The bus was roughly half full, and things were progressing smoothly when one of the boarding students peered at him closely and asked, “Where’s Mrs. Bengston?”
Martin’s heart began hammering a staccato beat in his chest, and, for a brief moment, he feared maybe the kid could hear it. His first instinct was to reach for the semi-automatic pistol concealed under the waistband of his jeans, but he controlled it. There was no reason to overreact. Yet.
He looked over the top of his newspaper at a pimply-faced boy of maybe sixteen, with curly hair about a day overdue for a shampoo and black, horn-rimmed glasses that had slid halfway down his greasy nose. He shrugged. “I dunno, sick, I guess.” The kid just stood there. “I’m the substitute,” he added lamely. Then he waved the kid down the aisle. “Let’s go,” he finally added firmly, figuring the best defense had to be a good offense. “Move it, you’re holding up the line.”
Martin dropped his face back behind the open newspaper, ready to pull his weapon and wheel the big bus out of line and away from the school if necessary. He hoped he wouldn’t have to, because he had no way of knowing whether his Carli was even on board yet. Finally the kid shrugged and slouched down the aisle, and the boarding process continued. No one else said a word to him or even acknowledged his existence, which was exactly what he had been counting on.
As the last of the kids filed onto the bus, Martin considered what might have caused the one teenager to question him. He figured the kid must have heard the story of the I-90 Killer approaching one of his schoolmates and wondered if that had played any part in it, but that seemed unlikely. Probably the kid was related to “Mrs. Bengston” or lived down the road from her or something; this hick town was so small, that seemed the most obvious possibility.
Approximately two-thirds of the available seats had been filled when the last of the students shuffled in and sat down. Martin waited for the bus ahead of him to close its doors and begin pulling ahead, as he had seen the drivers do when he performed his surveillance. The urge to check the young faces in the oversized mirror looming above his sun visor was almost overwhelming, but he controlled himself. Patience was key.
Finally the conga line of vehicles began moving. Martin shifted into drive, and the big diesel engine pulled the bus forward as he eased down on the accelerator. He was almost there. The only thing that could go wrong now was if Carli Ferguson had missed school today for some reason and wasn’t on the bus. Martin refused to acknowledge that possibility. If she had attended classes yesterday, one day after being approached by the infamous I-90 Killer, Martin figured she almost certainly would have done so today as well. Of course, there was always the possibility she had gotten sick or stayed home for some other reason.
No matter. If Carli wasn’t on the bus today, Martin would simply drop back and punt—return home and develop an alternative plan to wrest Carli from the hands of her parents. The line of buses burst out of the school driveway, one after the other, half turning right and the other half left, as oncoming traffic ground to a halt in both directions, stopped by a police officer stationed in the middle of the road. Martin appreciated the courtesy.
He made the left turn as a low buzz of conversation filled the bus. The line moved steadily, and, one by one, the vehicles in front of Martin veered off the main road onto side streets as they began the process of running their routes. When he had traveled roughly half the distance between the school and the convenience store where Martin met his angel two days ago, he pulled off the road, turning into the mostly empty parking lot of a strip mall that had seen better days. The tired-looking complex housed a hair salon, a donut shop, and an auto-parts store, as well as two sagging, empty storefronts standing as mute testimony to a sputtering economy in a struggling town.
Immediately after turning into the lot, Martin cut the wheel to the left, rolling the bus to a stop parallel to the street it had just turned off. This was not a scheduled stop, and even the most unobservant of the children had by now realized something was not quite right. The first stop on this route was not supposed to occur for nearly another half-mile.
A jumble of confused but not particularly concerned voices drifted forward, some kids questioning the unexplained stop but most simply complaining about the unscheduled delay.
“What the—”
“Come on, let’s move it.”
“I’ve got stuff to do!”
The comments were all directed toward the front of the bus in general and Martin in particular, but he ignored them. What was he going to say? “Oh, it’s okay, none of you have to worry. Except, of course, for Carli, my sweetheart, my angel, my chosen one!”
Instead of responding to the grumbling, Martin slammed the gearshift into park and stood, pivoting to face the kids, a few of the more adventurous of whom had begun standing and moving into the aisle. What exactly they thought they were doing Martin had no idea, but he decided it would be wise to put an immediate stop to the activity. He drew his gun and held it up next to his ear so it would be clearly visible, even in the back. For now, he kept it pointing at the roof.
Everyone froze. One boy who had been halfway to a standing position eased back down into his seat but he was the only one who moved. Everyone else froze, doing their best to will themselves invisible. No one had yet screamed, although that could change at any moment.
Martin used the silence as an opportunity to address the crowd. “No one has anything to worry about as long as nobody does anything stupid.”
Silence.