“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and I’m going to put a stop to this ‘attention-grabber’ these SEALs are using,” Chad threatened. “Once the next group of participants realizes what’s going on here, it will hardly have the same effect.”
“You’re right.” Riley turned back to her desk and picked up her phone. She caught sight of Amy by the doorway as she stood up and extended the phone to Chad. “But if you’re going to undermine the work these men are doing, then you can also tell the remaining participants why I canceled the last three sessions.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” His voice was indignant.
“You’re wrong. I would. Not only that, but I would be sure to call the governor and explain to him that your temper cost forty-five people the valuable training you seem to find so appalling.” Riley watched him consider her words and continued before he could respond. “I am perfectly aware that heading up this task force was a political move on your part, but I take it very seriously. I don’t care whether you believe in what we’re trying to accomplish here or not, but if you can’t support this program wholeheartedly, I suggest you pack your designer bags, get in your luxury car, and go back to Raleigh.”
The fury in Chad’s eyes flashed, and he took a step forward. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’ll bury you.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
Whatever response he had planned halted instantly when Amy’s voice rang out behind him. “Riley, Kel needs you outside. I’ll lock up for you.”
Riley nodded as she moved past Chad. “Have a safe drive back to Raleigh, Mr. Mallard.” With that, she headed down the hall.
Fury still vibrating inside her, she stepped outside only to find that Kel wasn’t anywhere in sight. She walked down the steps, her eyes scanning the nearby grounds. A moment later she heard the door of Sedgely Hall open behind her and saw Amy step outside right behind Chad Mallard. He didn’t even glance in her direction, instead turning straight for the parking lot.
As he walked away, Riley walked toward Amy. “I thought you said Kel needed me.”
“I just wanted to get him out of our office.” Amy was trying not to smile and failing completely.
“What’s so funny?” Riley asked, frustrated. “This is twice I’ve been the one who got stuck with the irate customer, so to speak. And you’re standing here trying not to laugh.”
“You would be laughing too if you knew that my father heard most of your conversation with Chad Mallard.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“I saw Chad headed this way, and I didn’t want you to have to deal with him alone. When I realized he was getting out of hand, I called my dad’s private line and just had him listen.”
“I don’t understand what your father has to do with this.”
“I guess I never mentioned that my father is Senator James Whitmore.”
“As in the senator from Virginia who helped set up this task force?” Riley’s eyes widened. “Senator Whitmore heard all of that?”
Amy giggled. “What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when Chad Mallard gets back to his office. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again.”
“And the guys worry about making me mad.” Riley laughed. “Amy, you just made my day.”
* * *
“I heard I missed another stellar performance this morning.” Tristan’s voice was laced with humor as he sat down beside Riley at the deli where they had agreed to meet for lunch.
“You can laugh about it.” Riley unwrapped her sandwich and glanced over at him. “You’re not the one who keeps getting cornered by your irate victims.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’ll probably have three more repeat performances before this course is over.” Tristan took a bite of his sandwich, but he didn’t miss the way her eyes sharpened.
“Are you guys doing this on purpose? Leaving me in the office alone to deal with these jerks?”
“Um, yeah, kind of,” he said around a mouthful of ham and cheese.
Riley shifted in her seat to face him more fully. Her voice was incredulous when she asked, “Why would you do that?”
“Because no one else can get the job done as well as you.” Tristan took a sip of his drink before looking up at Riley. Realizing she was already annoyed and quickly heading toward ticked off, he set his sandwich aside and tried to explain. “If one of us tried to argue with these guys, they would just see us as a bunch of macho Navy SEALs trying to prove that we’re better than them. After you tore into Chief Scarbourgh, we realized that you were going to make these guys really get what we’re trying to do.”
Tristan leaned back in his seat, his eyes staying on hers. “Did you realize that Scarbourgh defended our surprise attack to the other students? A couple of the guys were grumbling that day at lunch, and he basically summarized everything you had said to him—that now they could appreciate what the victims went through.” Tristan reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “No one in the world can win against your righteous indignation.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.”
“Trust me, be flattered.”
Riley blew out a breath and raised an eyebrow. “I wonder if these confrontations would qualify me for hazard pay.”
Tristan grinned. “Maybe.” Relieved that the crisis had passed, he picked up his sandwich once more. “By the way, did you want to come with me to the shooting range tomorrow morning? I don’t have to be in the classroom, and I wanted to get some extra target practice in.”
“Are you sure Kel won’t mind if I come too?”
“We’ll just tell him he owes you.” He flashed a grin. “Hazard pay.”
* * *
Riley set her ammunition down on a bench at the shooting range and glanced over at Tristan. “When you asked if I wanted to come with you, I didn’t realize you meant at six in the morning.”
“You didn’t ask,” Tristan pointed out. He was rather pleased with himself for catching her off guard. When he had arrived, her hair had still been damp and curling wildly around her face, which was free of makeup. She had made him wait while she finished getting ready and packed a change of clothes for when they got to the office. He had to admit he was impressed that it had only taken her ten minutes to get everything together.
Riley fought back a smile. “For future reference, I’d like to know what time you’re picking me up when we make plans.”
Tristan wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. “Maybe I just wanted to see what you look like in the morning.”
“Next time you want to see me in the morning, make sure you bring breakfast.”
“It hasn’t even been a week since we went to the grocery store. I thought you would still have some bagels left.”
“We probably would if Seth and Quinn hadn’t stopped by yesterday morning to go with Taylor to the gym,” Riley told him. “Your friends would eat me out of house and home if I let them.”
“Hey, Taylor’s the one who keeps inviting them over, not me,” Tristan replied. Then, in an effort to placate her, he added, “If you’re really hungry, we can stop and pick something up on our way to work.” Tristan loaded his rifle and then stopped suddenly. He turned to look at her, replaying their conversation in his mind. “Oh my gosh.”
“What?”
“We sound like Quinn’s sister and brother-in-law did right after they got married.”
“What do you mean?”
Tristan looked at her with a combination of trepidation and disbelief. “I’ve only known you for a few weeks, and we already sound like we’re married.”
Riley suppressed a giggle for about ten seconds before she gave up. “Pretty scary, huh?”
“Yeah,” Tristan agreed. Then his eyes narrowed. “You can stop laughing.”
“Okay, okay.” Another giggle escaped. She looked up at him helplessly. “I’m sorry, but you look so terrified.”
Tristan just shook his
head. “I’m going to start shooting now.”
“I love you,” Riley called out to him, her voice filled with humor.
“Yeah, I love you too.” Tristan moved a few steps away before turning back to her. “I just love you more when you’re not laughing at me.”
He took a few extra minutes to check over his weapons before aiming his rifle. He fired off a few rounds only to find himself distracted by Riley standing a short distance away. She hadn’t seemed the least bit panicked when he’d mentioned marriage. Then again, she hadn’t acted like he had just proposed or anything either.
They were in their fifth week together. Certainly that wasn’t long enough to even think about marriage. Yet somehow that careless comment had planted a seed in his mind. Too easily he could picture her in a white gown standing in front of the temple. He had only attended two temple weddings in his life: the first had been when Quinn’s little sister got married, and the other had been Brent and Amy’s wedding. Never before had he considered what it would be like to put himself in the role of the groom.
This was just a fantasy, he reminded himself. He and Riley were a long way from the real world in which he could get called in at any moment, at any time of the day or night. For three more weeks, he could enjoy the isolation, the freedom of knowing that when he went to sleep each night he would wake up to his alarm clock and not a middle-of-the-night phone call.
He looked over at Riley again. He thought of her admission that she had avoided military types. She loved him. He didn’t doubt that. Still, even if they had known each other longer, he couldn’t ask her to spend the rest of her life with him until he knew whether she could handle it. How would she act, he wondered, when he got called away?
With his mind still more on Riley than on target practice, Tristan lifted his rifle and shot off another round. He noticed the owner’s truck pull into the parking lot and glanced down at his watch. To his surprise, it was already seven thirty.
“Hey, are you about ready?” Tristan called out when Riley stopped to reload.
“Sure,” she answered. “Just let me clean my gun.”
“I’m going to go pick up some more ammunition. I’m getting low,” Tristan told her. “I’ll be right back.”
By the time Tristan returned, Riley was already waiting for him by his truck. “Do you mind if we swing by the high school on our way?” she asked. “I want to double check with the principal about our schedule this week. I don’t want to show up in the middle of graduation rehearsal.”
“No problem.” Tristan climbed into the truck and shot her a grin. “Of course, that might cut into our breakfast time.”
“In that case, I’ll just run in really quick. You won’t even have to park.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
19
The hallways were crowded when Eric Rhodes moved through the front doors of the school and merged with the rest of the students. A girl bumped into him and then glared at him like it was his fault. Eric balled his hand into a fist in his jacket pocket and took an unsteady breath. He could wait, he assured himself. He knew where he had to start.
The first bell rang, and he made his way to the bathroom. No one seemed to notice that he was wearing a jacket even though it was the beginning of June. Like always, he was invisible to everyone unless he happened to get in their way.
He already knew where the assistant principals would be this time of day, one waiting inside the front door to deal with late students and the other closing off the doors to the bus ramp. The bathroom where he had chosen to hide was near the middle of the school. It was empty when he walked in, but he moved into one of the stalls and closed the door to make sure no one saw him.
He could hear the tardy bell ring in the now-empty hallway, followed by the rumble of the morning announcements. Graduation was only a few days away, and it was all anyone was talking about. Final exams would start today, but Eric had blocked that detail out of his mind. He didn’t care about finals. He didn’t care about school. He just wanted to finally break out of his personal prison.
He waited in the quiet bathroom as the minutes ticked past one by one. He would have checked his watch to see how much time had passed, but the watch had been a casualty a few days before. He let the memory sweep over him—the way his father had squeezed his wrist so hard that his watch had dug into the skin and the face had finally cracked. His mother had witnessed the episode, but she hadn’t tried to console him afterward like she used to. Maybe she already knew it was too late.
Rage surged through him, and he pushed out of the bathroom. The hall was empty, and his tennis shoes squeaked loudly as he walked. He had never noticed that before. In the empty hall, he heard teachers’ voices muffled by the closed classroom doors. His eyes narrowed as he thought of his father teaching in one of those rooms, so self-righteous and arrogant. At school he acted as if he could do no wrong. Everyone thought he was so great, but Eric knew better.
His anger was like lava, slow and hot and steady. He gripped the handle of the gun, the sweat from his hands making the cool handle slick. He was going to do this. He was going to live out the fantasy he had imagined for years. This would be better, though. His friend was going to help him. He knew Eric was right. He knew about the monster. He had seen its claws.
Eric opened the door, lifted the gun, and froze. No! This wasn’t right! His father wasn’t standing in front of the classroom. The man leaning against his father’s desk was someone he had never even seen before. Eric took a shuddering breath. He could still do this. He could make his point, make everyone understand the hell he had been living in. Everyone would blame his father. His friend had said so. The world would find out, and they would blame him.
He lifted his gun, his finger wrapping around the trigger as he tried to pretend that the man teaching his father’s class was in fact his father. Then he saw her. Mrs. Cunningham had been leaning over a student’s desk, but now she straightened and turned her warm brown eyes on him. Her voice was firm, but not quite calm as she spoke. “Eric, this isn’t the answer.”
“I have to.” His voice wavered, and he tried to shove the doubts aside. He tried to focus on the students in the class, the kids who rarely noticed him but were now frozen in fear. Eric didn’t want to remember the days he had spent in Mrs. Cunningham’s room when no one else wanted him, when no one else wanted to know the truth. She knew, and she had tried to help, but it hadn’t made a difference. Nothing had made a difference.
Eric took a deep breath, his eyes hardening as he pushed the soothing memories aside. Instead he thought of the night before, when he’d been shoved against the wall for not taking out the trash quickly enough. The pain was still throbbing in his shoulder. He could still feel his ears ringing from the backhanded slap.
With a shake of his head, he funneled that anger at Mrs. Cunningham. “Don’t you understand? I have to!” He pointed the gun upward and pulled the trigger. Screams erupted, and a shocked look crossed Eric’s face.
* * *
Riley was barely inside the door when Tristan heard the distinctive sound of a 9mm pistol being fired. For a brief moment he didn’t react, because it took him a second to realize how out of place the sound was when there wasn’t a training exercise going on. Once his mind caught up with the reality that he had just heard a gun being fired, he jumped out of his truck, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and took off across the front lawn at a full sprint while he speed-dialed Kel. He didn’t slow down when Kel answered.
“I’ve got a shot fired at the high school,” Tristan said shortly. “This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
He hung up the phone and burst through the front door to see Riley frozen in the middle of the hallway, a combination of confusion and panic on her face. “Get outside and stay behind the truck,” he whispered urgently.
“The sound came from down there.” Riley’s words came out in gasps, but she managed to point down the hall.
“Go!” Tri
stan urged her, his voice low. He retrieved his gun from the holster strapped to his calf and turned to see the principal running toward them from the office area. Tristan held up a hand to stop him. “Lock everything down. My squad is on the way.”
Principal Newsome’s face was pale, but he didn’t hesitate. He quickly turned and ran back into his office as Tristan moved in the direction Riley had indicated. Soundlessly, Tristan moved down the hall, pausing to look through the small windows in each classroom door. He checked half a dozen rooms before the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker. He gave the proper code to instruct the teachers to keep their students in their classrooms.
Silence filled the halls, and Tristan took it as a good sign that he didn’t have the sound of gunshots to lead him to the source of the problem. He finished checking one hallway and started searching those that intersected it. It took almost three minutes before he found the classroom near the heart of the school where students were sitting in their desks with terrified looks on their faces.
He shifted to the other side of the door, careful to stay out of sight. It was then that he saw the gun and the shaking hand that held it. Two teachers were in the room, a man and a woman. Tristan quickly counted twenty-four students inside as well. The woman was trying to talk to the boy holding the gun. Tristan couldn’t understand the words through the thick door, but he approved of the tone she was using and hoped that she could help end this incident before anyone got hurt.
Though he knew he could go in now, Tristan waited. There was still a possibility of negotiating. He had already noted the hole in the ceiling where the one and only gunshot had obviously ended up, and he quickly reasoned that if no blood had been spilt, they hadn’t passed the point of no return.
With his gun at the ready, Tristan flipped open his cell phone, muted the sound, and sent a text message to the other members of his squad. The message was short and simple. 26 H, 1 G, room 162, 0 K. He knew his squad would understand. Twenty-six hostages and one gunman in room 162, no casualties.
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