“No additional unit needed, then?” asks the dispatcher.
“Affirmative. I’ll wrap this up soon, get the parents in here to deal with him or drop him at the ARC if he gives me a problem.”
“Roger that, thirty-one.”
The ARC is the Addiction Recovery Center in our town—what police departments used to call the “drunk tank” in the old days. Unless these hostiles did one helluva reconnaissance mission before they arrived, there’s no way they should know that level of detail about the local police. I only know about it because Duncan The Douche landed there a few weekends ago and was stupid enough to brag about it, trying to show me how gangster he is.
So there’s a reason she sounded so much like a cop when I first heard her in the office—a reason the police-band dispatcher didn’t question whether Andrews was impersonating the officer known as Unit 31.
Andrews is a cop. A dirty one.
Directly below me, I hear someone say, “We’re screwed.”
“Notice how he got away right before this happened, like he knew it was coming and didn’t even warn us?”
I know that voice, even if it’s only a loud whisper. Duncan.
“You heard Dodson,” says the other guy. “It’s good he got away. Maybe he’s trying to get help.”
“Yeah, you keep believing that. I’ll be over here working on an actual plan.”
One of the hostiles yells, “Shut up back there! No talking.”
This is just what I need—The Douche going rogue, but not before inciting a riot in chem class. Maybe I was right to include him on my suspect list. Maybe I should have been looking for more than one. Could Duncan be in on it with Katie? Nah, Jake, that’s the paranoia talking. Duncan is just being Duncan. But one thing I can agree with him on—I need to handle business myself because there is no cavalry coming.
When I start moving toward the next classroom, the hem of my pants snags on the pointy edge of a screw in the vent, pulling on the metal panel just slightly before it releases. My heart starts racing a mile a minute while I pray no one heard it. But that small noise was enough. I hear a male voice say, “Go check it out. I’ll stay here to watch over our backup plan out of this place.”
This remark starts my classmates talking, which makes the lead hostile freak out and start yelling at everyone to “shut the hell up or else,” which only encourages the talking to turn into shouting and screaming, providing cover for me to move through the shaft, past the ventless supply room, until I am over Ms. Flagler’s room.
The vent gives me the perfect vantage point to the classroom’s door. Just as I’d expected, one of the gunmen arrives, peering through the window. He must see what I see—an empty room—because he leaves after unsuccessfully trying the knob, apparently satisfied.
But I’m not. He hasn’t studied the school’s security system schematics the way I have. The lockdown from individual rooms can only be initiated from the inside. Someone is inside the room, hidden from the hostile’s view and mine.
I have no choice. I have to get to that supply-room computer, but I’m hoping whoever’s down there is a friendly.
I drop into the room, knowing I’m completely vulnerable to attack. My heart nearly stops beating when I hear a squeaking noise the minute my feet hit the floor. But it isn’t a human. It’s a complaint from a pack of guinea pigs I almost crushed. They’ve somehow escaped their cages, running all around the room. I think I know why the bad guy was satisfied with what he saw. Hopefully he figured one of the pigs had gotten into the walls or the air shaft, that it wasn’t a human who’d made the noise that caused his partner to lose his shit.
I just about do the same thing when I hear a noise. It’s the turning of a doorknob, but not the one the hostile just tried to open. It’s coming from behind me. I scan Ms. Flagler’s classroom in search of a weapon. The closest thing is a stool at one of the lab tables, which is a joke of a weapon if this guy is armed.
The door to the supply room slowly creaks open. His actions are deliberate. Fearful. Whoever it is probably isn’t armed either, which means I have a fighting chance. All I can do is turn around, get into a defensive stance, and hope I’m right. Or better yet, hope it’s a friendly coming through that door.
CHAPTER 15
Oh, thank God. They don’t come any friendlier. It’s Bunker emerging from the supply room, and he’s dragging Mr. Maitland with him.
“Found him hiding out in there,” Bunker says in a near whisper. “Says he was on the way from his class to the office when you made your announcement, so he ducked inside. Fortunately, he didn’t have the wits about him to lock down the room until after I arrived.”
“You got here?” I say, mostly ignoring his Maitland story. It’s more of a statement than a question.
Bunker smiles. “Told you I would. Had to cut you off because the real loser in the library was giving me a hard time. But the rest of the kids took over for me so I could come help you. They’re on your side. Besides, this whole thing will make for a great story when I ask out my future girlfriend.”
Bunker is talking about this girl, and all I want to know is how he made it here in one piece. “But how?”
“Just took the stairs and the hallway. You were right. There can’t be many bad guys running around. Didn’t see a single one on my way here.”
I don’t even try to hide my astonishment. Bunker pretends he doesn’t notice it and continues on, sounding like it’s just a regular day at ol’ Carlisle Academy.
“I released the pigs for cover.”
“Great idea, Bunker. It worked.”
“And I already checked out that PC. The hacker must have guessed you were headed here next, because it’s down, too. But Maitland here is going to let us borrow his laptop. He claims he can still get a connection.”
That is strange if it’s true. Why leave Maitland with access? But I hope he’s right. “Hand it over,” I say.
“No,” Maitland says, holding the computer in a death grip against his chest with both arms. “I need it so I can receive—”
I throw a left hook across his face and knock him the hell out. Not only don’t I care what he needed the laptop for, I’m pissed he’s in here hiding out instead of heading back to his class and trying to keep them calm like I’m sure every other teacher is doing right now. Plus, I just can’t stand the guy and will probably never get this chance again. I did it for national security, not to mention Carlisle. At least he had Bunker there to catch his fall, because I wouldn’t have.
“Better hide him in case a bad guy checks the room again,” Bunker says as he drags Maitland to the corner.
Out of sight of the door’s window, I open Maitland’s laptop, close out the classroom roster he had up, and bring up a DOS screen.
“Now, let’s see if he really is connected. I was this close to finding where and how the hacker is jamming our signals.”
My hope-o-meter goes from zero to sixty and back to zero in under ten seconds.
“Should have known I wouldn’t catch a break like that. If Maitland had a connection, he doesn’t now.”
The hacker probably detected Maitland’s usage and shut him down. I try looking in the laptop’s disk cache in case there’s at least a clue that might help me track her down.
Bunker comes over and stands behind me. That usually drives me insane, but I’m thinking, after the day I’ve had so far, I’m going to be a lot more chill about stuff like that.
“One day you have to show me how to do some of this stuff,” Bunker says. “I just don’t get how a bunch of zeroes and ones can shut down every phone in the building. I mean, how is that even possible?”
I stop typing for a second and let his words sink in.
“Bunk, you’re a genius.”
“I am?”
“I don’t think she’s spoofing. The whole reason I was ever in U—” Gah, I’m so excited to figure this out that I almost blabbed about my Ukraine mission. “Um, earlier this year, the hacker did a thing that put the two of us on a collision course.”