3:58 P.M.
Miranda pushes through the crowd toward the exit doors.
She’s only a dozen feet away. But something is stretched across the exits. Cable bike locks, black rubber-coated braided steel, now link together the silver handles of each pair of doors. She pushes on the nearest door anyway. It opens an inch before the cable catches it.
In the door glass, she sees people running from other exits through the parking lot into the gathering dusk.
Miranda’s trapped. She and all the people behind her. There’re only two ways out of this hall. One is through the locked doors. The other is through the food court, where the shooting started. Where the few remaining people are frantically trying to leave before they die.
And any minute, one of those men will come running down the escalator and finish what they started.