“She’s bleeding a lot,” Hazard said, eyeing the principal’s scarf. “There might be an arterial nick. You’ll need to tie the tourniquet here.” He indicated above the wound. “It’s almost too high on the leg, but you should be able to make it work.”

  Principal Wieberdink’s dark eyes were huge, and they were the only color in her face. “She—”

  “She’s very possibly bleeding to death. Do you know how to tie a tourniquet?”

  “We had trainings—”

  “Great. Radio again and let them know about the SRO; the police will need that information, and you’ll want the paramedics to get to her as soon as they can.”

  Hazard stood and unholstered the Blackhawk.

  “Mr. Hazard—” Wieberdink’s voice wavered. “My responsibility—”

  “You’re doing your responsibility. The tourniquet needs to be tight; she might wake up, and if she does, she’s not going to be happy, but it’s better than bleeding to death.”

  He left her before she could reply, trying to soften the sound of his boots on the linoleum as he ran. He knew where Kirsta was going. He knew what she meant when she said pedophiles. She was cribbing from her mother’s talking points, parroting her words. The teachers indoctrinating, conditioning, warping, grooming. The teachers. The sick, perverted teachers who want to fill our children’s minds with their filth. And there was one teacher in particular who was responsible for everything that had gone wrong in Kirsta’s life.

  When he turned down the next hall, he could hear voices coming from Theo’s classroom. Theo’s voice. Low. Calm. Controlled. If there was fear there, it was buckled down tight. And then an answering shout, Kirsta’s ragged voice.

  “I said don’t talk! Shut up! Shut up!” Her breathing had a wet fringe. “You’re confusing me!”

  “You don’t want to hurt them, Kirsta,” Theo was saying. “You’re a good person. They didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not the kind of person who hurts innocent kids.”

  The same heavy, gasping breaths answered. And then Kirsta echoed, “I’m a good person.”

  “I know. Everyone knows. That’s why you’re going to let them go, right? Because this is about me. You’re here because of me.”

  “I don’t—” Kirsta made a noise that warbled toward a screech. “My head hurts really bad! Why won’t you stop talking?”

  The silence was an undertow, dragging Hazard forward.

  “Go,” Kirsta said. “You two. Ok, now you two. Why are you staring at me? Go!”

  Rapid footsteps came toward the door, and a moment later, a stream of terrified teenagers emerged into the hallway. A black girl with her arm around a sobbing white boy stared at Hazard; a white girl with a dark stain on the front of her jeans didn’t even seem to register him. Some of them Hazard recognized as Colt’s friends; others were strangers. He held a finger to his lips and stepped aside, and they streamed past him in silence broken only by sobbing and their uneven steps.

  “Not him,” Kirsta said. “No! You have to stay!”

  “Colt’s just a kid,” Theo said with that same calm. “He’s a nice kid. He’s always been nice to you, hasn’t he?”

  “It’s ok, Dr. Stratford.” Colt sounded like he was trying to mirror Theo’s affect, but his voice was too tight. “I’ll stay.”

  “Colt and Ash can leave,” Theo said, “and then it’ll be the two of us, and—”

  “No!” Kirsta laughed, the sound a jangling scale of notes. “Ash can go. Colt stays.”

  “Colt is your friend—”

  “Nobody’s my friend! I’m not stupid; everyone thinks I’m stupid. They think I don’t know what they say behind my back, how they laugh at me. But I’m not. And he’s my ticket out of here, so he’s staying.” The silence raised the hair on Hazard’s neck, and in an unworldly calm, she added, “Ash, you can go.” There must have been some sort of nonverbal communication because Kirsta said, “Fine.”

  “Bruh,” Colt half-whispered, “go!” Another pause followed, and Colt said, “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Stop talking,” Kirsta said. “Now it’s my turn to talk. I’ve had to sit here and—and listen to your sick, twisted ideas for too long. It’s not fair. I’m a good, Christian girl from a good, Christian family. And I had to sit here, and I had to listen to you, and you—you put things in my head that God didn’t want to be there. So, now it’s my turn to talk.”

  Hazard eased the revolver out of its holster and stepped into the doorway. He offered a mental fuck, but he lined up the shot anyway; Kirsta stood on the far side of the classroom, where Theo sat at his desk. Colt and Ashley were sitting halfway across the room, directly between Hazard and his target.

  Kirsta’s head whipped around. She held a hunting rifle, and she swung it around to point at Hazard.

  “Put it down,” Hazard said.

  “You put it down!” She wore no makeup today, and Hazard saw her for the first time without it. She looked younger, softer, strangely childlike. The color had left her face, and she looked about two minutes from passing out. From somewhere, though, she mustered reserves and shouted, “D-drop it!”

  “I don’t think you came here to hurt Theo. Or anyone, for that matter. You’re doing a lot of talking. If you’d wanted to hurt someone, you would have done it already.”

  Kirsta blinked away tears. “I—I killed Officer Kirkman. She’s dead because she would have stopped me. I’m protecting these kids. I’m saving them!”

  “Officer Kirkman is fine. Everyone else made it out of the school safely. You’re standing here, you’re talking, and inside you’re looking for a way out of this mess. You feel trapped because you made a bad decision. But you’re not trapped. You can walk away from this right now. The police aren’t here yet; you made sure they’d be busy—you called in that fake shooting at Eldon, and you set up those explosives around town to keep the remaining ones busy. So, right now, it’s just you and me, and I’m telling you that you can walk out of here.”

  He could see it in her face, how much she wanted to believe it. “You’re trying to trick me.” She shook her head as though she’d walked through cobwebs. “You’re—you are a dirty fag, and you’re lying to me.”

  “Kirsta, you’re in over your head, and you don’t want to hurt anyone else. Put the rifle down. Nobody wants this to go badly.”

  “I can’t!” The words were a shriek and a sob.

  “Put the rifle down.”

  She was crying now, the barrel of the rifle dipping.

  Hazard could take the shot. He would, if it came to that. But she was a child, and she was frightened and unwell and had been twisted by her parents into something that would take up a gun to try to kill the thing she hated inside herself.

  “Put the rifle down,” he said as gently as he could.

  “Kirsta,” Theo said, “you’re a good person. You can help a lot of people right now by putting the gun down.”

  She drew in a shuddering breath and gave that cobwebby head shake again. “No. No, I can’t.”

  “Kirsta—”

  “I said no!” She coughed and tried to wipe her nose on her shoulder. “Colt, get up.”

  “Stay in your seat, son.”

  Colt’s gaze remained locked on Kirsta, but he stayed in the chair.

  “Get up!” Kirsta screamed. She cut her eyes toward Hazard. “Tell him to get up, or—or I’ll kill everyone! I want to leave, and he’s going with me!”

  “He’s not going anywhere. He’s my son—”

  “No, Pops,” Colt’s voice was thin, “I can—”

  “—and he’s not going anywhere with you. Drop your gun, and we can—”

  “I said get up!” Kirsta stumbled a few steps toward Colt, grabbed his shirt, and hauled him up from the chair. Ashley clutched Colt’s arm, but Colt shook him off, his eyes still locked on Kirsta. “We’re leaving, and—”

  The words broke from Hazard before he could think them through: “If you need a hostage, take me.”

  Kirsta stared at him, agape.

  “You know it’s a better idea.” The idea started firming up, and then the words. “I’m an adult; I’m more resilient, and I won’t panic and slow you down. I’m the chief of police’s husband, which makes me valuable in a negotiation. And, of course, you hate me, which means if it comes time to kill me, you won’t have any qualms about it. I can help you find a safe path away from here. And here’s the most important part, Kirsta: if you try to take my son, I’m not going to let you. That means things are going to go very badly, maybe for a lot of people. But if you take me, I won’t cause any problems.”

  “No, Pops—”

  “Emery,” Theo said, “Kirsta, let’s all take a breath—”

  “Fine,” Kirsta said. She shoved Colt away from her, and he fell; Ashley caught him, leaning out of the seat to grab him before he could hit the floor. When Colt tried to push himself up, Ashley’s hold tightened. “Let’s go.”

  “No,” Colt shouted. “No, Pops—Kirsta, stop, I’ll go!”

  “Drop the gun,” Kirsta said.

  “Ashley,” Hazard said as he eased his finger off the trigger, his gaze still on Kirsta in case she tried something, “do not let him come after us. Theo, you know what to do.”

  “Kirsta,” Theo said, “you don’t have to—”

  “Be quiet. Everyone be quiet. There’s too much talking for my head.” She gestured with the rifle’s muzzle. “You’re taking too long!”

  Hazard lowered the Blackhawk to the linoleum. He stood and displayed both hands, empty.

  “Let’s go!”

  “Pops!” Colt shouted. He was grappling with Ashley, trying to free himself, but Ashley held on with a grim resolve. “Let me go! Pops, don’t—Ash, let go!”

  Hazard stepped back, and Kirsta followed him. When he turned, presenting his back to the rifle, a frisson ran up his spine. His guts felt loose and watery. The sounds of Colt and Ashley already seemed far off.

  “Not that way.” Kirsta gestured with the rifle again. “Out by the gym. Hurry, but if you start running, I’ll shoot.”

  He took the lead, navigating corridors he remembered from his teenage years, taking them toward the rear of the building and the exits near the upper gym. When he hit the crash bar and pushed out through the fire doors, a perfect May day met them: the sun hot on his face, the smell of freshly mown grass, a synthetic smell that came from the rack of basketballs that some industrious PE teacher had set out for pickup games on the last day of school. A food truck with the Ace in the Hole logo was parked by the loading docks—the truck she had used to kidnap Ashley, the truck that supposedly had been stolen—and Kirsta gestured him toward it.

  How long had she been planning this, Hazard wondered as he trotted toward the truck. He was amazed that he still didn’t hear sirens. Maybe they were coming in dark, but it felt impossible that they couldn’t have driven the forty minutes from Eldon yet. It felt like he’d lived hours in Theo’s classroom. The automatic locks chirped when Kirsta fumbled a fob out of her pocket, and he wondered again how long she’d been planning this. How many sleepless nights, how many classroom daydreams, how many bits and pieces, little flashes of satisfaction at even the possibility, until something made it all come together?

  Hazard opened the door and rested a hand on the frame. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Get in!”

  She was already making mistakes, as he’d thought she would—she was letting him get in the passenger seat, and she had no way to restrain him. On top of that, she had a gun that was too big for the small space of the truck’s cab; once she was inside the vehicle, she wouldn’t be able to wield it effectively, and he could force the barrel away and disarm her. Hazard held up his hands again, another surrender, and got into the truck.

  To his surprise, she followed him around to the passenger side, still training the gun on him. She released it long enough to toss the fob at him. “Start it.”

  Hazard sorted the keys. His hands were shaking, adrenaline pulling his strings, making him dance. He got what he thought was the right one and leaned over to insert it in the ignition. It fit, and he turned it, but the truck made a distressed beep.

  He straightened, turning back toward Kirsta. “It won’t work without your foot on the brake—”

  The butt of the rifle came toward him. Then it connected with his head, and the world exploded into shadow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MAY 22

  FRIDAY

  1:19 PM

  HAZARD WASN’T UNCONSCIOUS THE whole time, but even awake, he lingered in a halfway place, his brain struggling to put together commands, his body refusing to follow them. Slowly, the world seemed to cohere, and then it was like waking up all over again.

  The smell of cold concrete and stale urine filled his mouth, and the way his breath came back to him suggested walls and a closed space. It was too dark to see anything except a lighter half-moon of grey ahead of him. At first, he could hear nothing except the hammering headache; then, from a distance, voices. Too far off to make out the words, but definitely voices.

  When he tried to move, he realized he was taped to a chair, ankles and wrists. He traced the frame of the chair with his fingers. Wood. The seat was hard and felt thin. And when he shifted his weight, the chair squeaked and shivered. So, old. And an old wooden chair might present an opportunity.

  He planted his feet and raised himself up. Then he dropped back as hard as he could. The crack of the chair’s feet connecting with concrete went through his head like a shot, and he flinched, but he raised himself and did it again. On his third try, he felt something splinter. He eased himself up again into that half-bent crouch. Beneath his right hand, the chair’s leg was now slightly bent. He worried it back and forth as best he could with his hand still taped in place. Sweat built on his face, prickled across his back, bunched his shirt under his arm. In the cramped space, he could smell himself, his fear and frustration.

  And then with the crack of old glue and varnish giving way, the leg came loose, and Hazard had to swallow a wild, ecstatic halloo. He dropped the chair leg. With one hand free, he was able to rid himself of the rest of the tape. The chair fell with a clatter that made him flinch again, and it was only partly his head this time. The sound of the voices continued unchanged, though. Luck. Maybe.

  A quick check told him he had nothing: no phone, none of his everyday carry supplies, and of course not the Blackhawk. The headache was bad, but it wasn’t incapacitating yet. And, most importantly, he was free.

  He examined his surroundings as best he could, relying mostly on touch. In front of him was a door and frame; the lighter patch against the darkness was where a handle had been removed, and his fingers found cold metal running through the opening—a chain securing a door that had been recently broken. That confirmed his suspicions: he was in the Ace in the Hole, being held where they had found Ashley.

  Shelves lined the other three walls. He followed the outlines with his fingers: a bucket, what he thought was a commercially sized package of toilet paper, the wooden handle of a plunger, some sort of spray can, the steel body and rubber nozzle of a fire extinguisher, boxes full of plastic bags that squished under his hands, probably containing some kind of drink mix.

  He went back to the door and retrieved the fallen chair leg from the floor. He inserted the narrow end into the opening where the door handle should have been, and the chain clinked. Then he applied force, using the leg like a lever. The hollow-core door groaned, layers of fiberboard and honeycomb cardboard protesting, but it didn’t give.

  Hazard yanked the chair leg free, swearing under his breath. He closed his eyes against the darkness. He breathed in eight slow breaths. Then he reinserted the leg and left it hanging from the opening. From the shelf behind him, he grabbed the fire extinguisher. Then, by touch more than by sight, he lined up the base of the fire extinguisher with the flat foot on the chair leg, and he drove the fire extinguisher forward. Improvised hammer and chisel. Kind of. On the second blow, something gave with a loud pop. On the third blow, he felt the chair leg shudder forward. The fourth, fifth, and sixth blows forced the chair leg in further, and then, with a resistance almost like tearing paper, the section of door between the opening for the handle and the doorframe gave way. Without anything to hold it in place, the chain slid down, clinking and rattling, and the door swung open.

  Fresh air made Hazard’s pulse kick up. On the other side of the door, the rest of the Ace in the Hole’s basement lay in thick shadow; the only light came from the stairwell leading up to the kitchen. The desk where they had found Derrick made a blocky shadow to Hazard’s left. He had a vague sense of the junk that had accumulated down here: stacks of cardboard boxes, old pallets, crates of empty bottles. The voices filtered down from the kitchen more clearly now, two women’s voices. Kirsta, he realized after a moment. And Joyce.

  “—have any idea what you’ve done?” Joyce’s words sounded slurred, greased with whatever cocktail of alcohol and benzodiazepines she’d mixed up for herself today. “To this family? To me? Do you? Do you?”

  Kirsta protest was too small to make out.

  “I don’t care what I said!” Joyce screamed. “I didn’t want this, obviously! I was—I was just saying things. Those are things adults say! I never wanted this. What don’t you understand about that?”

  This time, Kirsta’s words came to Hazard clearly, stiff with fresh hurt and resentment. “I did it for you. I thought you’d be proud.”

  “Proud? Of what? My dyke daughter shooting up a school?” Joyce see-sawed a laugh. “Were you thinking of making me proud when you ate out that lez you met at the bar? And I had to hear about it from Evan? Do you know what that was like for me, having that little queer threaten me? Good Lord, Kirsta, sit up straight; I told you, you’ve got rolls when you slouch. You are your father’s daughter; do you realize that? He was a loser and a fuck-up, and—God, ‘I did it for you.’ Do you have any idea how you sound? Do you even hear yourself?”