Snapped

by Laura Griffin

  Ric’s hand appeared at Jonah’s side, signaling: Three, two, one.

  Jonah swung around the corner. Nothing. On the west side, a faint scuff. If the shooter didn’t know they were up here, Brian’s boots had just given them away.

  Now, now, now! a voice in his head ordered. Jonah surged forward, turned the next corner.

  A flash of movement at the top of a ladder.

  “Roof!” Ric shouted the same instant Jonah lifted his shotgun. Footsteps pounded on the top of the stairwell building.

  “One shooter!” Brian yelled as both Ric and Jonah doubled back to the south.

  A smack against the pavement as the man jumped to the rooftop. They reached the corner at the same instant Jonah saw the gunman. Sun reflected off his pale bald head as he shoved a pistol in his mouth.

  Bang. He dropped.

  And where he’d been standing was just bright blue sky.

  Allison peered through the rifle scope and waited, heart galloping. Was that pistol fire? What was happening up there?

  A flutter of movement near the ledge, and gunshots echoed around the quadrangle like popcorn.

  “Hold your fire!” she yelled into her radio, on the off chance the shots were coming from police. But she suspected it was more vigilantes trying to pick off the gunman.

  “Shooter down.” Jonah’s words came over the radio, and Allison’s shoulders slumped with relief. She rested her forehead on the borrowed rifle.

  “We’re going to sweep the roof,” he continued in an edgy voice. Had he taken out the shooter? What had happened up there? “Looks like a lone perpetrator, but we need to confirm.”

  “Do a floor-by-floor of the library.” The order was issued by a voice she didn’t recognize, probably the SWAT commander. “All officers, hold your fire. I repeat, hold your fire. And get those kids to stop shooting, too.”

  Allison sat up straighter and blinked the sweat from her eyes. She gazed at the library, feeling a sense of numbness combined with caution.

  No movement, which was good. Jonah’s team was keeping low and away from the edge. She just hoped they were right, that the gunman was by himself.

  She glanced at the man beside her, who still had his rifle pointed at the roof. “You hear that?”

  “Yep.”

  Allison stood and peered over the balcony at the grassy quad. Half a dozen students—either dead or injured—lay sprawled in the sun, while others cowered behind trees and trash cans and even flowerpots. Everything was so still, it could have been a photograph. Her gaze drifted back to the motionless bodies.

  “Is it over?”

  She turned to look at Bo McCoy, who held the binoculars she’d given him in his slender young hands.

  “We don’t know,” she said, even though in her heart, she did know. It wasn’t over—not yet. And for some families, it never would be.

  “Stay here until you get the all-clear.” She handed back the rifle. “And don’t shoot anything,” she ordered. “We’ve got cops up there.”

  She rushed back to the ground floor, using the stairwell because her shell-shocked brain forgot about the elevator until she was halfway down. As she entered the ultra-modern lobby of the architecture building, she heard the nasal sound of a bullhorn outside.

  “I repeat, all is clear. The gunman is down.”

  For a moment, there was no reaction. But as she stepped from the air-conditioned building into the sweltering heat, the freeze-frame shifted into motion once again. People emerged from behind bushes, statues, even lampposts. Someone dropped from a tree. They poured out of buildings and crowded onto the sidewalks. Everyone gazed up at the library while some pointed, and the swell of anxious voices competed with the ever-increasing wail of sirens.

  Allison hurried through the crowd to a place where she’d seen a victim go down. The boy was on his side, clutching a bleeding arm. His fingers were crimson and his face was white and slick with sweat.

  “Help’s coming.” Allison grabbed something someone handed her—a wadded T-shirt—and pressed it against the wound. The boy moaned, but at least he was conscious. Another T-shirt appeared, and she added to the makeshift bandage.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He mumbled something she didn’t catch.

  “You hear the ambulance? That’s for you. Just sit tight, okay? Anything hurt besides this arm?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, and Allison glanced up. All around her was a forest of legs. Students, faculty, staff. But where were the medics?

  “Help is coming,” she promised, then jumped to her feet as she spotted an EMT.

  “Hey! Over here!” She waved him over and then backed away as he and a partner knelt down and went to work.

  Allison rejoined the crowd and searched for more injured. But it was now impossible to see the wounded through the thick soup of people. Some were shouting, some were weeping. Some staggered around, wide-eyed and dazed. An alarming number of men, young and old, held deer rifles pointed at the sky, and Allison hoped like hell this really was the act of a lone gunman. Any accomplice would have no trouble disappearing into the mob.

  Jonah pushed his way through the throng of bodies.

  “Allison!”

  She couldn’t hear him. Not surprising given the noise. Between the sirens and the helicopters, Jonah could hardly hear himself think. He squeezed past a barricade blocking off the inner part of campus. Someone grabbed his arm, then noticed his Kevlar vest and let go.

  He caught up to her near the command center. Behind her, the entire quadrangle had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.

  “Allison, wait up.” He snagged her arm and turned her around.

  “I thought you were on the roof.” She glanced up at it. Choppers hovered above the library like hornets, and a white tent had been erected over the corpse to keep news cams from filming as the crime-scene techs did their jobs.

  Allison gave him a worried look. “I hear it was pretty intense up there. You okay?”

  “That woman behind the statue. Have you seen her?” Jonah held his breath.

  “The statue?”

  “She called 911. She was pinned down behind the bronze horse sculpture, right over there.”

  Recognition flickered. “You mean the blonde? Tall?”

  “Where is she?”

  “They took her away in an ambulance.”

  His chest squeezed. “She was wounded?”

  “She looked okay to me. She was on her feet. Her kid was bleeding, though.”

  Jonah stared at her.

  “Doyle! I need you on crowd control!” Reynolds motioned her over to a parking area behind the psych building, where some campus health workers were dealing with minor injuries. Jonah’s boss saw him and frowned. “What are you still doing here? I thought you had a debriefing.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  But his boss was already stomping over. Reynolds was big, barrel-chested, and the silver bristles of his flattop contrasted with his ruddy skin.

  He motioned Jonah away from the crowd. “Get to that briefing, give your statement, and go home. Keep it short and to the point.” He aimed a meaty finger at him. “And take off that vest. I don’t want reporters picking you out. We got every news channel in the country headed down here.”

  Jonah gritted his teeth. A mass murderer had just shot up the college and his lieutenant was worried about reporters.

  “I’m on my way.” Jonah turned to leave.

  “Keep it tight,” Reynolds called after him. “Less is more, Macon. Don’t forget that.”

  The emergency room at County Hospital could have been in a war zone. Rows of gurneys filled with injured students lined the wall. People sat on the floor and slouched in corners, holding makeshift bandages and awaiting attention from harried nurses and med students. Sophie hadn’t seen a doctor yet, and she assumed they were all in back tending to critical patients. Waiting-room chairs had been stacked and shoved against a wall in order to m
ake room for the steady stream of gurneys coming in from ambulances. Load after load came off with bleeding arms, shattered wrists, injured feet. Several people had facial cuts from flying glass. Sophie reached up and touched her eyebrow, wondering how bad her injury was. She’d taken a hefty chunk of bark to the temple when the tree she’d been running for got hit with a bullet.

  The child in her lap squirmed, and Sophie gazed down at her. Every attempt to elicit a name had been met with silence, and Sophie didn’t know what to do, so for now she was going to wait here, holding an ice pack against the girl’s forehead and hoping she didn’t have a concussion. The girl had a big blue goose egg from when Sophie had tackled her to the ground and she’d hit a tree root. She also had a split lip. The blood there had dried, and Sophie had managed to clean it with some wet tissues, but it looked as though it needed stitches.

  “Would you like to play a game?” Sophie shifted her on her lap so she could look down at her face. “It’s called the name game. I’ll start. My name is Sophie. Kind of like sofa. What’s your name?”

  The girl turned away and burrowed her head against Sophie’s dirt-streaked blouse.

  Her throat tightened with frustration. She was terrible with kids. She’d never been one of those nurturing types who oozed mommy vibes, and yet here she was in this overcrowded waiting room with a child who refused to turn loose of her.

  “How’s your head feel?” Sophie rearranged the ice pack, which was almost melted.

  No answer, just more squirming. Sophie scanned the ER doors. They were automatic, but they stood permanently open now as a steady stream of people rushed in and out. Despite the signs posted around, there was a cell phone clutched in almost every hand, and people were babbling away frantically. Everyone was looking for someone—a daughter, a boyfriend, a sorority sister. Sophie had positioned herself strategically by the entrance, and almost everyone glanced at her. But their gazes didn’t linger, and she knew they hadn’t come here searching for this brown-haired little girl.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” Sophie tried to ease the girl off her legs, but she clung tighter. “Come on. Just a short one.”

  Sophie scooped her onto her hip and managed to elbow her way through the mob of people swarming a table where a list of names was being maintained by a besieged staffer. It was worse than a bar after a football game, and Sophie didn’t have her usual tricks available to get someone’s attention. She resorted to rudeness and elbowed a skinny guy right out of her way.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and the woman looked up from her handwritten list. “This child is missing her mother.” Sophie winced at the words, but it couldn’t be helped. “They were separated on campus, and I need to know if her mom came through here—”

  “Name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not family?”

  “No. Look, her mother’s pregnant. She was injured. She was taken away in a separate ambulance and—”

  Someone jostled her out of the way, and she tripped backward, almost dropping the girl. Sophie turned and snarled, and when she looked back, the woman was bombarded with other questions.

  Sophie scooted away from the crush of people. Her chair was already taken. She found a tiny bit of space beside a ficus plant and leaned against the wall there as she pulled out her phone to make another round of calls.

  Once again, no answer at San Marcos PD, probably because every parent of every kid at this college was trying to get through. She scrolled through her call list and tried the sheriff’s office again, and again, nothing. She tried the local CPS office, but was once again routed through a message system and dumped on someone’s voice mail.

  Sophie adjusted the girl on her hip and reached deep for some patience. She left her name and yet another urgent message, along with her phone number.

  The girl looked up at her as she clicked off, and Sophie forced a smile.

  “Is your head feeling better?”

  An ambulance screamed right up to the door, drowning out the question. The girl burrowed her face against Sophie’s neck until the siren finally ceased.

  “Hey, you!” Sophie caught the sleeve of a man in scrubs as he hurried past.

  He looked at her like a deer in the headlights. “I need a nurse here. This girl needs medical attention, and I also have to find her parents.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the exam rooms swarming with people.

  “Her mother was badly injured,” Sophie said. “She’s short, brown hair, about eight months pregnant. Is she back there, do you know?”

  “Uh, I really don’t—”

  “Check. Please. This child doesn’t have a parent here. I don’t even know her name.”

  He stepped back, and Sophie caught his hand. “Wait.” She plucked a pen from the pocket of his scrubs and shifted the girl onto her hip. “I’m going to write down my cell number.” He had hairy arms, so she wrote on the back of his hand. “My name’s Sophie,” she said, desperately trying to make a personal connection. “Find out if there’s a pregnant woman back there and call me.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Her injuries looked very serious, so she may be in surgery.” Or the morgue. “But I at least need her name. I’ve got to get in touch with this child’s family.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He glanced down at his hand and jogged off, and Sophie slumped against the wall. She felt faint, queasy. The room was hot and airless, packed with too many anxious bodies. Sophie closed her eyes. The girl’s skinny arms tightened around her neck, and she felt a fresh wave of panic. She had no idea what to do next, so she started humming the first thing that popped into her head. It was an old gospel song about flying away, which was exactly what she wanted to do right now.

  The girl’s arms gradually relaxed, so Sophie kept humming. She glanced down at the scraped little legs wrapped around her waist. She smoothed a hand over the girl’s hair and picked a leaf from one of her pigtails. The girl’s head drooped, and Sophie continued to hum softly. She turned toward the door leading to the back where the guy with her phone number on his hand had disappeared.

  A man stood there, staring at her. He was oddly motionless amid the chaos of the ER. Sophie shifted so he could see the girl in her arms, and his entire face flooded with relief. He pushed his way through the crowd.

  “Becca!” His voice caught on the word, and the little head jerked up from Sophie’s shoulder.

  “Daddy!” She launched herself out of Sophie’s arms and into the man’s, and he squeezed her to his chest. Sophie stepped back to give them room. Over his daughter’s shoulder, the man met Sophie’s gaze. The pained look in his bloodshot eyes spoke volumes, and Sophie knew that Becca’s mother was dead.

  Jonah pulled into the apartment complex and glanced up at Sophie’s window. Looked like she was awake, which was both good and bad. Good, because he wouldn’t have to turn around and go home, and bad, because what he needed to do right now was turn around and go home.

  Home was where he should be. It was late, he was beyond tired, and he wasn’t fit company for anything other than a bottle of Jim Beam. But he’d been thinking about Sophie all day, and somewhere along the way he’d convinced himself that this detour was a good idea.

  He parked his dinged pickup and hiked up the stairs to her apartment. The place looked just as dumpy as he remembered it, only someone had gotten around to pouring some chlorine into the pint-size swimming pool. Must be new management.

  Through the paper-thin walls, Jonah heard newscasts blaring as he made his way down the row of doors. Sounded like everyone in town was tuned into the same story. He reached Sophie’s unit and rapped on the door. He waited. And waited. He rapped again.

  Jonah’s pulse spiked when she answered. He didn’t know what he’d expected. It was after ten. Maybe he’d thought she’d be weeping into her pillow, or talking on the phone, or watching TV. He hadn’t expected her to be naked.

  “You always answer the door like that?”

  She had only a
bath towel wrapped around her and she hitched it up higher. “Are you off for the night, or is this a police visit?”

  “I’m off.”

  She stepped back to let him in, and he frowned down at her as he crossed the threshold.

  “You didn’t even ask who it was.”

  “You have a distinctive knock.” She tossed a look at him over her bare shoulder as she walked to the back of the apartment.

  Jonah’s feet remained firmly planted in her living room.

  The bathroom door was ajar and he saw a sliver of her reflection in the mirror as she leaned over the sink.

  “You just getting off?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Long day.”

  “Yep.”

  “There’s beer in the fridge.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  She finished doing some makeup stuff to her eyes and closed the door. He heard drawers opening and closing, then a hair dryer.

  Jonah took a moment to look at her setup. It was just as he remembered it from the one other time he’d been in here: small TV, inexpensive prints on the walls, worn but comfortable furniture. Everything was simple and affordable, with the notable exception of her stereo. It was sleek and new and perched on a six-foot bookshelf, along with her extensive collection of CDs. She had a purple iPod plugged in at the moment and was listening to something low and bluesy. Once upon a time, Sophie had been an aspiring singer, but he didn’t know if that was still the case.

  Jonah glanced down the hallway. The bathroom door was open all the way now, and he guessed she’d slipped into the bedroom. What that particular part of her apartment looked like, he had no idea.

  The last time he’d seen Sophie—before he’d seen her cowering at the base of that statue—he’d just closed a homicide case. It was a serial killer, and she’d been on his list of targets. She should have lost her life, but instead she’d walked away with some cuts and bruises.

  And a boatload of emotional problems.