TWENTY-THREE
Karen arrived at the dealership and pulled into the parking lot. Heart racing, she drove across the parking lot, heading toward the red and blue flashing lights near the building.
When she was closer, she saw a police cruiser. Two officers were right outside of it, one lying on the ground, one huddled over him. The one on the ground held a bloody hand to his shoulder. Next to the cruiser was a dusty Dodge Ram pickup. The driver’s door was open, interior light on.
No Teddy in sight. No Joshua. No Shane.
As she neared the building, three cruisers with their sirens blaring pulled into the parking lot from a side entrance. The cars parked next to the scene and officers jumped out. They ran over to the two officers on the ground. There was some yelling. A few of the officers ran toward the dealership, guns drawn.
She parked her car fifty feet from the pickup. Jumped out. An officer yelled at her to get back in her car.
“I called this in,” she said. “I’m the one who called nine-one-one. My son. Where is he?”
“Back in your car!” he yelled. He turned and ran toward the entrance.
Police officers ran around. More yelling. Sirens wailed. Lights flashed. Two more police cruisers roared across the parking lot toward them.
Chaos. Everything was chaos.
Joshua leaned over his dad in the hallway. The leg of his pants was soaked in blood. Blood continued to gush from his thigh.
“Run!” his dad said. “Get out of here.”
“No.”
He draped his arm around his dad’s shoulders. Attempted to help him stand up. He lifted and—
“Don’t move, kid.”
He turned around. Shane was directly behind him, chest rising and falling. His shoulder was bloody, his shirt soaked in red—he must’ve been hit during the shoot-out. He squeezed the shoulder with one hand and held the gun in his other hand. He pointed it at Joshua.
Outside the building, a group of police cruisers arrived at the scene, sirens blaring.
“Fuck!” Shane mumbled, staring out at them. “Fuck!”
Shane looked at the closed hallway doors on their left, on their right. He ran over to the closest door and tried to open it. Locked. He raised his leg and smashed his foot against the door. The door splintered around the handle and flew open.
“Over there. Go!”
Shane ran back over to Joshua. He grabbed Joshua and dragged him over to the door, one hand gripping his arm like a vise, the other pressing the gun into his back. Before they entered, Joshua looked back and saw a final image of his dad on the ground, holding his leg, the white tile around him covered in blood.
Through the door was a garage. A white car was in the middle of the room; it was too dark to see what model it was. Power tools and other items lined the wall. The garage door was pulled down behind the car.
In the hallway, there were footsteps, yelling. Sounded like an army storming the scene.
“Shit,” Shane said. “Shit.”
Shane frantically looked around the room. Right past the door was a board with at least ten different sets of keys dangling from pegs. Shane swiped them all off the board and started pounding the remote unlock button on each, throwing the keys to the side when they didn’t unlock the car.
In the hallway, the yelling was getting louder, closer.
Shane hit the button on a set of keys and threw them to the side. Another. Another—and the car in front of them honked once. The headlights flashed and the interior lights turned on.
Shane grabbed Joshua’s arm again and dragged him over to the passenger door, the gun pushing into his back. He threw open the passenger door and shoved Joshua into the car.
“Don’t move.”
Shane ran around the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine.
A police officer appeared at the door.
Shane shifted the car into reverse and floored it.
The officer fired a shot at the car.
The rear of the car smashed into the garage door and ripped a hole in it. One hand holding the steering wheel, the other on the armrest pointing the gun at Joshua, Shane kept the accelerator floored. They were in a parking lot, smaller and not crowded with cars—the rear of the dealership. On the opposite side of the building, Joshua could see red and blue police lights flashing into the night sky.
Shane slammed on the brakes. Joshua rocked forward in his seat. Shane shifted the car into drive and sped forward. Behind them, an officer appeared in the hole in the garage door. He yelled something at the car and fired his gun in the air.
Ahead of them, the parking lot stretched out for a couple of hundred yards. Beside the dealership was a flat grassy field with a LOT FOR SALE billboard at the edge. Shane drove over and jumped the curb that divided the parking lot from the field, the car rocking forward. They started driving through the field, the car tires kicking up grass and dirt.
More cop cars arrived, their lights flashing, sirens blaring. A few more officers sprinted into the dealership. An ambulance arrived and paramedics ran over to the injured officer, loaded him onto a stretcher. A few cars on the highway had pulled to the side of the road to let the emergency vehicles pass, bottlenecking the traffic. Car horns were honking. Noise and commotion were everywhere.
Karen wanted to scream. Yell out. Do something, anything. She felt so helpless; she needed answers. Where was Joshua? Teddy? Were they in the dealership? Had they escaped somewhere else? She recognized the pickup from her driveway—they must’ve taken it here . . . so they had to be here somewhere, didn’t they?
A uniformed officer walked over and stood next to her. The radio clipped to his shoulder was broadcasting a jumble of noises and voices. He turned the volume down low. “You’re the one who called in the emergency?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. . . . My son . . .”
The word trailed off.
“Everything will be fine,” he said. “We’ve got over twenty officers in there. We’ll find him. We—”
At the dealership entrance, two officers stumbled out of the building, their arms draped around a man, helping him walk.
It was Teddy.
She watched them move from the entrance across the parking lot. Once they were close enough, she could see that Teddy’s leg was covered in blood. She ran over. She looked at his bloody pants, looked at the officers on either side.
“My God, my God,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he said.
A paramedic with a gurney appeared and helped Teddy onto it.
“Joshua,” she said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He shot me, took Joshua.”
The paramedics rolled the gurney toward an ambulance. Karen watched as they loaded Teddy inside. Her mind was swimming. An officer appeared and stood beside her. He might’ve been the same officer she’d just spoken to, might’ve been a different one. She couldn’t remember.
“We’ll find your son,” he said to her. “If they are in there, we will find them. And we will make sure he’s safe.”
He kept talking to her, the words not even registering, until he was interrupted by a loud crashing noise from behind the dealership. Like a wall falling down. Tires squealed. There was a popping noise: a gunshot. The dealership building blocked Karen’s view and prevented her from seeing what was going on. She ran over to the side of the building and saw a white car reversing through an open lot behind the dealership. It came to an abrupt stop and started moving forward. The car sped through the lot, jumped a curb, and drove across a large empty field next to the dealership. A few officers standing beside her ran over to their cars and jumped inside. They drove in the direction of the car, pursuing it; the white car had at least a half-mile head start.
Karen watched the car disappear across the field—was Joshua inside? All around her was a scene of total madness—police cruisers speeding toward the white car, officers running around. The ambulance carrying Teddy pulled away, lights flashing, just as two more ambulances arrived on the scene.
It was all too much. She couldn’t hold back. She lowered her head and started crying.