Bryan Smith - Soultaker

So he was stuck.

He thumped the steering wheel. “Damn it all. What do I do? Christ, what do I do?”

He sat there stewing in frustration a while longer, intensely aware of the seconds and minutes ticking by, time rushing forward in a relentless tide toward the appointed hour. The forceful knock on the window made him gasp and jump in his seat. Flashing memories of this morning’s disastrous encounter with Cindy Wells zipped through his head. His head snapped to the left and he saw the face of Carter Brown, a member of the school’s security staff, peering down at him. Brown’s expression was neutral, but Raymond nonetheless glimpsed a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

Raymond’s heart raced.

He felt paralyzed, temporarily incapable of logical thought or action. It was very much the way he’d felt when Penelope had come bursting into his garage. The security guard’s eyes narrowed and his features fell into a jowly frown. Instinct guided Raymond’s hand to the power-window button. He pressed the switch and the window whirred down.

Brown tugged at his broad black belt, raised his sagging gray uniform jeans. “Afternoon, Mr. Slater. Any kind of problem here? Saw you banging on that steering wheel and got a mite worried.”

Raymond forced a smile. It was difficult and he was sure the expression was just a grotesque parody of mirth. “No problem. I, uh…just realized I left something I need at home. My, uh…”

He trailed off because he realized Brown was looking past him now, at the long white box on the passenger seat.

The box containing the Mossberg pump-action shotgun.

The box clearly labeled MOSSBERG, adorned with a picture of a Mossberg pump-action shotgun.

Hell.

Brown’s eyes flicked from the box back to Raymond’s face. They locked gazes for a moment that seemed to last years. Then Brown reached for the radio clipped to his belt. Raymond’s stomach did a slow, agonizing roll as he realized there was only one way out of this. He reached into his coat, pulled out the Glock, and aimed it at Brown’s large belly.

Brown’s thumb froze on the radio’s talk button.

“Listen to me carefully, Brown.”

Brown’s jowls trembled as he swallowed a lump in his throat. His face reddened. A sudden sheen of sweat glistened at his brow. He managed a single terse nod. “Okay.”

“Put the radio back on your belt.”

Brown did as ordered. More sweat rolled off him. His face flushed a deeper shade of scarlet. The poor man had to be scared out of his wits. In all his years on the job-and he’d been at Rockville longer than Raymond-he’d probably never had a gun aimed at him. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Raymond couldn’t have the man collapsing out here in the open. And he couldn’t allow himself to feel sympathy for him. He was just a man doing his job. But it didn’t matter. He was in the way.

“Open the door behind me. Get in the back.”

Brown’s lower lip trembled. “You’re not going to…kill me…are you?”

Raymond forced another of those fake smiles, hoping this one would be more convincing than the last. “Of course not. I just need to talk to you. I need your help, Brown. I’m not here to commit a crime. I’m here to stop one.”

Brown still didn’t look convinced, but he was too frightened to do anything other than what he’d been told. Raymond tracked him with the barrel of the Glock as he reached for the door behind Raymond, opened it, and slung his considerable weight inside. The Jaguar bounced slightly as his butt hit the seat.

Raymond twisted in his seat and aimed the gun through the gap between the front seats. “Close that door.”

Brown stared at the gun. The door stayed open. He looked at Raymond. “You can’t stop her.”

Raymond sighed.

Until now he’d harbored a small shred of hope. Hope that he could convince Brown of the threat facing Rockville’s students. That he could talk the man into helping him put a stop to it. But she’d gotten to him first, and probably long ago. It was a smart move on her part. Probably every member of the security staff had been corrupted. It would make things harder than he’d already expected.

“I’m sorry, Brown.”

He leaned through the gap between the seats and plunged the Glock’s barrel deep into the man’s big belly. Terror spurred Brown into action. A meaty fist arced toward Raymond’s head, made contact with his jaw at the same instant his finger squeezed the trigger. The blow sent him crashing against the dashboard. His head wobbled and the gun slipped from his fingers, landing on the Mossberg box. Everything went gray for a few moments. Panic gripped him when everything snapped back into focus.

He groped for the fallen Glock.

He had to stop Brown before he could raise the alarm.

But Brown wasn’t going anywhere. He was dead, his body slumped forward on the backseat. Blood leaked from the hole in his gut. Raymond glanced around, expecting to see other members of the security staff bearing down on the Jag. But there was no one in sight. He hoped Brown’s soft belly had muffled the sound of the blast. Maybe it had. His ears were ringing, but that could be attributed to having his bell rung by Carter Brown as the man’s last mortal act.

A renewed sense of urgency got him moving again.

He could hear the seconds ticking away in his head again, loud and resonant like the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

He reached between the seats and shoved Brown’s corpse aside, then crawled into the back and pulled the door shut. He didn’t spare the body a glance as he returned to the front seat. Three people had died today at his hands, either directly or, in the case of Cindy Wells, indirectly.

He chose to think of these deaths as necessary sacrifices.

God’s way of steeling him for the greater violence to come.

He started the Jaguar, put the car in gear, and headed toward the other side of the school.

It was 12:30.

It was 12:45.

Or maybe 12:49.

The Camry’s digital dashboard clock made it difficult to tell. One of the little LED filaments had given up the ghost some time ago. Five could be nine nine. Eight could be six. Numbers like three or four weren’t a problem. It was easy to connect the digital dots, so to speak. But with the problem numbers the only thing you could do was wait another minute to see which way the little glowing bars would rearrange themselves. The necessary time passed while the others piled into the Camry.

Jake watched the clock as he put the car in gear and backed out of Stu Walker’s driveway.

The clock moved forward a minute.

12:50.

Damn.

Jake changed gears again and hit the gas. The Camry sped down the narrow residential street. But this was not a time for caution. The situation was urgent. This he’d realized after only a few additional minutes of conversation with the kids back in Stu’s kitchen.

They were with him now, bunched together in the back.

Jordan, Kelsey, and Will.

Kristen sat next to him, riding shotgun. He almost laughed at that. He wished she did have a shotgun nestled in her lap. Their only weapons were handguns. The Glocks the boys were carrying and Stu’s.38. Kristen had retrieved it from a closet shelf in Stu’s bedroom. It looked like a cannon clutched in Kristen’s smallish hands. Looking at her, he wished again she’d stayed behind, but she’d been adamant about accompanying him, and there’d been no time to argue.

He slowed down at a three-way stop. A quick scan in either direction revealed no oncoming traffic, so he executed a quick right turn without coming to a full stop.

He straightened the car out and looked at the clock again.