Seconds Away

by Harlan Coben

  Plus, last time Spoon broke the rules, he had saved Ema's life.

  "Something wrong, Mickey?" Spoon asked.

  My grip on the phone tightened. I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to get him in any more trouble, but we needed him. "Nope, nothing. We'll see you soon."

  I hung up. Ema and I huddled by the school's side door. There are few places more empty and lifeless than a school at night. It was after nine P.M. by the time Spoon joined us.

  "Put these on," Spoon said. "To hide our faces."

  He handed Ema and me masks. He kept one for himself. But these weren't, say, ski masks, like you might expect.

  "Are these . . . ?" I began.

  "Yup, Lion King masks," Spoon said. "Ema, I gave you Mufasa. I was going to give you Pumbaa, but he's a warthog and, well, I figured you'd kill me."

  Frowning at the mask in her hand, Ema said, "You figured right."

  "So, Mickey, you'll be Pumbaa, and I'll be"--he slipped on the mask--"Timon. See? Timon and Pumbaa? Hakuna matata. Come on, put yours on. It will be practical yet fun."

  I didn't move.

  Spoon lifted his up and frowned. "There are surveillance cameras inside. If something goes wrong, we don't want anyone recognizing us."

  I looked at Ema. She shrugged. He had a point.

  Spoon slipped the mask back into place so that he was now a smiling meerkat. "Mickey, with your height you should also hunch over. In fact, we should all alter our gait. Ema, maybe instead of your usual angry strut, you could twirl or something."

  "Twirl?"

  "Or something. So they can't identify you."

  "I'm not twirling," Ema said.

  "Or something."

  "I'm not or something-ing either."

  "I think the masks will be enough," I said.

  Spoon shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  We moved toward the school door. Spoon swiped his card key. I heard a click, and the door opened. I looked over at Ema for assurance, but instead of her face, I saw Mufasa's. Well, Mufasa looked pretty resolute, so I followed Spoon inside.

  "There's no audio recording in here," Spoon said. He used his regular voice, no stage whisper or even "indoor" voice. The sound was loud in this still corridor, jarring and echoing. "There are cameras in every hallway. They are shot from above, but since we have masks on, this doesn't matter much."

  He made a right turn. We followed.

  "That's Mrs. Nelson's classroom. Do you know what Dad told me? She keeps her old underwear and socks underneath her desk. And not the sexy kind. I mean, have you seen Mrs. Nelson? Shudder, right? But Dad says she has an amazing sock collection. All different colors and styles. Do you want to see her sock collection?"

  "No," I said.

  "It's okay. The classroom doors are never locked. Fire hazard or something. Oh, unless there's a lockdown. Do you know what that is? See, every classroom has a panic button under the teacher's desk. In case of a school shooting or some kind of emergency, it sets off an alarm and the school goes into lockdown. Cool, right?"

  Mercifully we arrived in front of Ashley's locker. Spoon examined the lock. "Yep, just as I suspected. A Sevier combination lock." He shook his head. "Pitiful, really."

  "You have a key to open it?"

  Timon looked at me. It was so weird to look at your friend and see someone else's smiling face. "No, of course not. It isn't regulation."

  "So what should we do?" Ema asked.

  Spoon took out a tire iron, slid it through the lock's loop, and turned it hard. The lock snapped open as if it were made of porcelain.

  "Voila," Spoon said.

  That was when I heard a noise. I froze. "Did you hear that?" I whispered.

  "Hear what?" Spoon/Timon said.

  I looked over at Ema/Mufasa. I stared at her mask as though I could read her face that way. "Ema?"

  "Let's just hurry."

  Spoon cleared away the leftover lock debris. When he was done, he stepped back and gestured for me to take over. I reached forward, grabbed the metallic latch, and lifted it up. I opened the locker and peered inside.

  There was a gym bag.

  I pulled it out and dropped it on the floor. The three of us surrounded it and peered down through our masks. I bent down, took hold of the zipper, and pulled it open. The sound echoed through the still hallways, sounding like a giant rip. For a moment, no one spoke. We just stared down.

  Then Spoon said, "O. M. G."

  The first thing I noticed was the money--bundles and bundles of cash, wrapped up in rubber bands. It was impossible to say how much. Ema reached down and picked one up. She started fingering through the bills of Ben Franklin.

  "They're all hundred-dollar bills," Ema said.

  "Did you know," Spoon said, "that Benjamin Franklin was an expert swimmer?"

  "Not now, Spoon."

  Ema moved a few packs of bills to the side, and that was when we saw the plastic bags loaded with white powder.

  "Do you think those are drugs?" Spoon asked.

  "I don't think they're baby powder," I replied.

  "We need to get this to the police," Ema said.

  Spoon stood back up. "You're kidding, right?"

  "No."

  "We just illegally broke into the school," Spoon said, with a tinge of agitation in his voice. "We illegally broke into this locker. Do you know how much trouble we'll get in?"

  "He has a point," I said.

  "And who's going to believe that we just found it?" Spoon continued, raising both arms in the air excitedly. "Suppose they think we're the drug dealers. I've already got a rep, you know. They'll send me to the big house."

  "The big house?" Ema repeated.

  "The slammer, the joint, the pen, up the river, juvie, the clink--"

  "Okay, Spoon," I said.

  "We can't tell anyone we found this," Spoon insisted. "Don't you see? Imagine a tasty morsel like me in a prison."

  "Relax," I said. "No one is going to prison."

  "And suppose they do believe us?" Spoon continued. "Suppose we tell the truth and they believe us and it all traces back to Rachel. How is she going to explain this?"

  Silence. Even Ema knew that he was making sense.

  "We need to think," I said.

  "Quickly," Spoon added.

  "We can't just let it go either," Ema said. "We know what happened now. Rachel's mom goes on a rant about how evil her father is. Rachel investigates. She finds this bag. She hides it and contacts the Abeona Shelter, right?"

  I nodded, remembering my conversation with Shaved Head. He had thought that maybe Rachel had given me the package. She hadn't. I wondered why Rachel hadn't told me about it, but now I understood. Her mother was killed over this package. Rachel herself was shot. If she told me where it was, well, she'd be putting me in danger too.

  "Meanwhile," Ema continued, "Rachel's dad or those bad guys are wondering what happened to the bag. They figured out that Rachel must have taken it . . ."

  "No," I said. "They probably figured that Rachel's mom had taken it."

  "Right. So they went after her, and, well, we know what happened next."

  "She ended up dead."

  Spoon said, "We gotta go. Let's just put the bag back in the locker and try to think it out."

  "That won't work either," I said. "The lock is broken. We can't leave it in an unlocked locker."

  "So what do we do?" Ema asked.

  "You give it to us."

  I spun toward the rough voice. The two men I spotted in the souped-up car at Rachel's house were there. Both men were carrying guns. Scarface, the one Detective Waters had warned me about, said, "Nobody move. Put your hands up."

  "But if we're not supposed to move," Spoon began, "how can we put our hands up?"

  Scarface pointed his gun at Spoon's chest. "You being a smart mouth with me?"

  "No, no, it's okay," I said in the calmest voice I could muster. "We're all doing exactly what you tell us. You're in charge here."

  "Bet your butt I'm in ch
arge," Scarface said, turning his attention back to me. "Now take off those stupid masks."

  Spoon: "But if we're not supposed to move--"

  "Spoon," I interrupted. I shook my head at him to shut him up. We all took off our masks and dropped them on the floor.

  Scarface pocketed his gun, but his partner was still at the ready. The partner was a huge guy. He wore his sunglasses indoors in the dark and sported the blankest expression I had ever seen on his face. He looked like a bored, cold killer, like he would just as soon shoot us as not, no biggie. I didn't know what to do or say, so for now, I just stayed silent.

  Scarface walked over to the gym bag. He bent down and looked inside.

  "It all there?" Sunglasses asked.

  "Seems to be," Scarface said. He stood and grinned at me. "Thanks for finding our stuff for us, Mickey."

  "How do you know my name?" I asked.

  "Simple really. We figured that either Rachel or Mommy stole our little package from Daddy. So we got a hold of her cell phone records. Seems she called you right before the big bang-bang, so we figured, hey, maybe you, her boyfriend, helped her hide it. So we started following you. Easy-peasy, right?"

  The baby talk, to put it mildly, was unnerving.

  "Right," I said. "You got your stuff. You can go now."

  Scarface grinned at Sunglasses. The corner of Sunglasses's lips twitched. I didn't like that twitch.

  Scarface zippered the bag back up. "When we followed you to that burned-up old house, well, for a second I thought maybe she hid the stuff there and it got burned up. That would have been very, very bad."

  "But that wasn't the case," I said, trying to stand a little taller. "Your stuff was here the whole time. Now it's yours again."

  "Yep," Scarface said. "I see that. Only one problem."

  I swallowed. The small stone of fear in my chest started expanding, making it hard to breathe. "What's that?"

  "You guys. I mean, you saw our faces."

  "We won't say a word," Ema said.

  Scarface turned his attention to her now. As he moved closer to Ema, I tried to slip between them, but he stopped me with a glare. I didn't like the look in his eyes. They were cruel eyes, the kind that enjoyed hurting others--the kind, I realized with mounting horror, that would never listen to reason.

  "You expect me to just trust you, sweet cheeks?" Scarface asked. His face was mere inches away from Ema's now. She looked as though she was about to cry. "You expect us to just, what, let you go?"

  "My arms are getting tired," Spoon said. "Can I put them down?"

  Scarface spun toward him. "I told you not to move."

  "Well, yes, you did, but then you had us move twice--once to put our hands up, once to take off our masks." Spoon slid toward the right. "So that whole 'don't move' thing? It seems more like a guideline than a hard, fast rule, you know what I mean? So I was hoping, seeing how my arms are getting really tired--"

  And then Spoon did the unthinkable.

  With all attention on the inanity of what he was saying, Spoon suddenly leapt at Sunglasses. The move surprised everyone, me included.

  Next thing I knew, the gun went off. And Spoon fell to the ground, bleeding.

  CHAPTER 38

  For the briefest of moments, no one moved.

  I say the briefest of moments because in reality, it was more like a flash--a whirlwind mix that will forever be frozen in my mind. Have you ever had a moment like that, a moment that is shorter than a snap and yet stays with you forever? It was as though time had truly stopped. I remember it all. I remember the sound of the gunshot. I remember Spoon falling back. I remember Ema screaming. I remember Spoon on the ground, the red stain on his shirt spreading, his face losing color, his eyes closed.

  I will never forget any of that.

  But even in that flash, the one that couldn't have lasted more than half a second, I could feel the sickening guilt wash over me.

  I had done this to him. I had gotten Spoon shot.

  But while part of me was devastated and panicked, another part of me relied on my martial arts training. Somewhere in my center I was suddenly calm. I could not let Spoon's sacrifice go to waste. Spoon, for all his outward immaturity, had understood the truth. These two men were going to kill us. Someone, he realized, had to make a move. Someone had to do something even if it meant sacrificing himself.

  Spoon had distracted them. I could stand here and cry.

  Or I could take advantage of the opening.

  The rest was a quick fury. It seemed as though a hundred things happened over a long period of time, but when I looked back on it, I knew that it had only taken a few seconds from the time Spoon was shot until the time it was over.

  First, we all moved at once. It was as if someone suddenly released us from this pause into a frenzied tornado. I was the first to react. I started toward Sunglasses and his gun, though Scarface was in the way. Ema dropped to the floor to take care of Spoon. Scarface turned toward me. And Sunglasses swerved his gun in my direction.

  I was too far away from him.

  I was fast; I had gotten a jump on them. But I was still too many yards away to reach Sunglasses before he pulled the trigger again. I tried to calculate the odds. I could hope that he missed, but the chances were remote. I was simply too easy a target.

  So what to do?

  Make myself a less consistent target, for one. As Sunglasses began to pull the trigger, I jumped suddenly to the left and tackled Scarface. The bullet whizzed past me. I made sure now to keep Scarface's body between the gun's trajectory and, well, me. Scarface hadn't been expecting that attack. As we toppled backward, I moved my forearm into his throat. When we landed on the floor, my forearm jammed deep into neck. His eyes bulged, and he made a choking sound.

  I had him just where I wanted him.

  Of course, if that had been all, if my only concern was Scarface, I'd be a pretty happy guy right now. But it wasn't. He wasn't even my biggest worry. My biggest worry was Sunglasses. He had quickly recovered from my surprise move and was now heading toward us with his gun raised.

  I could only hide behind Scarface's body for so long--and by "so long," I meant "maybe another second."

  Sunglasses stood over us. He pointed his gun down at me. From my spot on the ground, I unleashed a kick that landed on his shin. He cursed, shook it off, took a step back, and once again took aim.

  This was it, I realized. I was out of moves. It was over.

  Scarface was rolling away, coughing, trying to regain his breath. It would take a while, but that didn't really matter. I'd be dead by then. Sunglasses altered his aim slightly so that the barrel was at my chest. I was going to raise my arms in surrender, but I knew that would do no good. I was staring at that smile-twitch again, the last sight I'd ever see, when I heard a shriek.

  It was Ema.

  She leapt on Sunglasses's back, her momentum knocking him forward. He managed to keep on his feet but just barely. Ema's arms snaked around his neck and squeezed for all she was worth. Without hesitation, I rolled toward Scarface and threw another blow at his throat. It landed but not flush.

  Sunglasses tried using his free hand to pry Ema's arm off, but she was a lot stronger than he expected. He lifted the gun hand toward her, as though hoping to shoot her off his back. Ema was ready for it. She took her right arm off his neck and chopped down on his gun hand.

  The gun dropped to ground.

  Now was my chance!

  I dived for the gun, but Sunglasses wasn't through yet. He kicked the gun with his right foot just before I got to it. The gun skittered all the way down the recently waxed floor of the hallway. No time to go for it. Scarface was starting to recover. He, too, had a gun.

  Sunglasses reeled back, trying to get Ema off him, but she wouldn't budge. Then he stumbled backward and slammed her into the wall of lockers. He did it again, harder this time, head-butting her in the face with the back of his head. It worked. Ema's grip went slack. She slumped to the ground, dazed. Sunglasses tur
ned toward her, but when I shouted, he turned back to me. Ema used the distraction to roll into a classroom and out of harm's way.

  Meanwhile, Scarface was stirring again--and he still had a gun.

  I leapt back toward him, but this time he was ready. Scarface rolled onto his back and kicked his foot out. It landed in my solar plexus. The air whooshed out of me. As I fell to the ground, I threw a flailing elbow strike. It struck pay dirt--Scarface's nose. I heard a crunching sound and knew that it was broken.

  But before I could get back up, Sunglasses was on me too. He kicked me hard in the ribs. I fell flat. He threw another kick. I grunted. The third kick made my head start to swim. I thought I might throw up. I lay there, defenseless.

  The next kick sapped me of whatever strength I had left.

  I was losing consciousness, almost ready to surrender, when my eyes traveled past Scarface and landed on Spoon. His eyes were still closed. His face was pure white. The blood poured from an open wound. I didn't know if he was dead or alive, but I'd be damned if I would let him bleed out.

  I had to do something, and the answer was suddenly obvious.

  Scarface's gun.

  It was in his back pocket. If I could just reach . . .

  Sunglasses saw what I was going to do. He smiled down at me and lined up for another kick, one that would probably finish me off, but suddenly the air was shattered by the sound of an alarm.

  "Lockdown!" a voice over the loudspeaker intoned. "Lockdown . . . Lockdown!"

  Ema! That was why she had rolled into the classroom--to hit the panic button Spoon had told us about. The distraction was all I needed. With one last grunt I reached over and grabbed the gun from Scarface's back pocket. I pulled for it, but it wouldn't come out. Sunglasses looked back over at me. He reeled back for another kick, but it wasn't in time.

  I freed the gun and pointed it at him. "Freeze!"

  Sunglasses stopped and slowly put his hands above his head. I crawled away, keeping the gun on him, making sure I was far enough from Scarface too.

  The loudspeaker kept going: "Lockdown . . . Lockdown . . ."

  Ema ran back out into the hallway and knelt down next to Spoon.

  "Spoon? Arthur?" Her voice was a tearful plea. She cradled his head. "Talk to me, okay? Please?"