Everyone exchanged a grim look as they took out their phones. Jonah answered first.
“Macon.”
“Get to campus, ASAP! Where’s the SWAT van?”
“Perkin has it,” Jonah told his lieutenant. “He’s at a training op—”
“Someone’s shooting people all over the quad! Get over there and suit up. Grab everyone you can.”
Jonah braced himself against the side of the van as Ric peeled away from the curb. From the look on his partner’s face, Jonah knew he was getting similar instructions.
“What’s your setup?” Lieutenant Reynolds demanded.
Jonah was already leaning over the backseat to do a quick inventory of the cargo space. “Two shotguns, a rifle, and a couple of flash bangs.” His pulse started to pound. “How many shooters?”
“We don’t know.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“We don’t know that either. We don’t know shit! All I got is a bunch of hysterical nine-one-one calls, someone’s gunning down people on the lawn. Some kid just got shot off his bike. ETA?”
Jonah glanced through the tinted windows as a blur of storefronts raced past. “Two minutes, tops.”
“Okay, then you’re it, Macon. I’m fifteen minutes out. You guys got any Kevlar?”
“Three vests and a flak jacket.”
“Take all of it. And call me when you get there.”
Crack.
Another burst of cement on the nearby sidewalk. Sophie huddled tighter and looked back at the howling little girl.
“Get down!” Sophie shouted.
From the pavement, an arm reached up and tugged weakly at the girl’s shorts. The arm was attached to a hugely pregnant woman who was lying in an ever-expanding pool of her own blood.
Dear Lord. Someone had to get them out of here, but there was no one. The campus that had been crawling with students just moments ago was now a ghost town. Sophie darted her gaze around. Where was the shooter? Had he entered a building? Sophie eased up slowly and peered around the base of the bronze statue.
Crack.
An agonized scream behind her. Sophie recoiled. She peeked beneath her quivering elbow and saw a man to her right. He was hunched at the base of a flagpole, clutching his ankle with a bloody hand.
Sophie’s gaze was drawn to the corpse behind her, now baking on the hot sidewalk. At the edge of the grass, another man lay sprawled across the ground, a backpack beside him. A student. Her heart jackhammered against her rib cage.
The crying intensified. Sophie glanced at the child again, and she was hunched over her mother, sobbing uncontrollably. She had to be two, maybe three years old. The woman twisted onto her side, probably trying to shield the girl with her body. They were behind a large oak tree, thank goodness. But if the child moved too much—
Crack.
Glass shattered on a building nearby.
Crack. Crack. Crack. One by one, the second-story windows exploded, and she thought of those shooting games at carnivals where the targets were little yellow ducks.
Sirens grew louder as Sophie scoured the rooflines for any sort of movement or muzzle flash. She went from building to building all around the quadrangle, searching the red-tile roofs and the highest row of windows.
Her gaze came to rest on the white limestone monolith that sat atop the hill, overlooking the entire campus like a giant Sphinx.
And suddenly she knew. The gunman was on top of the library.
And from there he could see everything.
A Tracers Trilogy Page 93