Raylan flew down the steps, nearly ran through Jonah, his other partner, who waited at the bottom.

“I’ll drive.”

Raylan didn’t argue, didn’t slow down. He jumped into Jonah’s orange-glow Mini. “Hurry.”

“She’s okay.” Jonah’s usual calm-at-all-costs demeanor held steady as he threw the car into reverse. “She’s smart. She’s done the drill over and over.”

Raylan barely heard the words, couldn’t hear his own desperate thoughts as his heart pounded in his ears.

With the top down on the Mini, the spring air flew around him. Tender green leaves unfurled on trees, early flowers danced with color and charm. He felt none of it, saw none of it.

All he could see was Lorilee’s face as she smiled before she’d driven away.

“What time is it?” It shocked him when he looked at his own watch to see that three hours had passed since he’d sat down to work.

It meant Lorilee would be in class, in the classroom before the first lunch break.

In the classroom was good. He knew the drill as well as she did, as she’d taken him through the steps, cried over the need to.

Lock the classroom door, get the kids in the storage closet, keep them calm, keep them quiet.

Shelter in place, and wait for the police to come.

As the first shock wore off, he pulled out his phone. She’d have it muted during class hours, but she’d feel the vibration.

When his call went to voice mail, just her cheerful drawl, he felt something sick rise up in his throat.

“She’s not answering. She doesn’t answer.”

“Probably left the phone on her desk. We’re almost there, Raylan. Almost there.”

“On her desk.”

He made himself accept that, though part of the drill ensured she had the means to communicate with the outside.

He saw the barricades, the police cars, ambulances, TV crews, the frantic parents, the terrified spouses who’d come, like him.

He was out of the car before it fully stopped.

The school stood a half block away, red brick, the sun beaming off its windows, the ground around it spring green.

He could see cops, and even from the distance he saw one of the windows had shattered.

“My wife.” He managed to get the words out as he gripped the NYPD barricade. “Lorilee Wells, art teacher. She’s in there.”

“We have to ask you to wait here, sir.” The uniformed officer spoke calmly, flatly. “We have officers in the building.”

“Raylan!”

He blanked for a moment when the woman hurried to him. His mind seemed to skip between a terrible clarity and sudden blanks.

“Suzanne.”

He knew her, of course. They’d had dinner in her home, and she and her husband—Bill, Bill McInerny, math teacher, chess guru, rabid Yankees fan—had dined in theirs.

She wrapped around him, this woman who smelled of grass and earth and mulch. A gardener, he remembered in the next spurt of clarity. An avid gardener who lived all but next door to the school in a ranch-style house with a big back patio.

“Raylan. Raylan, God. My day off, working in the garden. The shooting.” He felt every individual tremble when she began to shake. “I heard the shooting. But I didn’t think, I just didn’t think. You never think it could happen here, in your own backyard.”

“Have you talked to Bill? Could you reach him?”

“He texted me.” She drew back, rubbed tears away. “He told me he and his kids were safe, not to worry. He loved me, don’t worry.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes again, then dropped them. “Lorilee?”

“She didn’t answer.” He pulled out his phone to try again.

Gunfire erupted. It sounded like backfires and fireworks and terror. He swore the shots went straight through his heart, sharp, deadly punches. All around him people screamed, sobbed, shouted.

People clung to each other, as Suzanne now clung to him. He felt Jonah’s hand gripping his shoulder like a phantom weight. There, but not there.

Because the world had just stopped. In the void, all he heard was a terrible silence.

Then he saw police escorting a line of kids out, kids with their hands held up or on top of their heads. Kids crying, and some with blood on their clothes.

He heard parents shouting names and weeping. He saw paramedics rushing into the building.

Noise, too much noise filled the void, like a screaming roar inside his head. He couldn’t fully make out the words caught in the roar.

The shooters were down.

The situation contained.

Multiple dead, multiple wounded.

“Bill!” Suzanne pulled away, weeping and laughing. “There’s Bill, there’s Bill.”

Parents embraced children; spouses clutched spouses. Paramedics carried out stretchers, and ambulances screamed away.

He kept his focus on the doors where any second she would come out. She would come back to him.

“Mr. Wells.”

He knew the girl—one of Lorilee’s students. He went in once or twice a year to demonstrate and talk about how graphic novels and comics evolved from concept to completion.

She looked so pale, the skin so white against the red splotches from tears. A woman—her mother, he assumed—had an arm tight around her, and tears of her own.

He’d never know why her name came so clearly to his muddled mind. “Caroline. You’re one of Lorilee’s. Ms. Wells’s. Where—”

“We heard the shots. We were in class and heard the shooting, and—and laughing. They laughed and shot. Ms. Wells said to go into the storeroom, like in the drills. To go quick and quiet. And she went to lock the classroom door.”

“Is she still in there?”

“Mr. Wells, she went to lock the door, and he fell, right there. Rob Keyler—I know him. And he was bleeding, and he fell, and she—Ms. Wells—she started to pull him inside, to help him get inside. And then he …”

The tears ran and ran down her face, such a young face, still soft, still fighting a little teen acne. “It was Jamie Hanson. I know him, too. It was Jamie, and he had a gun in his hand, and she—Ms. Wells—she—she—she just threw herself over Rob. I could see. We hadn’t shut the door all the way, and I saw. He … Mr. Wells, Mr. Wells, he shot her. He shot her.”

Sobbing uncontrollably, she threw herself at him. “He shot her and shot her, and he laughed and walked away. He just walked away.”

He didn’t hear anything else. He didn’t feel anything else. Because his world ended on a soft spring day with a sky so blue it broke the heart.

CHAPTER EIGHT

They called her a hero. The boy she’d shielded with her own body spent ten days in the hospital, but he lived.

None of the students in her class sustained any physical injuries. The wounds to their hearts, souls, minds would take years to heal. If then.

Two boys, ages sixteen and seventeen, mad at the world, despising their own lives, ended the lives of six others on a pretty day in May. Five had been fellow students.

They wounded eleven more.

The lives they shattered, the children who lost parents, siblings, their innocence, the families who would grieve forever spread much deeper.

Neither boy survived the assault.