Chapter Three #3
I closed my eyes for a few seconds. A flicker of Livvy’s face, laughing at the kitchen table, textbooks spread out, hair piled in a messy knot overwhelmed my thoughts.
Smiling at her phone during texting marathons with Bodhi.
Sunny walking through the front door with her, loud and bright like college girls should be, living safe, normal lives.
Now they were huddled on floors behind desks and chairs while someone emptied magazines outside their windows.
“We wait for the first briefing,” I said. “We use our creds to get as close as they’ll let us. We coordinate, not freelance.”
He made a rough sound at the back of his throat but didn’t argue.
“Livvy? Can you hear anything?” I asked.
“I don’t… I don’t think so. Wait.”
“Don’t talk. Listen carefully. Stay exactly where you are. Stay low. Make sure no one in that room makes a sound. No talking, no crying, no moving. If you have to breathe, breathe slowly and quietly. Don’t answer me.”
Silence.
“You’re doing so well, kiddo. You’re going to be okay. Hang tight, we’re three minutes out, then we’re coming straight to you.”
Thomas spoke to Bodhi on his phone, voice hushed but urgent. “Stay put, Bodhi. No… no, do not go looking for her. We’re handling it. We’ll find Sunny too.”
I refocused. “If you hear anything in the hall, don’t speak. Stay hidden.”
“I don’t… The um… the windows are…”
“Livvy, don’t look out the windows.”
I heard her quietly strain, a faint shuffle.
“Oh my God…” she whispered, her voice shaking.
“You looked outside? What do you see?”
Her whisper trembled so violently I could barely make it out. “Laptops left on the Green… blankets… backpacks… everyone just… everything’s still there. Like they ran. All at once.”
My throat tightened. Silence stretched. Then she sobbed once, but it sounded as if she was stifling it with her hand.
“I see bodies on the ground,” she whispered. She inhaled sharply, then the phone scraped against something.
“Livvy?”
Her whisper came out shredded. “There’s… there’s blood.”
“She needs to back off the windows,” Thomas said. “Now. Tell her go back to her hiding spot.”
I took a breath. “Livvy, listen to me. Get away from the windows. Go back to the closet.”
“They’re—” she choked, “everywhere.”
“Look away, Livvy,” I said, gentle but firm. “Look away. Your one goal—the only thing that matters—is staying hidden and staying quiet, remember? Go now.”
Her breathing came fast and sharp.
I muted the phone, looking to Thomas. “She’s going to lose it. She’s triggered from… She’s going to lose it.”
“Talk to her,” Thomas said, pulling onto campus. “Let her hear your voice.”
I unmuted the phone. “Put your hand over your mouth if you need to,” I coached. “Count your breaths. Slow them down. You’re safe where you are. Count quietly. Can you do that for me?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good. You’re doing so good, Livvy.” I pressed my fingers hard into my own knee, grounding myself so she didn’t hear the fear trying to bleed into my voice. “We’re on campus. We’re coming to get you.”
Through the windshield, the first barricades came into view.
Police cruisers. Students crying on sidewalks.
Yellow tape fluttering in the breeze. Roads flooded with flashing lights.
Squad cars and fire trucks clogged the entrance, officers waving us toward the east lot.
Students clustered on the sidewalks, some wrapped in blankets, some staring at nothing with empty expressions.
Thomas eased off the gas. He held his badge out the window to the first uniform who tried to wave us back, his expression carved from determination only a father could feel.
Thomas nodded to the officer and turned the wheel. “Tell her we’re pulling up to the east perimeter.”
“We’re here,” I reassured her. “Hold on just a little longer.”
Her whisper came back, small and raw. “Please hurry. I think I heard more gunshots.”
I looked down at my phone, pulling up the app to get her exact location. A little blue dot pulsed over a gray outline of the humanities building.
“She in the rec room, sublevel, south side,” I said, my voice shakier than I wanted.
Thomas swung the SUV into the east lot. With nowhere else to park, the tires bumped over the curb, and he settled for a spot in the grass, braking hard. The lot was a mess of patrol cars, ambulances, unmarked sedans, and students standing in clumps.
Thomas threw the shifter into park and killed the lights. The engine was still rumbling when he unbuckled and pushed his door open.
I unlatched my belt and stepped out, leaving the door open.
My phone stayed on the seat, the screen glowing with the tiny dot marking Livvy's location.
I dragged a vest over my shoulders without looking away, irrationally convinced that if I lost sight of it, I'd lose sight of her.
Once the vest was in place, I quickly grabbed a pair of boots from the backseat and laced them up, making one final check of the map.
Thomas nodded, ready to move, so I pocketed my phone and followed him toward the humanities building.
Uniforms immediately started toward us, palms out, trying to divert us before we even cleared the sidewalk.
“Sir, you can’t be here, this area’s locked down—”
Thomas raised his badge to eye level. “Special Agent Thomas Maddox, FBI HQ. My unit works half the federal spillover cases this jurisdiction sends our way.” His tone softened—not warm, but surgical.
“I know you’re doing your job. I know this is a mess.
But my daughter is in that building, and I’m not standing behind tape while shots are still being called in on your radio. ”
“I can see you’re a fed… but I’m sorry, pal, no one’s getting through here. You’ll just have to wait in the staging area like all the other parents.”
Thomas leaned in slightly, lowering his voice.
“You and I both know how ugly it gets when HQ reports local PD slowed federal response. I’m better trained for this than anyone out here.
My kid is in the basement of the humanities building, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m standing here while you debate procedure.
If you want to file a complaint later, I’ll walk you through it myself.
But right now? You need to get the fuck outta my way, or I’ll have your job and your pension within the hour. ”
The officer swallowed, his eyes flicking to Thomas’s gold shield, then to me when I held up my own.
“Special Agent Liis Lindy,” I said. “This is your last warning. Move aside.”
A sergeant-looking type jogged over, radio clipped to his shoulder, the strain in his face a mirror of the sirens still screaming in the background.
“You the feds from HQ?” he asked, slightly out of breath.
“Yes,” Thomas said. “We’re both armed and current. You’ve got one shooter?”
“Far as we know,” the sergeant answered, the cop in front of him slinking back. “Started on the green, moved toward humanities. We’ve got a contact team already clearing top floors and working down. You’ll just be in the way.”
My brows pulled together. “Not happening.”
The sergeant hesitated. I watched a war play out behind his eyes. Liability, protocol, administrative action. And somewhere in the mix, understanding. His gaze snagged on the tension in Thomas’s shoulders, on the wrath and fury written all over my face.
He exhaled, sharp. “If you go in, you’re under our command post. You clear it with them, stay on their channel, and you don’t break off alone. I don’t care who your kid is. I’m not getting blamed for losing agents on top of everything else.”
“That’s fine,” Thomas said. “Where’s command?”
The sergeant pointed toward the Mobile Operations center, an open trailer surrounded by a cluster of marked SUVs. A folding table was in front, covered in floor plans, a campus map taped to the surface with a crew of officers bending over it, speaking into radios pressed to their shoulders.
We jogged over, and for the third time showed our badges. There wouldn’t be a fourth. No matter what happened with their command, our next stop was Livvy.
A lieutenant in a tactical vest gave us the thirty-second version, clipped to the essentials.
Shooter last seen by the north side of humanities, moving between cover.
Multiple students, some staff, and campus security down on the Green.
Contact teams inside sweeping down. Basement levels not yet cleared.
My hand closed over the butt of my sidearm, needing to feel something solid.
“We’ve got a second team going into the humanities building now. You’re with them,” the lieutenant instructed. “Don’t break formation unless your lead says so.”
Thomas nodded once. “Understood.”
We fell in with four officers in tactical vests at the front of the building. Their faces were drawn tight, eyes already narrowed, tracking lines and exits, measuring everything in angles and threat. I recognized it all too well. I felt it pulling at me too.
“Who’s point?” Thomas asked.
A man about his size stepped forward, but he was far younger. “Coleman,” he said, introducing himself. “Let’s move.”
We moved as a unit, with purpose but cautious, cutting across the grass and checking rooftops. Laptops lay open in trampled paths, coffee cups tipped over, a lone sneaker on its side. Backpacks gaped where they’d fallen, notebooks and debris were scattered through the grass.
I forced my eyes forward once I came to the first lifeless hand, unwilling to stare into the vacant eyes of someone’s son or daughter.
The glass doors of the humanities building had been shoved open and left that way, one pane spidered with cracks from some unknown impact that made my skin crawl to imagine.
We slipped inside, the world snapping from siren-filled chaos to a heavy, insulated silence broken only by the distant echo of shouting.
“Check your corners,” Coleman hissed.
Thomas drew. I did the same, the weight of my Glock familiar and jarring all at once. My heart was banging against my ribs, and at the same time, my training grounded me like a second skin.