6:11 P.M.
Cole is halfway to the planter when they hear footsteps below them on the main floor. Fast and from behind. He flattens himself to the carpet. Miranda and the others shrink back closer to the stairway door. It must be the one called Zulu, coming back.
They can’t see him, but they can hear him. It sounds like he’s right underneath them. “I don’t like this,” Zulu says. “I don’t like this at all. The cops sneaking around, Nicholas missing. You should’ve let me keep looking. Maybe I could have found him or figured out where the cops got in.”
“Remember what Kilo said,” Golf says through Zulu’s mic. “That we have to stick together, no matter what.”
“Yeah, and where’s Karl, Kilo, whatever now? Kicking back at the airfield while we take all the risks. He didn’t even answer the last time you tried him.”
Golf keeps his tone even. “He said that he was going to be in and out of range.”
A third voice chimes in over the mic. “The negotiator promised that the cops were going to keep back. Obviously that was a lie. Things are going south. Nicholas is missing, Karl’s not responding, and the cops are trying to spy on us.”
“This isn’t how it was supposed to go down,” says a fourth man on the mic.
As they are speaking, Cole cautiously starts to move again. He’s only a few feet away from the planter. And tucked behind the planter is a—Miranda squints—a weird-looking black, bulky vest with a dozen pockets.
A cold finger traces her spine as she realizes that it’s a suicide vest, just like the ones the killers are wearing.
“I don’t understand how the cops or FBI got close enough to send that remote-control Jeep right up to us like that,” Zulu says. “All the nearby exits are locked. We’ve got clear lines of sight. We should have spotted them right away. But they’re obviously here and we don’t even know where they are.”
“All the more reason we can’t have you go running off,” Golf says. “We can’t afford to lose someone else.”
“We need to get out of here,” the third man says. “We need that bus and we need it now. I told the negotiator that they had better hurry if they don’t want more people to die.”
A bus? Is that slang for something? Miranda exchanges puzzled looks with Grace. A bus doesn’t sound like the ideal getaway vehicle. Slow, lumbering, huge turning radius. Then Miranda gets it. The one good thing about a bus is that it can hold a lot of people. The killers must be planning on taking at least some of the hostages with them.
Layered under the voices is another noise. Miranda tilts her head, straining to hear. She can’t quite place it. It’s like someone has left a hose running.
Javier taps her shoulder and then points across the way. On the other side of the second floor, across the mall, an open office door reads MALL SECURITY. Just inside, two uniformed men are sprawled facedown on the carpet, unmoving. One of them is bald except for a half circle of gray hair. Miranda has walked past him a dozen times, carefully looking neither at him nor away.
She had wondered if the coworkers of the security guard who took Amina were in on this thing. The dead men must be the answer. It looks like they were ambushed. If you have to die, is it better to be unaware until the end, and maybe not even then?
Miranda wrenches her gaze back to Cole. She pretends that the right-hand corner of her vision doesn’t work. That she can’t see the bodies in the food court, the bodies in the security office. That the lack of Oxy hasn’t left her shaking and nauseated.
Cole reaches the planter and rises to his knees. One hand pushes aside the leaves, and the other plunges in and then reappears with the rifle. It’s a dull black. The butt ends in a flat, elongated rectangle. Miranda guesses that’s so you can brace it against your shoulder. In front of the trigger sits the curve of the clip. The rifle looks all business. It’s clearly not meant for anything other than killing.
Cole starts to crawl back, but it’s hard to both crawl and carry the gun. He looks over at the food court, and after checking out its emptiness he gets to his feet. Pressed close to the wall, he starts walking back to them.
“I still say we need to know where the cops are,” Zulu says, his voice rising. “What if they’re planning an ambush to get us back for our ambush?”
“Let me try to raise Karl again,” Golf says. “Kilo, come in. Kilo. Over.”
One of the killers moves into Miranda’s field of vision. She sucks in her breath. If she can see him, he can see them. All he needs to do is look up and over. And with the jittery way he’s moving, turning his masked head from side to side, it seems quite possible that he will also think about the space overhead. They have to get out of sight. Now!
As she, Javier, and Grace creep backward, panic zaps through her. They have no way to warn Cole.
But when he sees them retreat, he drops to his knees. He scuttles forward, pushing the rifle ahead of him.
Miranda scrambles into the nearest office. It’s small, with just a desk and three chairs. The others follow. After Cole crawls inside, Grace closes the door before Miranda has time to wonder if the movement will catch the killers’ eyes.
What if they were seen? Miranda grabs a narrow white three-ring binder labeled 2017 INVOICES, lays it on its side, and shoves the narrow end under the door until it gets stuck. It’s like a doorstop. Now if anyone comes up here and tries the door, they won’t be able to shove it open. Cole nods approvingly.
Miranda feels a flush of pride. Then she realizes that if the killers get suspicious, they can just shoot through the door.
“So that’s an AK-47?” she whispers as she looks at the gun lying on the carpet next to Cole.
He shrugs one shoulder. “An AR-15.”
“What were you doing up here that you saw it?” Grace asks. The strain of the past couple of hours shows in her voice.
“Um, making deliveries. I work for an office-supply company.”
Javier nods. “I thought I’d seen you around before.”
“I spotted the rifle when I was trying to get out,” Cole says. “They must have staged this stuff up here for someone who didn’t come. Maybe someone who backed out.”
Miranda thinks of the ski mask she saw near the gun. “I don’t think this stuff was up here waiting for someone who didn’t come. I think someone had it all on and then decided to take off. He got rid of it along the way. First the gun, then the suicide vest, then the ski mask.”
“You could be right.” Cole straightens up. “Hey, maybe I can pretend to be him! The guy who took off. If I put on the vest and the ski mask and then walked up to that gate, I don’t think they’d be able to tell me apart from the real guy they’re looking for, at least not at first. If I keep my mouth shut, they might not know any better until it’s too late.” His mouth thins to a line. “And then I’ll do what I gotta do.”
Javier pulls his brows together, looking worried. “Or they’ll just kill you.”
Miranda is trying to figure out whether Cole’s idea will even work, when Grace says, “Only you won’t be pretending if you put on that vest and mask. Because you were wearing them in the first place. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
In the stunned silence that follows, she launches herself at Cole. Her hands circle his throat.
“And you’re the one who killed my mom!”