The cracking, popping sounds went on and on, seeming to come from everywhere now. Glass shattered and crashed, a woman with a bloodied leg huddled under a bench and moaned. He heard more screams—and, worse, the way they cut off, like a sliced tape.
Then he saw the little boy in red shorts and an Elmo T-shirt staggering like a drunk past Abercrombie & Fitch.
The display window exploded. People scattered, dived for cover, and the kid fell down, crying for his mother.
Across the mall, he saw a gunman—boy?—laughing as he fired, fired, fired. On the ground, a man’s body jerked as the bullets tore into him.
Reed scooped up the kid in the Elmo T-shirt on the run, hooking him under one arm like the football he’d never been able to handle.
The gunfire—and he would never, never forget the sound of it—came closer. Front and back. Everywhere.
He’d never make it to Mangia, not with the kid. He veered off, running on instinct, did a kind of sliding dive into the kiosk.
Angie, the girl he’d flirted with five minutes before, a lifetime before, lay sprawled in a pool of blood. Her pretty brown eyes stared at him while the kid hooked under his arm wailed.
“Oh God, oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, oh God.”
The shooting wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.
“Okay, okay, you’re okay. What’s your name? I’m Reed, what’s your name?”
“Brady. I want Mommy!”
“Okay, Brady, we’re going to find her in just a minute, but now we have to be really quiet. Brady! How old are you?”
“This many.” He held up four fingers as fat tears splashed on his cheeks.
“That’s a big guy, right? We have to be quiet. There are bad guys. You know about bad guys?”
With tears and snot running down his face, eyes huge with shock, Brady nodded.
“We’re going to be quiet so the bad guys don’t find us. And I’m going to call for the good guys. For the police.” He did his best to block the boy’s view of Angie, did his best to block his own mind from the idea of her, of her and death.
He yanked open one of the sliding doors for storage, shoved out stock. “Climb in there, okay? Like Hide and Seek. I’m right here, but you get in there while I call the good guys.”
He nudged the kid in, got out his phone, and that’s when he saw how badly his hands shook.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“DownEast Mall,” he began.
“Police are responding. Are you in the mall?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a kid with me. I put him in the stock cabinet in the Fun In The Sun kiosk. Angie—the girl who worked it. She’s dead. She’s dead. God. There are at least two of them shooting people.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Reed Quartermaine.”
“Okay, Reed, do you feel you’re safe where you are?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Sorry. You’re in a kiosk so you have some cover. I’m going to advise you to stay where you are, to shelter in place. You have a child with you?”
“He said his name’s Brady, and he’s four. He got separated from his mother. I don’t know if she’s…” He looked around, saw Brady had curled up, eyes glazed over, as he sucked his thumb. “He’s probably, you know, in shock or whatever.”
“Try to stay calm, Reed, and quiet. The police are on scene.”
“They’re still shooting. They just keep shooting. Laughing. I heard him laughing.”
“Who was laughing, Reed?”
“He was shooting, the glass exploded, the guy on the ground, he kept shooting him and laughing. Jesus God.”
He heard shouting—not the screams, but like war cries. Something tribal and triumphant. And more shots, then …
“It stopped. The shooting stopped.”
“Stay where you are, Reed. Help is coming to you. Stay where you are.”
He looked down at the boy again. The glassy eyes met his. He said, “Mommy.”
“We’re going to find her in a minute. The good guys are coming. They’re coming.”
That was the worst part, he’d think later. The waiting … with the smell of gunfire burning the air, the calls for help, the moans and sobbing. And seeing the blood on his own shoes of the girl he would never take to the movies.
CHAPTER TWO
At seven-twenty-five on July 22, Officer Essie McVee finished the on-site report on a fender bender in the parking lot of the DownEast Mall.
No injuries, minimal damage, but the driver of the Lexus got pretty aggressive with the trio of college girls in the Mustang convertible.
Though the Mustang was clearly at fault—the weeping twenty-year-old driver admitted it—by backing out of the space without checking, the hotshot and his mortified date in the Lexus had—also clearly—had more than a few drinks.
Essie let her partner handle the Lexus, knowing Barry would pull out the old women-drivers bullshit. She’d ignore that, also knowing Barry would cite the guy on an OUI.
She calmed the girls, took statements and information, wrote the ticket. Lexus didn’t take kindly to the OUI—or to the cab Barry ordered—but Barry handled it in his “Aw, shucks” way.
When the radio squawked, she tuned her ear to it. Four years on the job didn’t stop her heart from banging.
She jerked around to Barry, saw by his face his ear had been tuned in as well. She turned her head to her mic.
“Unit four-five is on scene. We’re right outside the theater.”
Barry popped the trunk, tossed her a vest.
Mouth dry as dust, Essie strapped it on, checked her sidearm—she’d never fired it off the range.
“Backup’s coming, three minutes out. SWAT’s mobilizing. Jesus, Barry.”
“Can’t wait.”
She knew the drill, she’d had the training—though she’d never really expected to use it. Active shooter meant every second counted.
Essie raced with Barry toward the wide glass doors.
She knew the mall and wondered what twist of fate had put her and her partner seconds outside the theater entrance.
She didn’t wonder if she would get home to feed her aging cat or to finish the book she’d started. She couldn’t.
Locate, detain, distract, neutralize.
She put the scene inside her head before they hit the doors.
Theater lobby opening to the main mall, turn right to ticket booth, move to concessions, left to corridor to the three theaters. Nine-one-one stated shooter in One—the biggest of the three.
She scanned through the glass, went through, tacked left as Barry tacked right. She heard the piped music from the mall, the rumble of shoppers.
The two guys at concessions gawked at the pair of cops, weapons drawn. Both shot their hands up. The jumbo soda in the hand of the one on the left hit the counter, smashed and splashed.
“Anybody else here?” Barry demanded.
“J-j-just Julie, in the lockers.”
“Get her, get outside. Now! Go, go!”
One of them leaped toward a door behind the counter. The other stood, hands up, still stammering, “What? What? What?”
“Move!”
He moved.
Essie turned left, cleared the corner, saw the body, facedown outside the doors of One, and the blood trail behind it.
“We got a body,” she told dispatch, and kept moving. Slow, careful. Past the laughter in the theater on her right, and toward the sounds pushing against the door of One.
Shots, screams.
She exchanged a look with Barry, stepped over the body. At his nod, she thought: Here we go.
When they dragged open the theater doors, the sounds of violence and fear flooded out, and the muted light from the corridor slid into the dark.
She saw the shooter—male, Kevlar vest, helmet, night-vision goggles, an assault rifle in one hand, a handgun in the other.
In the instant it took her to register, he shot a male—who was fleeing for the side exit—in the back.
Then he swung the rifle toward the theater doors, and opened fire.
Essie dived for cover behind the wall behind the last row, saw Barry take a hit in the vest that flung him back and down.
Not center mass, she told herself as adrenaline pumped through her, not center mass because, like Barry, the shooter wore a vest. She sucked in three quick breaths, rolled, and to her shock saw he was charging up the sloping aisle toward her.
She fired low—hips, crotch, legs, ankles—and just kept firing even when he went down.