5:23 P.M.
The noise. The pressure wave that pushed the door into him. It has to have been a bomb, Parker thinks. Are the other hostages dead?
Is Miranda?
When his ears clear, he hears the hostages out in the hall screaming and crying. But what’s worse is that he also hears men shouting. Not in fear, but excitement. It’s the killers. Whooping. Like fans of a winning football team.
So whatever happened was something they wanted. Miranda said a SWAT team was coming to kill the bad guys. Parker guesses that the opposite just happened.
Lips is yelling at the hostages. “Settle down and shut up, already!”
“Parker,” Moxie cries out from inside the cupboard. “Parker, where are you?” Her voice is muffled, but not enough.
Parker shoves his phone in his pocket. He scuttles forward on hands and knees, repeating “Shh” as loudly as he dares.
“Parker! Parker!”
“I’m coming!” he whisper-shouts. “Just be quiet.”
Behind him, the door flies open so hard, it bangs against the wall. He looks over his shoulder. It’s Lips. Lips raises his rifle.
Parker goes still inside. This is it. His last second on earth. He doesn’t pray. He doesn’t plead. He just stares at the round empty eye of the gun.
Lips steps forward and puts the end of the rifle against Parker’s temple. The cold circle is just millimeters from his brain. Maybe there won’t even be time to register the pain.
But the next thing that happens isn’t Lips shooting him but candy boxes falling onto the floor as Moxie scrambles out of the cupboard. Concentrating on not even twitching, Parker watches her out of the corner of one eye. Her hair is stuck to one side of her flushed face, and her red coat is rucked up in the back.
So much for protecting her from what’s happening. In another second, she’s going to be covered with his brains and blood.
And that’s if she’s lucky. If she’s not lucky, she’s going to be dead herself.
She lifts her hand and points straight at Lips. “You,” she announces, “are a bad man!” For emphasis, she stamps her foot.
There’s no turning back now, Parker realizes. They’re both going to die. At least Moxie is on her feet, not cowering on her knees the way he is.
“She’s just a little kid,” he babbles. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. She knows exactly what she’s saying.” To Parker’s surprise, Lips grins. “Little girl, you’ve got some mouth on you.”
Moxie, thankfully, doesn’t argue the point. Parker has a feeling it wouldn’t take much for her to tip the balance from cute to annoying to dead.
Lips pulls the rifle back a few inches and then uses it to prod Parker’s shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be back here. Didn’t you hear? You messed up. You had one chance to come out and you didn’t.”
He doesn’t recognize Parker. Better that Lips think he just chose not to leave this space than have him learn about the phone, the knife, and the cut zip ties. “I’ve been hiding back here since the beginning. I just wanted to keep my sister safe.”
Without turning his head, Parker looks for the knife. It’s lying on the floor just behind Lips, partly hidden by the open door. Can Lips see the remains of the zip ties? Are they on the worktable? Is the top edge of Parker’s phone poking from his pocket?
“I don’t think that’s a good enough excuse,” Lips says.
“It’s the only one I have.”
“Get up and go back out there.” Lips prods him again. “We’ll see what they want to do with you.”
The quicker they leave this room, the less chance that Lips will spot the knife or realize Parker hasn’t really been back here the whole time. Parker grabs Moxie’s hand.
“He was hiding in the candy store’s back room with his little sister,” Lips calls as they walk out into the hall. They stop about twenty-five feet from the gate.
Through the security gate, Wolf’s ice-blue eyes regard Parker. With his features obscured by the ski mask, it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. Parker forces himself to drop his gaze. There can be only one dominant male here, and it’s for sure not going to be the one without a gun.
“You.” Wolf points at one of the college girls, the one in the Stanford sweatshirt. “Hold his sister.”
Parker nudges Moxie to the girl. Moxie tries to tear away, so Stanford grabs both her wrists as she twists and squirms.
“We told you what would happen if we found you.” Wolf’s voice is calm, and all the more frightening for that. “You had your one chance and you threw it away.”
Parker stays quiet. There doesn’t seem to be much point in arguing or trying to feign abject apologies. Off to the side, he sees an older lady in the white Van Duyn uniform. Van Duyn must be worried he’ll try to save himself by ratting her out for hiding his sister.
“Do you believe this kid?” Wolf points his rifle at Parker’s chest while he scans the rest of the hostages. His mouth stretches wide in the approximation of a smile. “He thought he could disobey me. He thought he got to choose what to do. No. You all belong to me now. To us.” His eyes fasten back on Parker’s. “Get on your knees.”
With no place to run, no way to help himself, Parker drops to his knees and prays it will be fast.
“But never let it be said that we aren’t merciful.” Wolf lowers his gun a few inches. “It’s going to be up to your fellow captives whether you live or die. They’re going to beat you for your disobedience, and they are going to do a thorough job. But eventually it’s going to be up to them to decide when—or if—to stop.”
No one moves.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Wolf cries. “If you’re against the doors, stay where you are, but the rest of you gather around this boy who thinks he can play with your lives.”
People begin to shuffle closer. Parker looks up at their faces, but only a few meet his eyes. Some of them are crying, fresh tears streaking already wet faces. Others are expressionless. The guy who was wounded is in front of Parker. Someone has bandaged his arm with a scarf, the price tag still attached.
“Now you need to show him how big of a mistake he made. Show him how angry you are for him putting all of you at risk. And show me that you really mean it. Make an example of him so I don’t have to teach the rest of you a lesson.”
After a long pause, the old guy wearing white puffy Velcro-fastened tennies kicks Parker in the ribs. It isn’t even really a kick that Velcro gives him. It’s more like a push.
Businessman, his face expressionless, pulls his expensive shoe back and kicks Parker in the left hip. Hard. An electric shock zaps down his leg.
Parker grunts and drops to his hands and knees.
“That’s a good start,” Wolf says. “But it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.” He raises his gun again. “Punish him or you will be punished.”
The lady with graying dreads makes a noise like a banshee. She looks like the kind of lady who would bake chocolate-chip cookies for her grandkids, but that was before this nightmare. Even zip tied, Dreads manages to grab Parker’s hair in both fists and then slams her knee into his nose. It feels like a cold metal spring opening inside his head. His eyes instantly fill with tears as blood splatters the white linoleum.
Stanford is trying to push Moxie’s face into her waist, so that his sister won’t have to see this.
Parker tells himself he won’t cry out. He won’t give Wolf and Lips and Mole the satisfaction.
With their hands zip tied in front of them, people mostly use their feet as weapons. Tennis shoes aren’t too bad. Dress shoes, with their hard shells, are much more painful. The lady with the crazy tall heels raises one foot, and Parker braces himself to be skewered by her stiletto, but it barely brushes his waist. While he’s still trying to figure out if Heels missed him on purpose, the guy with the gauges kicks his thigh so hard, Parker topples. Gauges’s second kick just misses him.
Trying to make himself as small as possible, he curls into a ball, his forehead tight against his knees, his fingers cupping the back of his neck. This still leaves a lot of surface area.
His plan to stay silent is quickly abandoned. Grunts are forced from his mouth with every blow. His mouth fills with hot, salty blood. A solid kick connects with the back of his head. He imagines he can feel his brain bouncing off his skull.
Finally, Heels yells, “No. Stop! We have to stop! He’s not the enemy. And we’re not killers. We’re not like them.”
Parker uncurls his head.
And then Businessman kicks him in the chin.
5:23 p.m.
UNIT 45: We have to assume that 68 and the others are no longer able to assist. I’ll take command until SWAT is on-site. Until then I want two cars at every exit to check for injured, and to check for people who might be armed.
DISPATCH: Copy that. I’ve got press and family members staging at Calvary Baptist, which is about two miles from the mall. We have requested mutual aid from all local law enforcement. Tigard, Beaverton, Gresham, and Oregon City are sending additional officers. I’ve got about fifteen Salem officers coming up, and another twenty officers coming down from Vancouver.
UNIT 45: All cars coming in, have them set up a perimeter around the entire mall.
DISPATCH: Copy.
UNIT 10: Do I have permission to take people in cars? I’ve got a bunch of people shot and no ambulances.
UNIT 45: Do it. Just tell all the hospitals we got people coming in.
DISPATCH: Copy.
UNIT 22: We’ve got two victims in the back of a squad on the west side of the mall. We’ll take them in.
UNIT 84: I have three parties shot over on the east side. One guy’s been shot in the neck. Taking them in.
UNIT 45: Officers on foot, be careful, as we’ve got squads leaving with victims. Dispatch, what’s the status on SWAT and the Crisis Negotiation Team?
DISPATCH: They should be on-site in the next few minutes.
UNIT 45: Is the FBI in the loop yet? We may need to get them to activate the Hostage Rescue Team out of Quantico.
DISPATCH: Someone’s in touch with the FBI on the fire channel.
UNIT 45: Tell everyone to come into the south parking lot. We’ll give them cover.
DISPATCH: 10-4. They have been advised.