Pop. Pop. Pop.
Across the table from Riley, Eric slumped over. Confused, Riley stared at the growing puddle of red oozing out from under Eric. The same kind of puddle now surrounding Gabe on the floor.
After that everything happened in slow motion.
All around him kids started running and screaming as the pops became more frequent. His classmates fell like they were in a video game.
Like they were being shot.
But this wasn’t a video game. These were his friends, his classmates, his teachers. This carnage was real, so real his mind rejected it. Riley turned and raised his eyes to meet the cold, hard eyes of the shooter only a few feet from him.
Jacob, a former wide receiver on the varsity team, held a rifle in one hand, a gun in the other. Riley didn’t know anything about guns, but these guns were big suckers. Next to Jacob stood Ely, Jacob’s best friend, similarly armed. Both guys had been kicked off the varsity football team earlier in the week for violating the athletic code by drinking, which meant no playoffs for them.
Jacob levelled the gun at Riley’s forehead.
Riley braced himself, surprised he hadn’t wet his pants, pretty sure his short life would end in the next second or two. Instead Jacob swung the rifle around to fire several rounds at the varsity players running for the door and a couple girls huddled on the floor. One of the girls was Gina. Riley dived for her, covering her with his body.
Sharp, white hot pain burned through the muscles in his arm. He lay atop Gina and her friend, whispering to them not to move, to play dead.
And wondered if he wasn’t dying himself.
* * * *
Cooper skated around the ice, trying to relax. He noticed Mina talking to Coach and then Coach gestured to him. Cooper skated over to where they stood.
“What’s up?” He looked from one to the other.
Mina patted his arm and scurried down the hall, as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him. Cooper stared after her, confused and slightly alarmed. When he swung his gaze back to Coach, Gorst was staring at the ice and wringing his hands.
“What’s going on?”
“Coop, doesn’t your nephew go to Yesler High School?”
That gnawing feeling gnawed a hole right through his stomach. “Yeah?”
Gorst’s face had turned pale. “There’s an—uh—uh—incident at Yesler.”
“A what?” Cooper broke out into his second cold sweat of the day. Behind Gorst stood Ethan, looking equally nervous and pale. Cooper looked from Ethan to Coach. “What kind of incident?” Only he knew, deep inside he knew, it was the worst kind of incident.
Ethan shouldered his way past Coach, who took up most of the narrow passageway that ran from the ice to the lockers. “Cooper. Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? What the fuck is going on?” Cooper grabbed both of Ethan’s arms, squeezing so tightly he most likely left bruises, but he didn’t give a shit.
“Early reports are that there’s a shooter in the building,” Ethan said with a false calm.
Cooper heard him as if he were far away. He’d fallen into a dark pond and struggled to swim to the top with an anchor wrapped around his ankles, and his lungs screaming for oxygen.
“Cooper?” Ethan pulled free of Cooper’s grip and shook him.
Cooper still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t function. He shouldn’t have let Riley go to school today, should’ve trusted his instincts.
“Mina just heard it on the news. It’s an on-going situation.” Coach’s words penetrated the foggy haze and prodded Cooper into action. He had to do something, had to save Riley, had to tell him that he mattered before it was too late.
“Fuck.” Cooper raced for the locker room as fast as a guy on skates could race. He didn’t bother to change, but he couldn’t drive a car with skates. He fumbled with the laces and finally managed to loosen them enough to yank off his skates, just as his phone erupted with text messages.
He grabbed the phone and scanned the messages. One was from the school informing him there was an incident and to stay away from the school but directing parents to a nearby church.
Fuck that.
Fear slammed through him. Fear something might have happened to Riley. Fear that he’d never see the kid’s scowl again when he thought Cooper was being a dork. Fear that he’d never watch him play another high school football game. Fear that he’d never get to tell him that he was proud of him, and he loved him.
Yeah, he loved his nephew.
As he ran to his car, ignoring the concerned faces of teammates and staff, he texted three simple words to Izzy:
I need you.
Followed by the three most important words in the English language:
I love you.
* * * *
Izzy heard the news when she came out of the shower that morning. It was everywhere. Social media was blowing up, and all the news stations carried the incident live and in all its horror.
Riley went to that school.
She picked up her phone to call Cooper and saw the texts. He needed her. She texted him back. No response. She tried calling him, the phone went straight to voicemail.
She told her sisters goodbye and ran to her car, promising to call as soon as she found out something.
Izzy knew Cooper. As unwise as it was, he’d go straight to the school, not to the nearby staging area for parents. At the least he’d get in the way, and the worst, he’d storm the building himself.
She couldn’t lose him and Riley, too.
Izzy drove like a crazy person to the school, unable to reach Cooper. Ethan called her, concerned for Cooper and Riley, but visibly relieved when he heard Izzy was en route.
“If anyone can calm him, you can,” he’d said.
Izzy pulled out her iPhone and fired up “Find My Friends.”
Most of the routes were blocked off, so she parked and followed her phone until she spotted Cooper’s vehicle parked haphazardly on a side street blocks from the school. He’d done exactly what he shouldn’t have done—gone barging into an active crime scene.
Damn that stubborn man.
She ran down the sidewalk, grateful for her flats rather than her usual mile-high heels. Pushing past hysterical parents and concerned onlookers, she detoured toward a commotion right at the edge of the barricade of police cars.
Four officers attempted to hold a crazed Cooper, and they were losing the battle. Izzy stepped up, put on her calmest face, and moved into Cooper’s line of sight.
He caught sight of her and instantly stopped struggling, as if all the air had whooshed out of his body. He sagged against the officers, his face grief-stricken.
“He’s still in there. No one’s seen him.” Tears streamed down his face, and his breath came in wheezing gasps, as if he couldn’t take in enough oxygen.
“I can handle him.” Izzy nodded to the officers, who stared at her in amazement, as if they couldn’t believe her appearance had managed to calm this savage beast.
“Cooper.” She put a hand on his arm. “You aren’t helping. They need to focus their attention on the students and the situation, not on you.”
For a long, tense moment, no one seemed certain what Cooper would do next. He swallowed, his hands fisted, his face turned toward the school, watching as kids sprinted out accompanied by SWAT team members.
He nodded, suddenly looking sheepish and crumpled into her arms, a broken man badly in need of the right glue to put his pieces back together. Izzy was that glue, and Riley was one of the missing pieces. Izzy only hoped she could repair the damage.
She looked over Cooper’s shoulder at the officer who appeared to be in charge. “I’m sorry. I’ll take him off your hands. We’ll wait at the church for word.”
The officer blew out a relieved breath and gladly foisted responsibility for Cooper off to her.
Cooper held her so tightly, she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t complain. Sobs wracked his big body and tears wet her neck w
here he pressed his face against her skin.
Lifting his head, he stared at her, his cheeks wet from his tears. “I knew. I knew something was wrong. I shouldn’t have let him go to school today. I can’t lose him any more than I can lose you,” he moaned in pure agony.
“He has to be okay, honey. He does. He has to be.” She set him back, holding his arms and looking into his eyes. “Let’s go to the church. They might already have information for us.”
She grabbed his arm and led him down the street. Their cars were now blocked by several news vehicles. No matter, he needed the walk to the church on this cold brisk fall day.
“He doesn’t answer his phone or his text messages.” Cooper’s devastation struck deep inside her.
“He’s probably holed up in a safe place and doesn’t have his phone with him.” She stroked the tight muscles in his back, trying to relax him, but for once her touch didn’t seem to help.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to him.”
“He’ll be okay, Coop. He will.” Izzy wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Cooper or herself.
“I heard on the police radio that they have at least a dozen kids down, and they can’t find the shooter. He’s in the building somewhere. Oh, God.” Cooper’s face distorted with agony and pain, while more tears slipped down his cheeks. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shuddered with sobs.
Izzy rubbed his shoulder, glancing toward the cop studying them with equal parts of suspicion and annoyance. “All the more reason for us to get out of their way and let them do their jobs.” She pried his hands from his face and gently kissed his tear-stained cheeks. He managed a feeble smile.
“We need to go.” Izzy tugged on his hand. He took a few staggering steps, then found his stride and allowed her to lead him down the street past crying parents and hysterical kids. His blind faith in her meant more than he could possibly imagine, especially in the wake of tragedy.
And she loved him all the more for relinquishing that control to her and trusting her to handle the situation better than he could.
Chapter 21—A Ray of Hope
Cooper was a hot mess of emotions. If it hadn’t been for Izzy, he’d have completely lost it and probably ended up arrested. Instead he followed her to the church, more than happy to let her take charge. It felt good to relinquish control while he coped with the tragedy of the situation. He’d always assumed losing control would put him into a claustrophobic panic, but with Izzy, it felt right and comforting to know she had his back. And, God, he needed her to have his back today.
He paced the floor of the large conference area in the church. All around him he heard the quiet sobbing of some parents and the heart-wrenching wailing of others. A flat screen TV across the room showed SWAT teams and uniformed officers, guns drawn, running into the building.
At times, a group of students with hands above their heads would run out of the building, flanked by armed escorts, or a stretcher would be wheeled out, or a student would stagger out being held up by friends. Each time, he stopped his pacing and joined the countless other parents searching for their children. It’d been game day so the football team wore jerseys to school, even the non-varsity players, making it hard to identify individual team members. But Cooper knew Riley’s walk, knew how he held his head, and how he stood taller than most of the boys his age.
Cooper didn’t see Riley anywhere.
Parent after parent received word from their kids via cell or text or saw them on TV. Some rushed from the room to go to the hospital, others were reunited with their kids as they were brought into the church.
Watching tearful reunion after tearful reunion, Cooper’s hope began to fade. Despair settled in his stomach, while a swirling storm of dread fogged his brain.
Cooper texted Riley a hundred times and called him just as many, but his phone went straight to voicemail. He’d heard enough to know that the shooting started in the cafeteria and spread out from there. The police captured one shooter and were looking for a second, which meant the kids still in the building were either barricaded in rooms or unable to leave for various reasons.
Izzy sat nearby attempting to comfort a distraught mother, who appeared to be all alone without a support group. Cooper stopped pacing and sank wearily into the empty seat next to Izzy. He pushed his fingers through his hair and buried his face in his hands.
The news reported that a second shooter had gotten into a shootout with the SWAT team and been killed. Cooper breathed a sigh of relief. The danger was over, now the damage could be assessed. The news cameras showed kids running from the building, others being taken out on stretchers.
But he still didn’t see Riley.
His mouth filled with saliva and clogged his throat. He was pretty sure he was going to throw up. If it hadn’t been for Izzy’s quiet strength, he’d have lost it worse than any of the parents in the room.
She put her arm around him and pulled him close. “Cooper, he’ll be fine. I know it.”
He couldn’t begin to count how many times she’d said those words in the past hour. “I don’t know how I’d handle this without you,” he admitted.
“You don’t have to. You have me.” She touched his cheek with her finger, a gentle, caring touch that meant as much to him as all their hot, steamy nights together.
He looked at her through blurry eyes burning with unshed tears. “For how long, Izzy?”
“Cooper, this isn’t the place to discuss this.”
“I want you back, honey. I want you with me forever—you and Riley.”
She kissed his cheek, as if indulging him. She couldn’t possibly know how true his words had become, how the two of them had managed to weasel their way into his heart and entwine themselves around his soul until he knew he couldn’t survive without them.
Right now, he needed to deal with the present.
The future would come later.
* * * *
When the shooters left the cafeteria in search of more victims, several students barricaded the doors so the shooters couldn’t come back in.
As soon as they were out of immediate danger, Riley pulled Gina into his lap. A big hole in her chest pumped blood all over him, mingling with the blood from where the bullet had grazed his arm. Weird but he didn’t feel a damn thing after the initial stab of pain.
He ripped off his jersey and held it over Gina’s wound, putting pressure on it in an attempt to stop the bleeding. There was so much blood—sticky, thick blood—and the strong smell of iron and gunpowder filled the air. He didn’t know if help would come in time. Each beat of her heart became more and more feeble.
All around him were groans and cries for help. A teacher bent down to assess Riley and Gina. “Are you okay?” he asked Riley.
“Yeah,” Riley said, his voice a gravelly whisper.
“Good, keep pressure on her wound,” the teacher said grimly. “That’s all we can do right now, but helps coming.” Despite his positive words, his voice gave away his desperation. The teacher hurried off to the next victim.
Riley talked to Gina, told her about anything and everything, willing her with his voice to hang in there. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he kept talking anyway. At least it made him feel like he was doing something.
Riley heard a crash and was certain the shooters had returned. He ducked, pulling Gina close and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable. He stayed absolutely still, hoping they wouldn’t waste bullets on kids they thought were already dead.
“Son, can you walk?” A hand touched his arm. Riley startled and glanced up to see a fully uniformed SWAT officer kneeling beside him.
“Uh huh.” Riley nodded. “But she can’t.”
The officer gestured to another man. “Take him out of here with the rest. We need medics over here stat.”
Riley resisted, not wanting to leave Gina, but he was herded from the room with several other crying and wailing kids and hustled outside into the dr
eary Seattle day. A fine mist coated everything as Riley was helped into an ambulance with a few other non-critically injured classmates and driven away.
He stared out the window holding a towel over his arm. They passed several news vehicles, while sirens wailed. Then it hit him as the shock wore off. He started shaking, and one of paramedics draped a blanket over his shoulders. He was damn lucky to be breathing right now. Several of his classmates, possibly friends and teammates, weren’t so fortunate.
Riley had to call Uncle Coop. He’d be worried sick. Wouldn’t he? Well, Izzy would be for sure.
He reached in the breast pocket of his letterman’s jacket for his phone and pulled out a mangled mess. Holy shit. The bullet that had grazed his arm must have hit his chest first, or he’d been shot twice. Either way, his phone had stopped the bullet. He stared at the phone and struggled to process the full extent of what’d happened to him.
One or two inches had stood between him and life or death.
His world spun around him as the shock of how close he’d come to dying sank in.
Riley gripped his head in his hands and lost his breakfast.
* * * *
Izzy held Cooper’s hand, as they watched the one TV in the large room, waiting for word on the survivors or the victims—any kind of word—because knowing beat the shit out of this horrible dread that filled them both.
“Everything will work out,” she spoke with absolute conviction. Riley had to be okay. Anything else was unthinkable. She swallowed as she glanced around the room and was hit with how many parents would be getting unthinkable news as reports came in fast and furious of multiple fatalities and injuries.
Riley wasn’t responding, nor had he contacted them, which made her beyond sick to her stomach, more like near hysteria. Only she had to be the rock for Cooper, she had to be the person he could lean on. He needed her now, and she’d be what he needed. She could fall apart later.
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