“You were there?”

“With Mi-Hi Jung and Tish Olsen. In the movies. They’re operating on Mi. She got shot. She got shot. He killed Tish.”

“Oh God.” They stood, tears streaming. “Tish? Tish Olsen? Oh God, oh God.” When she threw her arms around Simone, Simone clung to her.

“Tiffany’s in surgery. She … they can’t tell me.”

“Trent? She was with Trent.”

Mrs. Bryce stepped back, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, shook her head. “I’ll pray for Mi.” She turned back to the sink, ran water, splashed and splashed it on her face. “You’ll pray for Tiffany.”

“I will,” she promised, and meant it.

She didn’t need to throw up anymore. She already felt empty.

In the waiting room she fell asleep with her head in CiCi’s lap. When she woke she stayed curled there, her mind so foggy it seemed a thin layer of smoke blurred the room.

Through it she saw a man with gray hair and blue scrubs talking to Mrs. Bryce. And Mr. Bryce, she realized, and the woman he’d gotten pregnant and married.

Mrs. Bryce was crying again, but not the way she had in the bathroom. She had her hands clutched together in her lap, her lips pressed tight, but she kept nodding. And even through the layer of haze, Simone saw gratitude.

Tiffany hadn’t died, not like Tish. Not like Trent.

Mi wouldn’t die, either. She couldn’t.

They waited. She drifted off again, but lightly now, so she felt CiCi shift.

This doctor was a woman with ink-black hair pulled back from her face. She had an accent—Indian, maybe. Simone heard it, but it faded off as the words registered through the fog as she pushed herself up.

Mi had come through surgery.

Bullet wound in the right arm. No muscle damage.

Bullet nicked the right kidney. Repaired, no permanent damage likely.

Chest wound. Lungs full of blood. Draining, repairing, transfusions. The next twenty-four hours critical. Mi—young and strong.

“Once she’s out of Recovery and in ICU, you can see her. Briefly, only two at a time. She’s sedated,” the doctor continued. “She should sleep for several hours. You should try to get some rest.”

Mrs. Jung cried, but like Mrs. Bryce had.

“Thank you. Thank you. We’ll wait, and go see her.” Mr. Jung put an arm around his wife.

“I’ll have you taken up to ICU. But only family,” she added, with a glance at Simone and CiCi.

“This girl is family,” Mr. Jung said.

Relenting, the doctor looked back at Simone. “I’ll need your name for the approved visitors list.”

“Simone Knox.”

“‘Simone Knox’? The first nine-one-one caller?”

“I don’t know. I called them.”

“Simone, you should know: By calling them so quickly, you gave Mi a fighting chance. I’ll put your name on the list.”

*

After Simone had gone home to her bed, to dark, fractured dreams, Michael Foster sat by his wife’s hospital bed while she slept.

She’d wake, ask about Brady again. Her short-term memory was disrupted, but would come back, they told him. For now, he needed to reassure her anytime she surfaced that their son hadn’t been harmed.

Reed Quartermaine. They owed Reed Quartermaine for that.

She’d wake, he thought. She’d live.

And, due to a bullet in the spine, she’d never walk again.

One bullet struck her just below the shoulder blade, but the other hit her lower spinal cord.

He tried to believe they’d been lucky, because he’d have to believe it to convince her. If the bullet had hit higher, she could’ve lost feeling in her trunk, in her arms. She might have needed a breathing tube, might not have been able to turn her neck.

But they’d been lucky. She’d been spared the trauma of losing control of her bladder and bowels. With time and therapy, she’d be able to operate a motorized wheelchair, even drive.

But his beautiful wife, his wife who loved to dance, wouldn’t walk again.

She’d never run on the beach again with Brady, go hiking, jog up and down the stairs in the house they’d scrimped and saved for.

All because three sick, selfish bastards had gone on some senseless murder spree.

He didn’t even know which one of the three had hurt his wife, the mother of his child, the love of his goddamn life.

It didn’t matter which, he thought. They’d all done it.

John Jefferson Hobart, aka JJ, age seventeen.

Kent Francis Whitehall, age sixteen.

Devon Lawrence Paulson, age sixteen.

Teenagers. Sociopaths, psychopaths. He didn’t care what label the shrinks slapped on them.

He knew the death count, at least as of four a.m. when he’d last checked. Eighty-nine. And his Lisa was one of the two hundred and forty-two injured.

Because three twisted boys, armed to the fucking teeth, had walked into the mall on a Friday night with a mission to kill and maim.

Mission accomplished.

He didn’t count them among the dead—they didn’t deserve to be counted. But he could be grateful to the cop who’d taken out Hobart, and grateful the other two had killed themselves—or each other.

That detail remained unclear as of four a.m.

He could be grateful there would be no trial. Grateful he, a man who’d dedicated himself to saving lives, wouldn’t spend sleepless nights imagining killing them himself.

Lisa stirred so he shifted closer. When her eyes opened, he brought her hand to his lips.

“Brady?”

“He’s fine, baby. He’s with your mom and dad. He’s fine.”

“I had his hand. I started to grab him up and run, but then…”

“He’s fine, Lisa honey, he’s fine.”

“So tired.”

When she drifted off, he went back to watching her sleep.

*

Reed woke at dawn with his head banging, his eyes burning, his throat desert dry. The world’s worst hangover without a single drop of alcohol.

He showered—his third since coming home to his exhausted, grateful parents and his clinging, weeping sister. He just couldn’t get over the way Angie’s blood had soaked through his pants and onto his skin.

He knocked back some Advil, guzzled water straight from the faucet.

Then he booted up his computer. He didn’t have any problem finding stories on the shooting.

He studied the three names listed, then the photographs. He thought maybe he recognized Whitehall, but couldn’t figure from where.

He knew he recognized Paulson. He’d seen him riddle a man’s body with bullets and laugh.

One of the two had killed Angie, as the reports said the third, Hobart, never got out of the theater.

One of them had killed Justin, a busboy at Mangia, his first summer job. And Lucy, a waitress who’d planned to retire at the end of the year and hop into their RV to tour the country with her husband.

Customers, too. He didn’t know how many.

Dory was in the hospital. So were Bobby and Jack and Mary.

Rosie told him the boy with the guns had walked through the glass doors, sprayed the main dining room with bullets, then walked out again. Ten seconds, twenty. No more.

He read eyewitness reports, stopped and read the one on GameStop twice.

We heard the shooting, but didn’t really know what it was. The shop’s noisy. Then somebody came running in yelling somebody was shooting people. He was bleeding, but didn’t even seem to know he’d been shot.

That’s when the store manager—I don’t know his name—started telling everybody to get into this back room. Some people started to run out, but the shooting got closer. You could hear it, and the manager kept telling people to get in the back. It was really tight in there, the store was crowded. I was never so scared in my life as being crammed in that room. People were crying and praying, and he said we had to be quiet.

Then we heard it, the shooting, really loud. Right out in the store. Glass breaking. I thought we were all going to die, but then it stopped. Or I guess it moved away. He wanted us to stay in there until the police came, but somebody panicked, I guess, and pushed out of the door. Some people ran out. Then police came and took us outside. That boy saved our lives, the young manager with the thick glasses. I’m convinced he saved our lives.

“Way to go, Chaz,” Reed murmured.

*

In the little kitchen of her little apartment, Essie brewed a full pot of coffee. She’d have plenty of time to drink it as she’d been taken off the roll.

Her CO assured her she’d be back on—and likely get a medal—but the process had to play out. She’d not only fired her weapon, she’d killed.

She believed her CO and knew she’d done her job, but figured she’d stay half on edge until being cleared for duty. She hadn’t realized just how much she needed to be a cop until there’d been the tiniest doubt that she could be dismissed.