4:02 P.M.
When Miranda yanks at Parker’s wrist, he doesn’t have time to wonder why she’s in Fairgate Mall or why she, of all people, is trying to save his life. Because Parker catches a glimpse of a small figure dressed in red.
Moxie!
Shaking off Miranda’s grip, he takes off after his sister. Sticking to the perimeter, sheltered by the overhang of the second floor, he sprints flat out.
Parker darts into the corridor where he just saw the flash of red. Even though he’s lost sight of her, Moxie has to be here, because there’s no way out. Ahead of him, the exit doors are chained shut. Behind him is the food court, where the only people left are dead or dying, and at least one of the killers is on the hunt. Moxie must be among the couple of dozen people frantically milling around, or maybe in one of the small stores that lie on either side. With a wrestler’s agility, Parker cuts through the crowd, squeezing between a woman wearing a white visor and apron and a middle-aged guy dressed head to toe in Blazers gear. Parker zigzags between a kid he vaguely recognizes from school and a girl who looks like a teenager but has a baby in a stroller. Past an old guy in high-waisted jeans and white puffy tennis shoes, a young woman in impossibly high heels, three college girls clutching shopping bags and one another. Santa is here too, or at least the guy who was posing for photos a few minutes ago. Now he sits on a bench, his face red and sweaty. Parker dodges and weaves and slips, his gaze bouncing from one person to another: from an older black lady to a forty-ish businessman to a guy with a bushy beard and gauges. To a man with a shaved head hiding behind a pillar, a gun in his hand. To a middle-aged guy holding his arm like a tourniquet, blood welling between his fingers.
But no Moxie.
She must be in one of the stores. On one side is a Shoe Mill, and an AT&T phone store. On the other is a Coach store, a Van Duyn, and something called Eternity Day Spa. They are all small enough that the only way in or out is through each store’s main entrance. Moxie must be hiding in one of them, either in fear or blissful ignorance. Waiting desperately—or maybe just with an impatient giggle—for Parker to find her. He hopes it’s the second one. Hopes that she has no idea what’s going on. Hopes that he can snatch her up, keep her from seeing the dead, and find a way out.
The fire alarm suddenly stops. For a second, the silence is as loud as the piercing shrill had been. Then it’s filled by the sounds of people crying and freaking out and yelling into their cell phones and asking each other what to do.
Parker is about to dart into the nearest store, the Shoe Mill, when a metallic clatter makes him turn. It’s one of the ski-masked killers. He’s pulling a seven-foot-tall folding metal security gate across the end of the corridor, right where it opens out into the food court. His AK is slung on his back. One side of the gate is bolted to the wall. It rattles along on casters, opening like an accordion. As soon as the guy reaches the other side, they will be penned in like animals. Animals at a slaughterhouse.
The crowd’s panic ratchets up even higher. The guy with the gauges starts to run toward the rapidly closing opening. But on the other side are two more guys wearing ski masks, both of them shouting, “Stay back!” and pointing their rifles at him and the people behind him.
Parker imagines bullets mowing half a dozen people down. But then the guy’s shoulders slump and he steps back.
Just before the security gate is all the way across, the killer who was pulling it steps inside. His lips are as full as a girl’s. In his head, Parker christens him Lips. Lips swings his rifle in a half circle so that they all step back.
All three killers are wearing suicide vests. One of the two men on the other side of the gate locks it with a padlock. He has a dark mole just underneath his left eyebrow. Mole points the rifle at the people they have penned in. The third killer puts a megaphone to his mouth. His eyes are the silvery blue of a wolf’s.
“Listen up, everyone,” Wolf says. “If you want to live—and I’m supposing you do—you have to be quiet and you have to do what we say.” His tone is matter-of-fact. “Because if you disobey us, you will be killed. To begin with, anyone who is still on their phone, turn it off. Now!”
Parker thinks to look for the man with the shaved head and the handgun, the one who was hiding behind a pillar, but he’s disappeared. If that guy shoots one of the killers, will that trigger the explosives?
“What do you want from us?” asks a black woman with silvered dreads.
Wolf says, “First of all, none of you should be talking. And certainly not talking back.” He points his rifle at her and she flinches. “I could shoot you to make my point. But I won’t. Not this time. But the next person who talks, I will put you down like the dogs you are.”
The only sound is the drip-drip-drip of blood hitting the floor from the wounded man’s arm.
“As for what we want—we want the world to listen. You’re here to make sure that people pay attention. And we don’t need any competing messages. Which means all of you have to give me your phones. Every single one. Take them out of your pockets and purses and slide them across the floor to me. Because if we catch one of you with a phone, you’ll die.” Casually, he points his rifle at the group, aiming it at one person, then another. For a heart-freezing instant, it’s aimed at Parker’s head, but then it moves on.
One by one, people bend down and send their phones sliding along the floor until they clear the four-inch gap at the bottom of the gate. If the phones don’t quite make it, people close to the gate kick them the rest of the way. Mole starts tossing the phones into an empty Macy’s bag.
“November, report in,” Wolf says into his mic. “November. Over.”
As Wolf waits for an answer that doesn’t come, Parker’s fingers touch the edge of his phone, which is in his back pocket. Parker’s blocked from view by a plump middle-aged woman in front of him. Instead of pulling out his phone, he slips his finger to the side and toggles it into the silent position.
After Mole is done, Wolf nods at Lips, who goes to the door of the Shoe Mill. “Anyone hiding has to come out now!” Lips yells. “If we find you later, we’ll kill you.”
He repeats himself at every store. A guy in his twenties wearing khakis, a pressed blue shirt, and a name tag appears in the doorway of the phone store. A sixty-ish woman in a white hairnet comes out of Van Duyn, anxiously twisting her hands. Both are made to surrender their phones. The AT&T guy has three.
But Moxie doesn’t appear. Where is she? Parker never prays, but now he prays that she has somehow run very far away. That she has found an exit and is now being evacuated by the police. Because the alternative is too awful to contemplate.
Wolf comes back to the metal security gate. His posture is relaxed, his voice unhurried. “People, you may not know this, but you are at war. And like all wars, civilians sometimes get caught in the cross fire.” The smile visible through the mouth hole of his ski mask does not match the cold gaze coming through the eye holes. “Sorry about that.”
Everyone is silent, watching Wolf alertly. “If there is a hell, then we’ll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war. But you should know that you are serving a more noble purpose than simply being victims.” His gaze takes them all in. “You are the key to changing everything.”
Wolf points through the security gate at the kid Parker recognized. His name is Joe or Joel—something like that—and he’s a year behind Parker at school. “You. In the glasses.” Joe/Joel’s black-framed glasses are sliding down his tearstained face. “Come here.”
The kid doesn’t move. Lips comes up behind him and pokes his back with the rifle.
With a whimper, the kid shuffles forward, a wet stain spreading over the crotch of his pants.
“It’s your lucky day, kid.” Wolf’s grin is humorless. “You’re going to live. We’re going to open this gate and let you out. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a fistful of flash drives. “You’re going to put these in your pockets, and then you’re going to run down to the end of that hall and cut through Sears and go outside with your hands in the air. You’re going to give these to any reporters you see. You’re the one who is going to get our message out.”