners, the motion hardly enough to be called a smile. More like a sneer, she realized. He was sneering at her.
Fury flooded Lindsey’s body, increasing the vibration of her hands. Had he been the one who’d put that damn snake in her hamper? Locked her in a building he’d tried to burn down around her? Had he then targeted Andrea and Tim, hounding them to suicide?
Each memory fueled a rage she hadn’t realized simmered so near the surface. She dropped the tenth grade anthology on her desk, taking a perverse pleasure from the bang it made as it hit. On some level she was aware the girls had looked up to see what was going on, but she was past the point of caring.
She marched down the center aisle until she reached Steven. She had to step around Jean’s book bag to lean forward and put her palms on the wooden surface of his desk.
His eyes never left her face. And other than a slight widening as she bent down, they didn’t change.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” His voice was soft, the lift at the corners of his mouth increasing.
“You’re supposed to be studying. Or you need to go.”
“I
am
studying. My favorite subject in the world.”
There was no doubting his meaning. With that realization, Lindsey knew this was a confrontation that couldn’t take place in this classroom. Not in front of the other students.
Steven shifted forward in his seat, bringing his face closer to hers. She recoiled, straightening and stepping back, only to stumble over Jean’s backpack.
In the split second she had to react, she put her arms out, trying to regain her equilibrium by finding something solid to grab onto. Her right hand found purchase on the seat back of the desk in front of Jean’s. As it tilted backward under her weight, Jean jumped up, scrambling, or so Lindsey thought, to get her bag out of the aisle.
By the time Lindsey managed to right herself, still hanging on to the seat back, she realized that both the boy and girl were bending over the backpack. A couple of books, which she assumed had spilled out when she’d fallen over it, lay beside the bag.
As Lindsey straightened, her balance restored, Jean began to pull something else out of the depths of the backpack. It took Lindsey too long to understand what she was seeing.
And far too long to react.
“Back up,” Steven said, brandishing a gun that seemed to have appeared from thin air.
Despite the threat it represented, Lindsey couldn’t keep her eyes off the object Jean had taken from her bag. The olive drab, rectangular-shaped package had a D-cell battery duct taped to its top. A tangle of wires protruded from it and the tape.
Eyes shining, the girl held it out as if she were presenting a gift. Something wonderful. Something miraculous.
Lindsey heard a gasp from one of the girls seated by the windows, reminding her of their presence. And of their lives. Her students’ lives, which she was responsible for.
“Back up,” Steven said again, gesturing with his weapon. “Do it
now,
Ms. Sloan.”
She took a step backward and then another. She tried to hold his eyes, willing him not to use the gun.
Even as she did, she was aware of the far greater danger represented by what Jean held. It was clearly some kind of explosive. Maybe four or five pounds of it. And Lindsey had no idea what kind of damage something like that could do. Destroy this room? The whole wing?
Her eyes flicked to the left, to see if anyone in the hall was aware of what was going on. The door to her classroom was closed. Had Steven done that when he’d slipped in?
“What are you going to do?”
His smile widened. “I don’t know. Got a suggestion?”
“Please don’t do this, Steven. Whatever—”
He laughed. “We’ve come too far to go back now. You know that. You knew it when you told your boyfriend to start asking all those questions. You can’t unring the bell, Ms. Sloan.”
Neither could he. Whatever they were planning, Steven would understand very well there was no going back from this.
“You don’t have to make it worse,” she pled.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, we do. Much, much worse for everybody. It’s the only way to fly.”
“That’s insane.”
“I’m sure that will be said. Aren’t you sure, Jean? That they’ll say we’re nuts? But what’s different about that?”
The girl laughed, her hands cradling the explosive.
“Put that down,” Lindsey urged her, “and I’ll talk to them. I’ll talk to Jace. You know he listens to me.”
“Jace listens, huh? And you talk?” Steven mocked, and then his voice hardened. “You talk to him while ya’ll are fucking?”
“Steven.”
“I forgot. Mustn’t talk naughty to the teacher. You want to wash my mouth out with soap, Ms. Sloan? Well, believe me I’d like to wash you, too. Only not your mouth. ’Cause I don’t mind if you talk dirty to me.”
A distant rattling, like the noise of a jackhammer, came from somewhere outside. Jean laughed in response, the sound jarring and inappropriate.
“You know what that was, Ms. Sloan?” Steven asked.
Lindsey shook her head, afraid to speculate.
“That’s our signal.”
“Signal for what?”
“Signal that the
fun
has started. And it’s time for us to join in. Go get your keys.”
“What?”
“Get your keys.” He gestured toward the front of the room with the gun he held.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
The muzzle of his weapon swung away from her and focused on the two girls sitting by the window. The motion carried Lindsey’s gaze with it. One of the girls screamed. The other laid her head on her desk, burying it in her arms.
“Steven, don’t,” Lindsey begged again.
“Keys.
Now.
”
She turned and ran for her desk. Before she got there, she had to come to terms with the realization that she might just have missed her chance. If she’d grabbed his gun in the fraction of a second while it was moving away from her—
Then Jean might have done whatever they intended with that bomb. If she had, they might all be dead. As of now, they were all still alive. And it was up her to see they stayed that way.
Lindsey stooped, pulling the bottom drawer of her desk open. She tried to think if there was anything in her purse she could use as a weapon. She jerked it out, feeling inside for her keys. Her fingers encountered the cool metal of her cell phone. By policy, students weren’t allowed to carry them on school property.
“Just the keys.”
Her hand still in her purse, Lindsey looked up to find Steven standing on the other side of her desk, watching. She knew this was another crossroad. If she obeyed, and left the phone in her purse, she would be giving up her only means of communication with the outside world.
“Everything else stays in your purse and it goes back into the drawer,” Steven ordered.
When she hesitated, he put both hands on the stock of the gun, tilting the barrel downward so the dark hole of the muzzle was aligned with her forehead. Then he lifted one brow, the movement obvious despite his glasses.
She found her keys and pulled them out of her handbag, letting him see them as she laid them on the desk. Preventing Steven from pulling that trigger was the important thing now. Not only to preserve her own life, but to keep him from crossing that barrier of killing his first victim as long as she could.
And which of the three already dead wasn’t his victim?
That was different. Or at least she hoped it was. Driving someone who was vulnerable to take their own life wasn’t the same as firing a gun and blowing out the brains of someone you knew. Someone you supposedly cared about.
How much of a role did Steven’s infatuation with her play in all this? Had he seen Jace’s questioning of him as a final betrayal of his fantasies?
She closed the drawer, sacrificing any chance of using her phone to the hope that she could keep the unthinkable from happening.
“What are you going to do?” she asked again.
“That’s for us to know and you to find out.”
The childishness of the taunt reinforced the reality—and danger—of the situation. No matter how bright they were, these two were nothing but children. With a child’s impulsiveness, lack of control, and inability to see consequences.
Their brains aren’t done…
Yet in their hands were very adult weapons of destruction. Guns and explosives. And before them lay an entire school, beginning to fill with people who, because they suffered from the same faults, had not always spoken or acted with kindness in their dealings with these two.
Therein lay the seeds of Columbine and every other act of violence that had been perpetrated on an unsuspecting student body. Those seeds had been sown here, too.
And now, she feared, it was time for all of them to reap their harvest.
A
s Jace put the car into gear to back out of the Carrs’ driveway, he called the dispatcher, impatiently counting off the rings until she answered. He told her he wanted two patrol cars dispatched to the high school and that he’d meet them there.
There was a beat of silence before she asked, “Are those in addition to the one I just sent over, detective?”
The sense of dread he’d felt since Carr’s mother had mentioned the kid taking his “project” to the school blossomed into something far worse. “You’ve already sent a car? For what?”
“One of the school’s maintenance workers reported hearing what sounded like automatic weapons fire.”
“Would he know?”
“Said he’s a Vietnam vet.”
“Jesus.” Jace’s response to that information was as much a prayer as an expletive. He increased his speed, eyes checking intersections he approached as he talked. “Where?
Exactly.
”
“He thought it came from the commons.”
“The commons?”
“It’s an area off the main lobby. A place for the students to congregate, mostly before school. In the same general vicinity as the lunchroom and the gym,” she added helpfully.
“But the lunchroom wouldn’t be open this early.” Jace tried to remember the geography of the main building.
“Oh, they serve breakfast, too, mostly for the free lunch crowd, but anyone that wants to can buy it.”
Crowd.
The word reverberated in Jace’s mind, reminding him of the swarm of teenagers that had poured out of the gym after the pep rally he’d attended.
“How long ago was the call?”
“I dispatched the deputies out about…three minutes ago.”
“Send a couple more cars,” Jace said. “Tell one of them to go to wherever they unload the buses. They need to stop anyone else from entering the building. Oh, and one more thing. I need the home phone number of a Colonel Paul Carr.”
When the dispatcher provided that information, Jace dialed the Carr residence, again waiting impatiently through the rings.
Justin’s father answered. “Hello.”
“Jace Nolan again, Colonel. I need to know what weapons are missing from your house.”
“If this is another accusation against my son—”
“You
do
have weapons there, don’t you, Colonel? Have you checked them this morning?”
There was a slight hesitation before Carr said, “I keep my collection in a gun safe, detective. No one has access but me.”
“That’s great. Now go check and tell me what’s missing.”
“I just told you—”
“We received a report of automatic weapons fire at the high school. You have automatic weapons in that collection, sir?” The resulting silence was all the answer Jace needed. “Go see what’s missing, goddamn it. And do it now.”
“Hold on.”
As he waited, Jace tried to think what else he should do. Turning the wrist of the hand he was steering with, he glanced down at his watch. It was 7:18 a.m. How many kids would be in and around the building at this time of the morning? And how could he make sure that no more were allowed inside?
“Three weapons are gone,” Carr said without preamble. “An M9 Beretta, a 1911A and an AK47.”
The latter explained what the maintenance worker had heard. “So now we know what your son’s ‘science’ project consisted of.”
“See here, Nolan—”
“You better get that high-powered Montgomery lawyer on the phone, Colonel. I suspect you and your family are going to need all the help he can give you very soon. And if you have any influence over your son, I suggest you call him. Try to convince him that whatever he’s doing needs to end right now.”
“Believe me, I’d be glad to,” Carr said, “but they don’t allow cells at the high school. Some kind of safety measure.”
Christ, Jace thought. That meant there was no communication in or out of the building, except through the central office. And if they had already taken that out, as they should have in an assault, there would be no way for outsiders to know what was going on inside.
“Then you and your wife might want to start praying.”
Jace broke the connection. Eyes shifting between his phone and the road ahead, he held the cell out in front of him, running down his contacts list until he found Lindsey’s name. Carr hadn’t mentioned if the ban on phones extended to the teachers, but Jace thought that was unlikely.
If he could reach Lindsey, she could clue him into what normally went on at the school this time of the morning. Where the kids were. And maybe more importantly, where they weren’t. If they could do anything to minimize the exposure…
When—after a half dozen unanswered rings—the voice mail message came on, Jace resisted the urge to snap the lid closed. Maybe Lindsey had her phone on vibrate. Or maybe it was off. Just because she didn’t answer didn’t mean she’d been caught up in whatever the maintenance worker had reported.
“Call me as soon as you get this,” he said in response to the prompt. “If you’re in your classroom, lock your door and stay there. Promise me, Lindsey. Just stay there.” He hesitated, his mind racing. And then, knowing that despite what anyone could do, this could blow up in their faces, turning into the same kind of bloodbath Columbine and Thurston had been, he added, “I love you. Just…Just please, please don’t let anything happen to you.”
He closed the case of his cell with a snap and tossed it onto the seat beside him. Then, conscious of nothing except getting to Randolph-Lowen as soon as possible, he continued to drive too fast through the sleepy streets of a town that had, until this morning, thought nothing more tragic than the suicides of two teenagers could ever happen to it.
Jace went to the back of the school, because he assumed the first cruiser they’d dispatched would go in the front. He wanted to make sure his instructions were being followed and that students weren’t being allowed to enter through the transported-student entrances. Judging by the two buses lined up along the sidewalk—
Rick Carlisle stepped out from between them and started toward him. The deputy was in uniform, his shoulder radio in place so that he would only have to turn his head to make contact with the dispatcher.
“What do you know?”
“Not much. I got here in time to stop this one. The other,” he said, turning to indicate the first bus in line, “had already unloaded, but we’ve rounded up the students who hadn’t gone into the building and got them back on it.”
“You hear anything like the gunfire that was reported?”
“Not back here, but it was pretty noisy until we got the kids on the bus.”
“You check with the dispatcher?”
“Yeah. Nobody’s heard anything from the first responders, but given the timing they must be inside by now. We were close, so we got here maybe five minutes behind them.”
Carlisle’s attention was diverted by the arrival of another bus. He stepped around Jace, raising his hand to the driver.
Although the woman had been reaching for the lever to open the door, she must have caught sight of the deputy’s gesture out of the corner of her eye. Carlisle walked around to the side. The driver completed her motion, cracking the door.
“Pull up beside the front bus in line. Don’t let anyone off.”
“Has something happened?”
“We don’t know yet. It may be nothing. Just keep them on the bus until we find out.”
She nodded before she pulled the lever toward her and put the bus in gear. Accompanied by the stench of diesel fuel, it rolled past Carlisle and into the place he’d directed.
“Where’s your partner?” Jace called.
Rick stepped to his right and pointed in the direction he’d sent the woman driver. When Jace walked around the rear of the parked bus, he saw another deputy standing beside the first, in conversation with a man holding a briefcase. Teacher, Jace surmised, and possibly the driver as well.
“Tell those two to take over out here. They can call for backup if they need it. Tell them whatever they do not to let anybody into the building. You come with me.”
Leaving Rick to make those arrangements, Jace turned and headed down the covered sidewalk toward the back entrance. Before he reached it, he was left in no doubt about the accuracy of the original information they’d received.
Although distant, the sound from inside the building was distinct enough to be instantly identifiable to anyone familiar with it. The combat vet who’d called in hadn’t been wrong. Apparently Carr’s son knew enough to be able to use the powerful assault rifle his father owned.
Jace drew his own weapon, and then positioning himself to the side of the glass panel in the door, he tried to see inside. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening in this hall.
After a few seconds, Carlisle, his department-issued .38 held in both hands, assumed a similar stance on the other side of the entrance. His brows lifted in question as he looked over at Jace. When he nodded, the deputy reached out to open the door. Jace slipped inside, leading with his Glock.
The hall was eerily empty. Maybe another of the early-arriving teachers had heard the gunfire and collected any students from back here and either taken them outside or secured them in a safe place.
He moved forward as quickly as he could without exposing himself to fire from the dark classrooms he passed. Carlisle followed, checking behind them as they navigated the hall.
Before they reached the end, there was another burst of fire from the automatic weapon. This time it was followed by the throatier bark of a semiautomatic.
Department issued? If so, that might mean that at least one of the first officers who had been dispatched was still alive. That made at least three of them inside the building. And other cars should be arriving at any minute.
With the thought, he turned to watch as Rick ran toward his position. “Backup?”
“On the way. ETA maybe four minutes.”
It should have made him feel better, but in any situation involving guns, especially automatic weapons, a hell of a lot could happen in a couple of minutes. None of it good.
“What about the first responders?”
Rick shook his head. “Dispatcher still hasn’t been able to make contact.”
Which made it likely both were dead, probably gunned down as they’d entered the building. The shots he’d heard, which he had taken as return fire, might mean someone was using their weapons. In any case, they were going to have to operate without any of the information those first arrivals might have provided them.
“Best guess where they’d be?” he asked the deputy. “Commons? Gym?”
“Depends on what they want. If it’s maximum kill, then this time of day I’d say the commons or the lunchroom. If they want somewhere they can secure and hold, I’d go for the lunchroom, with the gym a distant second.”
Maximum kill.
Another of those phrases he’d rather not have in his head, Jace acknowledged.
At this time of the morning Lindsey would already be upstairs. If they could contain this—
More gunfire interrupted that hopeful thought. He wondered how many shooters they were looking at.
He’d always suspected at least two people had been involved in the church fires. That kind of mischief was more fun if you shared the high. Just as this would be.
The more people involved in this kind of assault, the better, from a strictly tactical aspect, for the shooters. And the bigger the nightmare in trying to contain them.
That was something they’d have to learn as this played out. Right now, the only choice they had was to concentrate on the area where gunfire had already been heard.
“Okay,” he said to Rick. “How do we get there?”
“Follow me.”
Without waiting for agreement, Rick moved into position in front of him. He peered around the corner, carefully checking out the cross hall they’d reached. Then the deputy stepped out into it, knees bent, his weapon moving in a 180-degree arc. When nothing happened, he glanced back at Jace and nodded before he took off to his right.
Taking the same precautions, Jace trailed him. Unlike the procedure Jace had followed in the hall, the deputy didn’t bother to check out the rooms on either side, although there were lights on in some of them. Jace hoped the teachers who had unlocked those doors had by now relocked them. The best-case scenario would be that they’d gathered up any students they’d seen in the hall and brought them inside.
He knew from his initial visit that most of the kids congregated in the commons area before the opening bell. Because they’d been forbidden to enter other parts of the school at this time of day? If that was the case, Carlisle was undoubtedly right.
Maximum kill. Which meant they were going for a Columbine-type assault. Unless someone took them out—
Rick stopped again, pressing his back against the wall. He had reached the next intersection. The one that would lead into the lobby, at the very heart of the school. The office and stairs up to the second floor classrooms would be on the left; the commons, gym, and lunchroom on the right.
With his hand, the deputy motioned to hold up. Adrenaline had already been pumping like a drug through Jace’s bloodstream. With the realization of where they were, it surged again. Sharpening his focus. Magnifying each movement made by the man in front of him.
Once again Carlisle leaned forward in an attempt to make a visual reconnaissance of the intersection ahead of them. This time, he jerked his head back immediately, flattening himself once more against the wall.
Mouth open from their recent exertions, Rick turned to look at Jace. Because he couldn’t read the deputy’s expression, Jace raised his brows, questioning. Carlisle shook his head before again looking back at the intersection.
Clearly he’d seen something that had bothered him out there. Or maybe
someone?
One of the shooters? If so, why hadn’t he tried to take him out?
Because it would have endangered others.
That was the only explanation that made sense of the deputy’s actions.
Were the shooters holding hostages? Using them as shields? Whatever was going on, Rick had decided now wasn’t the time to confront whoever was out there. The only problem Jace had with that decision was that time was a luxury they no longer had.