But Sofia’s fingers were not moving. Linda’s eyes flicked down to see what was wrong.
“There’s a text.” The girl bent to read it. “From…” Her whisper gave way to a ragged intake of breath.
“What?” Linda risked a quick glance over her shoulder. “What is it?”
“Mina. He shot Mina!”
12:51
Tom
He hadn’t expected it to feel so damned good. Who’d have thought that blowing the shit out of a concrete wall and reducing some doors to tatters would be so incredibly satisfying? And if he happened to hit some bystanders—who the hell cared?
He emptied the last round of the Bodyguard at the battered door, then tossed the weapon aside. Too light, too small a magazine, he’d only brought it as a message.
The bag at his foot held six loaded 15-round magazines for the Glock and enough boxed bullets to keep him here until dark. But surely even San Felipe’s hick police department would know by now that something was going on. Time to get serious. Time to do what he’d come for.
He draped the gym bag’s long strap across his chest and stepped into the quad, holding out the Glock. The cop was still, no need to pay any more attention there, so he kept firing at the door, empty brass spitting out with every shot. BLAM (ting) and a step. The Glock’s punch was an incredible rush—forbidden, visceral, unambiguous. Fucking orgasmic, you might call it. He fired merrily at the clerestory windows, giggling with exultation as he pictured the atrium of Atcheson Enterprises disintegrating under the assault. BLAM (ting) step. (Glass raining down; employees fleeing.)
BLAM (ting) step. (Closing in on the Board Room now, rather than a barren scatter of picnic tables.) BLAM (ting) step. (That lawyer, the first to go.) The rhythm was like dancing (BLAM [ting] step). Like the waltz he’d done at his wedding to the greedy bitch, only far, (BLAM [ting] step), far more satisfying.
12:52
Brendan
Sir had gone back to the Glock, ripping away at the doors again. The sound was different, though it took Brendan half a dozen shots (EIGHT; pause; NINE) before he could be sure. Louder.
The Glock (TEN) was coming at them.
12:52
Nick
Nick had never heard anything like it, never imagined that gunshots could be so incredibly loud and hard and oh god it was terrifying—nothing like a TV show, just noise and make-it-stop and the stink of scared kids. And blood—no! He couldn’t go into that room, he kept thinking it was Bee there so he hung back, just outside the door, keeping everyone between him and Mina, which was cowardly but he’d think about that later.
Only two people seemed anywhere near calm—and Mr. Kendrick wasn’t one of them, though Nick would have thought nothing would shake the old guy. Every time he looked at Mina, Nick could feel him sort of shudder, like he was seeing his own kid.
Tío, on the other hand, just stood there like he was waiting for things to finish so he could get out his mop. The other calm one was Brendan. The tall kid was standing just inside the office now, with Mr. Kendrick’s arm propped against the door frame, blocking him in. Brendan seemed to have accepted that he was stuck there.
Nick thought the eighth-grader’s calmness was a little strange, since he was pretty sure Brendan liked Mina a lot. But Nick could see the side of his face, and it looked more like he was planning a move on the court instead of watching his girlfriend bleed to death. To say nothing of hearing a gun getting louder and louder with every shot, closer and closer.
Then something changed, as if the sound track in a movie shifted—or someone threw open a window in a hot attic. Startled, Nick raised his head, unsure where the change came from—and looked directly into Brendan’s eyes. The older boy had turned, just a bit, to look right at him—at him, Nick Clarkson, eye to eye like they were equals. Nick blinked, unsure, but there was a world of meaning coming across the short distance, a lengthy conversation in a silent moment. Brendan held Nick’s gaze a moment longer, then his eyebrow lifted, a tiny motion with a huge question.
Are you with me?
Six months ago—before Bee, certainly—Nick would’ve backed away from it. But Nick had learned from failing Bee, and this new Nick didn’t hesitate—didn’t even think about it, really. He dipped and raised his chin a fraction. Brendan’s gaze went warm, and his quick flick of the eyes sideways at Mr. Kendrick provided the instruction. His hand came up in front of his chest, out of Mr. Kendrick’s sight: four fingers, stretched out against his shirt. Four. Three. Two. One—
Brendan dropped and ducked under the Englishman’s braced arm, a move he’d done a thousand times on the basketball court. The man whirled, reached out, grabbed—only to have Nick fling himself forward with all his strength, directly into the man’s off-balance form, bringing him down in a tangle of clothing and shouts and heavy adult limbs.
12:52
Linda
Catastrophe happened in slow motion. Linda’s first warning was the sound of her phone hitting the floor. It landed face up—
Mina shot need ambulance
—but when she blinked, Sofia was already on the move, her young body rising off the ground on those muscular legs, eyes fixed on the door as despair and fury took over: NO! Linda reached up but Sofia just stormed through her, knocking her aside (distant pain) with the blow of a knee and the texture of denim against Linda’s fingertips.
But it was the noise coming from Sofia that roused the others—nononono, more a primitive growl than anything resembling words, guttural and compelling and louder with her every step. The cry yanked Chaco Cabrera like a leash. Smaller, younger, farther away from the door—but the boy was in motion before Sofia was halfway across the room.
By the time Linda gained her feet, the room was filled with kids racing for the open door, and all their principal could do was stumble after them, arms outstretched, moaning, “Stay, oh, stay here!”
12:52
Brendan
Brendan dove behind the folded-up table (THIRTEEN). Heard the struggle behind him (FOURTEEN). Ripped at the lock mechanism on the doors.
12:52
Gordon
Jesus Christ, nervy Nick had panicked—just as Gordon nearly had the older boy—and it was all he could do not to smash the little kid to the floor when their entwined bodies came down, but the frenzied boy whirled and struck out, getting in Gordon’s way, almost as if he was trying to keep Gordon from
12:53
Brendan
Brendan (FIFTEEN) hit the doors like he was plowing the other team’s guard up into the stands. He staggered as their weakened locks gave way, but if his body had learned one automatic response from all those hours on the court, it was that speed outplayed gravity every time. His legs thrust hard to keep him from going down, feet slapping the pavement, accelerating his long body up the quad. At the upper reaches of his vision he saw the Glock’s magazine eject, saw it fall through the air, bouncing off the pavement as Sir’s hand came out of the gym bag at his side, Sir’s head down but he would look up in a second and he would see
12:53
Chaco
whoever the guy was it wasn’t Angel or anyone Chaco knew which yeah surprised him but still it meant there was some pinche loco who thought he could walk in and start shooting up the school, the bullets just inexorable—Jesus!—which was nuts enough but then Sofia saw on the principal’s cell that Mina Santos was hit and that set her off, and a person just couldn’t let a girl like Sofia go after a guy with a gun all by herself he just couldn’t so Chaco went too, or maybe there was less thinking than that maybe he just got up and went but anyway he was pounding along after those long (gorgeous) basketball player legs of hers and he was damned if he’d let a girl stand up for the school on her own especially Sofia Rivas so he tucked down his head and ran after her as hard as he could to the door and out it and
12:53
Sofia
the man’s back was to her out in the quad and Sofia was aware of nothing but the man’s shoulders and t
he strap of gym bag across his leather jacket and the side of his face under the baseball cap as he looked down for something in the bag—but at the same time she was incredibly aware of everything in the universe, some part of her brain slowing down to register the beat of each footstep behind her and the approach of someone from the far side of the leather jacket and Sergeant Mendez on the ground with a stream of thick dark blood and screams coming from all over and a faraway siren and blue sky (—a bird flying, slow—) but the man’s back was all she really saw, those shoulders and the left arm coming up with something from the gym bag like a grenade or a pipe bomb maybe? (school shooting/pipe bombs) but he was raising it up to his other hand or maybe to the gun in that hand so yes it was bullets it was more bullets and his back was six steps away now and five and she could see the other person coming it was Brendan and he was
12:53
Brendan
pounding toward him, toward the hands slamming the magazine into the gun and the weapon came up and it would take Sir the time of two steps (slapslap) to raise the gun and half a step to pull the trigger and he couldn’t miss, not at this distance, but Brendan only tucked in and put on more speed because even if he was dead, even if he was already dead when he crashed into Sir it might do some good, might open the Enemy up for his teammates to
12:53
Gordon
go after Brendan, but after two seconds of not-wanting-to-hurt-the-kid Gordon realized that Nick actively wanted to get in his way, so he just moved, bellowing a command to “Get ’em into the office!”
The gun started up again as Gordon crashed out into the quad.
For an instant his eyes reported—not a man putting bullets into Brendan Atcheson, but a rugby scrum, a pileup of bodies with more pouring on from both directions.
He didn’t stop moving, not even through that split second of confusion, but neither did the shooter, using his gun to bash at a girl who hung leech-like from his shoulder, her teeth bared in fury. A window shattered somewhere and figures converged and a uniformed cop lay on the ground, ten feet away, and Gordon began to shout at the top of his lungs, “Brendan, get them off, clear the way, BRENDAN!”
Somehow, his voice got through to the charging boy. At the last instant, Brendan’s nimble feet veered a few degrees and those long arms came out, scooping the girl and another kid off the shooter’s back and hauling them into the clear area beyond. With the weight off him, the shooter whirled and came upright, the gun swinging around to his son and the tall girl and short boy in Brendan’s arms and behind them Linda with blood pouring from her nose—
And Gordon pulled the trigger of Olivia’s weapon. Twice.
THIRTY-TWO MINUTES LATER (1:25)
Gordon
Gordon and Tío stood in front of the school library watching the mass of uniforms seethe over B Quad. The first ambulance had left fast, four minutes earlier, rushing Mina to surgery. Now the second driver slammed his doors and trotted to the front. Lights began to pulse as it threaded its way through the picnic tables. At the access road, the sirens started up, moving slowly at first until the ambulance cleared the fast-arriving tide of panicking parents.
Instantly, the police closed in on the blood-smeared quad and started dropping evidence markers around the draped body of Tom Atcheson.
The Clarion reporter pointed her camera at it all.
Gordon handed Tío back his rag, stained now with the blood he’d got on his hands. He did not realize that he had taken a deep breath until the smaller man spoke.
“You saved the sergeant’s life.”
“No, her vest did that.”
“Yet you did not hesitate to help her. Even though this will make a problem for you. Am I wrong?”
For a moment, Gordon played with the idea that Sergeant Mendez would be so grateful she’d overlook his sins; that her colleagues would set aside their innate suspicions…but no. If the kiap didn’t get him, the news cameras would. “Yes, my friend, life is about to get complicated.”
“Señor, I am familiar with the look of people who wish to disappear.” He did not add, although Gordon heard it in his voice: It is a look I have seen in the mirror.
“Is that so.”
“I am also familiar with how one must choose one’s time with…with alacrity, I believe the word is. Now that the police have done their best for the sergeant, they will raise their heads to look for the man who picked up her gun. It may be that you are happy to speak with them, señor. Or it may be that you fear that speaking with them will limit your movements. That a delay may create further problems.”
Gordon had his eyes on Linda, at the far end of the quad with Cass Henry, several students, and a lot of cops. The bridge of Linda’s nose wore a bandage, her bloody jacket lay discarded across a nearby table. She was speaking to a policeman, but most of her attention was on the kids: her right arm anchored a white-faced Brendan Atcheson close against her side, her left lay across the shoulders of Sofia Rivas, whose eyes were smudges of tear-stained mascara. On the bench at her knees sat Nick Clarkson, who had Dr. Henry’s hand on one shoulder, and Chaco Cabrera, made a part of the circle by the intensity of her gaze.
But she was not simply comforting the kids: she was admiring them. As he stood there watching, the children had gone from weeping, shuddering figures to young people with straight backs and raised chins. By the time they went home with their rejoicing parents they’d be shaky, but she’d have gotten the first shy, proud smiles out of them.
Linda was going to blame this all on herself: Atcheson, the delay between the white van’s arrival and the 911 calls, the blood of Olivia Mendez. And later, the fate of Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, whatever that ended up being.
Had it been a single shot, he might have got away with it. But that second round was his own cold choice, just to be certain. It was that second shot that would tip the balance, ushering him (politely!) into custody until questions could be asked, a more thorough search made, his past permitted to creep in…
He did not think they would arrest him, in the end. Hell, he’d probably be declared a bloody hero. But they’d keep him in custody just long enough for his face and name to hit the news, and TaylorCorp would be waiting for him when he walked out.
If that happened, Linda would never be the same.
“Señor.” Tío’s voice was low, and urgent.
“Sorry?”
“I am trying to tell you, hermano, about the field workers across the road. Those who lack documents will have gone by now. Of those who remain to give statements, one drives a small gray Toyota pickup truck. He has been most careless today, entiende? The door of his truck is unlocked, and the key is beneath the mat on the driver’s side. Were this truck to drive away, it would not be noticed for some hours. Perhaps not even until the morning. However, soon—very soon—the wall around this school will close, making it impossible for a person to slip away.”
Gordon stared down at the earnest brown face. “Tío, you’ve been standing right here the whole time.”
“That is true. But Señora Rodriguez? Ay, there is no controlling that woman—here and away, phone at her ear, busy as always. It is extraordinary what the Señora can achieve, given a few minutes.”
Brown eyes held golden ones, and after a moment, Gordon’s mouth twitched. He reached out to give the older man’s shoulder a squeeze, in lieu of a handshake. But when he turned back toward Linda, he found her looking straight down the length of the quad at him. Framed by uniforms, surrounded by kids, blood on her cheek—and all she saw was him.
Gordon lifted one hand, two fingers raised in a gentle salute of apology and affection and finality.
And then he was gone.
FOUR MONTHS LATER (JUNE 10, GRADUATION DAY, 6:40 P.M.)
Linda
The sun was low when Linda came through the kitchen door, arms filled with bouquets from the kids, groceries from the market, newspaper from the tube, and rubbish from the mailbox. Junk envelopes and flyers dribbled across the floor, bu
t she reached the counter before the grocery bags followed them.
She left the door standing open, keys dangling, while she put away the frozen dinners and packaged salads, taking out the bottle of white wine in exchange.
This would be a two-glass night. Maybe even three.
The first couple of swallows were large, medicinal gulps. She made herself slow down after the third, resting the half-empty glass against her sunburnt forehead. Empty house, empty life. She should give in to cliché and adopt some cats.
Year one for Linda McDonald, at Guadalupe Middle School.
Graduations were always tough: hug your favorites goodbye, watch your failures walk into their futures. Wonder…Mina and Sofia were off to high school, sisters still. Mina was thin from three surgeries, and almost childlike with her face stripped of makeup—especially beside Sofia, who had grown more self-assured with every passing week. Brendan was gone already; he and his uncle were spending the summer in Europe. Nick and Chaco she’d have back in the fall, Carlos and Esme. Tío and Coach.