Nineteen Minutes Read Online Free PDF Page B

him.
    “Where is he?” Patrick mouthed.
    The boy pulled a pistol from beneath his thigh and held it up to his own head.
    A new rush of heat surged through Patrick. “Don’t fucking move,” he shouted, drawing a bead on the boy. “Drop the gun or I will shoot you.” Sweat broke out down his back and on his forehead, and he could feel his cupped hands shifting on the butt of the gun as he aimed, determined to lace the kid with bullets if he had to.
    Patrick let his forefinger brush gently against the trigger just as the boy opened his fingers wide as a starfish. The pistol fell to the floor, skittering across the tile.
    Immediately, he pounced. One of the other officers-whom Patrick hadn’t even noticed following him-retrieved the boy’s weapon. Patrick dropped the kid onto his stomach and cuffed him, pressing his knee hard into the boy’s spine. “Are you alone? Who’s with you?”
    “Just me,” the boy ground out.
    Patrick’s head was spinning and his pulse was a military tattoo, but he could vaguely hear the other officer calling this information in over the radio: “Sterling, we have one in custody; we don’t have knowledge of anyone else.”
    Just as seamlessly as it had started, it was over-at least as much as something like this could be considered over. Patrick didn’t know if there were booby traps or bombs in the school; he didn’t know how many casualties there were; he didn’t know how many wounded Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Alice Peck Day Hospital could take; he didn’t know how to go about processing a crime scene this massive. The target had been taken out, but at what irreplaceable cost? Patrick’s entire body began to shake, knowing that for so many students and parents and citizens today, he had once again been too late.
    He took a few steps and sank down to his knees, mostly because his legs simply gave out from underneath them, and pretended that this was intentional, that he wanted to check out the two bodies at the other end of the room. He was vaguely aware of the shooter being pushed out of the locker room by the other officer, to a waiting cruiser downstairs. He didn’t turn to watch the kid go; instead he focused on the body directly in front of him.
    A boy, dressed in a hockey jersey. There was a puddle of blood underneath his side, and a gunshot wound through his forehead. Patrick reached out for a baseball cap that had fallen a few feet away, with the words STERLING HOCKEY embroidered across it. He turned the brim around in his hands, an imperfect circle.
    The girl lying next to him was facedown, blood spreading from beneath her temple. She was barefoot, and on her toenails was bright pink polish-just like the stuff Tara had put on Patrick. It made his heart catch. This girl, just like his goddaughter and her brother and a million other kids in this country, had gotten up today and gone to school never imagining she would be in danger. She trusted all the grown-ups and teachers and principals to keep her safe. It was why these schools, post-9/11, had teachers wearing ID all the time and doors locked during the day-the enemy was always supposed to be an outsider, not the kid who was sitting right next to you.
    Suddenly, the girl shifted. “Help…me…”
    Patrick knelt beside her. “I’m here,” he said, his touch gentle as he assessed her condition. “Everything’s all right.” He turned her enough to see that the blood was coming from a cut on her scalp, not a gunshot wound, as he’d assumed. He ran his hands over her limbs. He kept murmuring to her, words that did not always make sense, but that let her know that she wasn’t alone anymore. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
    “Josie…” The girl started to thrash, trying to sit up. Patrick put the bulk of his body strategically between her and the boy’s-she’d be in shock already; he didn’t need her to go over the edge. She touched her hand to her forehead, and when it came away oily with