her near the command center. Behind her, the entire quadrangle had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.
“Allison, wait up.” He snagged her arm and turned her around.
“I thought you were on the roof.” She glanced up at it. Choppers hovered above the library like hornets, and a white tent had been erected over the corpse to keep news cams from filming as the crime-scene techs did their jobs.
Allison gave him a worried look. “I hear it was pretty intense up there. You okay?”
“That woman behind the statue. Have you seen her?” Jonah held his breath.
“The statue?”
“She called 911. She was pinned down behind the bronze horse sculpture, right over there.”
Recognition flickered. “You mean the blonde? Tall?”
“Where is she?”
“They took her away in an ambulance.”
His chest squeezed. “She was wounded?”
“She looked okay to me. She was on her feet. Her kid was bleeding, though.”
Jonah stared at her.
“Doyle! I need you on crowd control!” Reynolds motioned her over to a parking area behind the psych building, where some campus health workers were dealing with minor injuries. Jonah’s boss saw him andfrowned. “What are you still doing here? I thought you had a debriefing.”
“I’m on my way.”
But his boss was already stomping over. Reynolds was big, barrel-chested, and the silver bristles of his flattop contrasted with his ruddy skin.
He motioned Jonah away from the crowd. “Get to that briefing, give your statement, and go home. Keep it short and to the point.” He aimed a meaty finger at him. “And take off that vest. I don’t want reporters picking you out. We got every news channel in the country headed down here.”
Jonah gritted his teeth. A mass murderer had just shot up the college and his lieutenant was worried about reporters.
“I’m on my way.” Jonah turned to leave.
“Keep it tight,” Reynolds called after him. “Less is more, Macon. Don’t forget that.”
The emergency room at County Hospital could have been in a war zone. Rows of gurneys filled with injured students lined the wall. People sat on the floor and slouched in corners, holding makeshift bandages and awaiting attention from harried nurses and med students. Sophie hadn’t seen a doctor yet, and she assumed they were all in back tending to critical patients. Waiting-room chairs had been stacked and shoved against a wall in order to make room for the steady stream of gurneys coming in from ambulances. Load after load came off with bleeding arms, shattered wrists, injured feet. Several people had facial cuts from flying glass. Sophiereached up and touched her eyebrow, wondering how bad her injury was. She’d taken a hefty chunk of bark to the temple when the tree she’d been running for got hit with a bullet.
The child in her lap squirmed, and Sophie gazed down at her. Every attempt to elicit a name had been met with silence, and Sophie didn’t know what to do, so for now she was going to wait here, holding an ice pack against the girl’s forehead and hoping she didn’t have a concussion. The girl had a big blue goose egg from when Sophie had tackled her to the ground and she’d hit a tree root. She also had a split lip. The blood there had dried, and Sophie had managed to clean it with some wet tissues, but it looked as though it needed stitches.
“Would you like to play a game?” Sophie shifted her on her lap so she could look down at her face. “It’s called the name game. I’ll start. My name is Sophie. Kind of like sofa. What’s
your
name?”
The girl turned away and burrowed her head against Sophie’s dirt-streaked blouse.
Her throat tightened with frustration. She was terrible with kids. She’d never been one of those nurturing types who oozed mommy vibes, and yet here she was in this overcrowded waiting room with a child who refused to turn loose of her.
“How’s your head feel?” Sophie rearranged the ice pack, which was almost melted.
No
Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child