As if to prove his point, there was another burst of automatic weapons fire, the popcorn rhythm of it much clearer. More distinct. Obviously it was coming from the right, while whatever Carlisle had seen that had driven him back from a confrontation had been off to his left.
Tired of trying to figure out what was going on, Jace ran to where the deputy was, his back against the wall. Although he’d attempted not to make any sound, Rick had turned his head to watch his approach.
As he came to a stop beside him, Jace hissed, “What? What’d you see?”
“Two of them coming down the stairs from the second floor.”
Jace started to move past him, but Carlisle used his forearm to push him back. And then he said the words that were guaranteed to stop Jace in his tracks. And to stop his breath.
“They’ve got Lindsey.”
“
W
hy are you doing this?” Lindsey asked again.
Steven continued to hurry her along, gun in one hand, the other wrapped around her upper arm. Since they’d left her room, she’d formed a dozen plans of action and discarded them all.
She couldn’t decide if Jean was capable of setting off the explosives she carried. She wasn’t as afraid of Steven as she was of that totally unknown element. After all, the boy had made her lock the door of her classroom, leaving the two terrified girls unharmed.
“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in prison.”
“Then stop this
now,
Steven, before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late. It was too late when you butted in.” He jerked her arm, dragging her forward, almost causing her to miss her footing on the stairs.
What Steven had just said had to be a reference to Jace. Despite his attitude on the phone, he must have taken what she’d told him seriously. There was little consolation in the thought that she’d been right.
“Where are we going?”
This time Steven didn’t bother to answer, his hold tightening as they made their way down the few remaining stairs to the main floor. The assistant principals would be in the office by now. And Melanie. One of them would have called the sheriff’s department when they’d heard the gunfire.
The lobby was deserted. Lindsey lifted her eyes to look across to the double set of doors that opened to the commons. That area was also empty, its gleaming tile stretching to the lunchroom at the other end.
As Steven guided her past the elevator, she tried to look back at the door to the office, where she’d signed in less than twenty minutes ago. It was closed. And a smear ran down its central glass panel as if someone had dipped their hand in red paint—
The realization of what that must be caused her steps to falter. Steven jerked her arm again, forcing her to keep moving despite her shock.
She turned to look at him, surprised to realize how tall he was. As tall as her father. Or Jace. No longer a child.
Glancing down, he laughed at her expression. “Did you think I was kidding?”
“Who…?” She couldn’t complete the question.
“Whoever was in there. That was the one place we couldn’t afford to be lenient.”
As he had been upstairs?
“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. Better to go out in a blaze of glory—”
“By killing innocent people? Is that your idea of glory?”
“Hey, don’t try to blame me for this. Blame your lover. Blame yourself. What we were doing wasn’t hurting anyone. And we wouldn’t have. Not until he decided to get involved.”
“He got ‘involved’ because that’s his job. You know what you were doing was wrong. How can you blame someone else—”
“Shut up,” he demanded, shaking her. “Just shut the fuck up. You aren’t in charge here,
Ms.
Sloan. We are. So don’t try to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
They were past the elevators, approaching the intersection with the hall that lead to the back of the building. The hold Steven had on her arm strengthened as his anger grew. The closer they got to the commons the more aware she was that the time to act was running out. If she was going to make a move—
She tried to pull her arm from his grasp. In answer, Steven not only tightened his grip, he turned the gun he held so that the muzzle was pressed against her temple.
“Stop it. Stop it now,” he hissed, his voice no longer amused, “or I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll blow your brains out.”
She stopped struggling, convinced from the rage in his voice that he was so far over the edge he might really pull the trigger. As he had done in the office?
She closed her eyes in despair, allowing him to pull her forward. Only when she felt the pressure of the metal against her skin lessen did she dare open them again.
Steven had taken the gun away from her head and was in the process of moving it so it once more pointed in front of him. Before he completed the act, something warm and wet hit the side of her face, followed by a sound she would identify only later.
Steven seemed to stagger forward, pulling her with him. Then, his fingers still clutching her arm, he fell to his knees, dragging her down. As she automatically put out her hand to break her fall, Lindsey glanced to her right to see what had happened to the boy who’d compelled her here at gunpoint. And understood the significance of the moisture she’d felt.
As Steven’s body continued to fall forward, his grip released. Although he’d carried her down to the floor with him, she began to scramble up immediately, a reaction to the horror of his head wound more than fear of what might happen next.
She just wanted to get away. Away from Steven. Away from the blood that continued to spill out onto the white tiles.
She’d made it up into a crouch before she remembered Jean and the bomb. She turned her head, trying to locate the girl.
Jean was standing slightly behind them. Her mouth had opened, her widened eyes fastened on the dying boy. The block of explosives was still cradled in her hands, but so far she hadn’t attempted to pull wires or turn switches or to do whatever she had to do to set the thing off.
Lindsey’s head continued to turn, trying to find the person who’d fired the shot that felled Steven. Jace stood at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. His knees were bent, both arms extended in front of him, hands wrapped around the butt of a pistol.
“She has a bomb,” Lindsey screamed.
As the words echoed through the empty lobby, she realized her warning had brought the girl out of her trance. Then, almost simultaneously, she realized there was no way in hell Jace could reach Jean in time to stop her from setting it off.
Instinctively, she sprang to her feet, lunging at the girl. Jean reacted by backing away, but she still made no effort to set off the explosives.
Emboldened by that and by the adrenaline flooding her system, Lindsey grabbed both sides of the package to pull it to her. Finally understanding what she intended, Jean tried to retain her hold, but in that fraction of a second surprise had bought her, Lindsey was able to wrest the thing away.
She brought it around with her as she turned toward Jace. He had managed to close perhaps half the distance between them, coming at a dead run. Behind him Rick Carlisle brought up his weapon to take aim at the girl by her side.
For Lindsey, the realization that she might be holding a bomb was beginning to sink in. All she wanted to do now was get rid of it. To have someone who knew what they were doing take it out of her hands and dispose of it. If that someone were Jace—
She caught movement in her field of peripheral vision and turned her head in time to see Jean start toward her. “Do it, and I’ll tell him to shoot you, too.”
“Don’t.” Jace’s shout came almost on top of her threat. “Step back. Now.”
He’d slowed enough to bring his weapon up again. Jean’s face crumpled, anger replaced by fear and then surrender. And just as she always had, she did as she was told. She took a step back as Jace continued to advance.
That threat eliminated, Lindsey once more turned imploringly to him, holding out explosive. “Is this real?”
“Just stay calm.” He slowed, almost to her.
“Is it
real,
damn it? Just tell me.”
“It may be. It looks like C4.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Plastic explosive. Something the army uses because it’s relatively stable.”
Stable sounded comforting. If it was true. “How stable?”
“It’s probably not going to explode just from holding it.”
Not going to explode…Probably…
Whatever comfort she’d taken from the first was destroyed by the delayed import of the other. “What do I do with it, Jace?”
“You give it to me.”
It was what she thought she wanted. To have someone who knew what he was doing take this thing out of her hands. And now Jace was telling her he was about to do exactly that.
“What are
you
going to do with it?” She wanted to give it to him—God knew how much—but there was something about this she didn’t like. Something she didn’t trust.
Jace was no more a bomb expert than she was. He obviously knew more than she did about explosives—anybody did—but disposing of bombs wasn’t his job, any more than it was hers.
He’s a cop. It’s his job. Whatever this is, it’s his job. Just give the thing to him.
“I’m going to dispose of it.” His voice was too calm.
“Do you know how?”
“Do
you?
”
She shook her head. Her hands had started to tremble both from fear and the overload of adrenaline. First that had made her brave. Now it was making her sick.
“Then give it to me.”
He put his gun back into the holster under his suit coat. He took a step toward her, holding out both hands, palms up, perhaps six inches apart. They looked strong. Capable of anything. And rock steady.
And all she had to do was to place the explosive on top of them, then step back, and let Jace take care of all this. Let him take care of
her.
She lifted her eyes to his. They, too, seemed steady. Reassuring.
She took a breath before she moved her hands, raising them so that they were only a couple of inches above his, still outstretched before her. Then she began to lower the block of plastic explosive, the trembling of her hands becoming more acute the closer she came to putting it on his palms.
Suddenly the wail of multiple sirens, all of them seeming to converge on the school, made her freeze. With the cacophony, they both turned to look out through the glass doors of the main entrance. She watched, her hands still hovering above Jace’s, as a half dozen county vehicles roared into the parking lot.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Jean bolted toward the commons. Without thinking about what she held in her hands, Lindsey turned, her eyes following the running girl.
“Stop her,” Jace shouted.
Surprised, Lindsey turned to look at him.
Rick,
she realized. He’d been talking to Rick, who still stood, arms extended, tracking the progress of the girl with his weapon.
“She can warn them,” Jace said. “Shoot her.” And then in almost the same breath, he said again, his voice low and calm, “Put it down, Linds.”
Behind her she could hear Jean’s sneakers slapping against the tile. She was probably across the commons by now. Going to warn whoever had fired the shots they’d heard upstairs?
“Put it down,” Jace urged again.
She expelled the breath she hadn’t known she was holding and placed the explosive on his palms.
“Now let it go and step back. Then run to Rick and stay there.” He raised his voice, his eyes holding hers, “Rick?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell them I’m bringing this outside. I’m going to walk it to the middle of the parking lot and put it down. I don’t want anybody to approach me. Tell them that after I come back to the sidewalk, they should cordon off the lot and get somebody out here who can disarm it.”
“You got it.”
“Release it, Lindsey, and step away,” Jace said again.
“Don’t let anything happen to you.”
“I’m not planning on it. You tired of staying with your folks yet?”
She nodded, her throat thick with emotion.
“Good. Now turn this loose and go to Rick.”
“Jace—”
“I can’t get it out of the building until you move out of the way. We need to do that, and then we need to find out what they’re doing in the lunchroom. They’ve probably got students in there, Lindsey. Maybe a lot of them.”
She nodded, moving her hands away from the sides of the homemade bomb. It ought to have been a relief to give it over to Jace, but it felt instead as if she were abandoning him. Choosing the coward’s way out.
“Now go,” he ordered.
“I love you.” She hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t been aware she was thinking it before the words were between them.
Not that it wasn’t true. She just didn’t know whether saying that to him now was a kindness or one more burden to be added to those the situation had imposed on him.
For a long heartbeat Jace didn’t say anything. In the now absolute silence, she could hear Rick conveying the instructions he’d been given via his radio to the deputies outside.
Finally Jace nodded. “Go on.”
This time, having nothing else to offer him, she obeyed. Only when she was enclosed tightly by Rick’s left arm, which had opened to welcome her as she’d approached, did she look back.
Jace was halfway to the main entrance, the explosive carefully carried on his outstretched hands. Before he reached the row of glass doors, one of the deputies stepped up to open the central one, moving to one side as Jace came through.
Suddenly Rick released her, shoving her hard to the side. The blow was powerful enough that she fell against the wall. Shocked, she turned to see Rick bringing his weapon up again to focus on something beyond the opening that led to the commons.
Still crouching beside the wall that had broken her fall, her gaze shifted to find whatever he was targeting. A figure ran toward them from the open lunchroom door. Her identification of Justin Carr was instantaneous.
In his hands was what appeared to be a rifle. She had time for only those two thoughts before the weapon he carried began to spray bullets toward the place where she and Jace had been standing only seconds before.
Rick hadn’t moved, other than to return fire. The sound of the exchange echoed through the lobby. The intermittent bursts from Justin’s weapon. The heavier bang, bang, bang of Rick’s gun as he methodically squeezed off round after round.
Bullets struck plaster and tile, shattering both and sending debris raining down. Instinctively Lindsey tried to protect her eyes and face, shielding them by putting her arms over her head.
There was literally nowhere to go. No cover she could reach without exposing herself. Hunched against the wall, she waited for an opportunity to get out of the line of fire.
Then the deputy’s hands flew out to his sides. Without any attempt to break his fall, his body slammed backwards, his head striking the floor hard enough to bounce.