Chapter 19
19
Finn watched it unfold with growing horror.
The men walking in coordinated movement.
The words shouted in anger from the mezzanine, half a football field away from where he and Ronan stood, their inane conversation with the couple (Archibald and Viola? Or was it Violet? He couldn’t remember) in front of them coming to a stop, the banner.
When the shooting started, he immediately swung his gaze to the hall below, searching out the blue-gray of Elise’s dress, her blond hair, praying to god she’d hit the floor.
He spotted her a second later, dropping to the ground next to Julia, her dress a blood red smear on the floor.
The crowd was in a panic, and his gaze snagged on four tuxedoed men rushing someone out of the hall. Finn could barely make out the man at their center — slight and balding — but they were moving in a pattern Finn recognized from the way Secret Service covered the president.
He wasn’t the president, but he was somebody.
Their bodies closed around the small man they were trying to protect, weapons drawn and at the ready as they pushed him toward the front door. Two of the terrorists were in pursuit about twenty feet behind, their focus on the escaping entourage.
Another round of gunfire burst forth in a staccato rhythm that chilled Finn to the bone.
He ran for the stairs. He didn’t give two fucks about the men firing from the mezzanine. Not right now. Not with Elise and Julia on the floor dodging their bullets.
“There are more in the hall,” Ronan said as they sprinted down the staircase toward the main floor. His voice was measured. “I counted twelve — two at twelve and six, two more at two, four, eight, and ten.’’
He’d slipped back into military lingo, but Finn got the gist of it.
Finn saw them, men dressed in black tac gear, automatic weapons aimed at the crowd.
But not shooting. Not yet.
All the fire was coming from the men on the mezzanine, glass from the windows in the ceiling and the stained-glass panels raining down on the crowd, half of which was on the ground ducking for cover, the other half stampeding in a panic toward the door.
Elise and Julia had been right to duck for cover, make themselves less of a target, but they risked being trampled if Ronan and Finn didn’t get there soon.
“Stay low,” Ronan said as they reached the bottom of the staircase.
He didn’t need to tell Finn twice. The gunfire from the mezzanine was ear-splitting and endless. It sent a visceral bolt of alarm through Finn’s body, and adrenaline had taken over in a rush of manic energy he knew was dangerous.
It took training to react like Ronan, to survey all the dangers, all the possibilities, when your nervous system was getting cues that you were about to die.
They pushed through the crowd, some trying for the main exit, others looking for a less crowded way out of the hall.
Finn homed in on the area where he’d spotted Elise and Julia, by the giraffe exhibit near the middle of the hall. There was no time to think about anything but getting them out before they were trampled by the crowd.
She was still there, crouched on the floor with her hands over her head.
He touched her and she flinched, her eyes full of terror until she realized it was him. “It’s okay,” he said. “Take my hand.”
She did and Finn pulled her up off the floor.
Julia was already up.
“Side entrance,” Ronan said. “Stay behind me. Finn, bring up the rear.”
“What about them?” Elise asked as they headed toward the gun-wielding men who’d taken up position on the main floor.
“If they wanted to shoot, they would have done it already,” Ronan said.
Finn saw what he meant. Their compatriots where still shooting from the mezzanine, but the ones on the ground were letting the panicked crowd leave. Then he noticed something else: there was a reason glass was shattering everywhere, a reason there were no dead bodies on the floor.
The men shooting from the mezzanine weren’t shooting to kill. This was an exercise in chaos.
A message. A warning.
The danger came from the crowd, panicked and desperate to escape, shoving each other to the ground in their efforts to find an exit, trying to avoid the men with guns even though they weren’t shooting.
Ronan led the way, Finn dropping to the back as Julia and Elise moved between them. A big man in a tux smacked into Elise so hard she staggered sideways.
Finn reached for her arm to keep her from dropping to the floor under the stampeding crowd, then moved in closer behind her, scanning left and right, trying to spot any threat before it got close enough to do her any damage.
He braced himself for a fight as they approached the men with guns, half expecting them to notice their small group, to start firing at them.
The men looked past them. Whoever was in charge of the attack wasn’t there for them.
Ronan moved past them, followed by Julia and Elise. Then Finn was stepping into the night behind them, sirens piercing the air, blue and red lights sweeping the ground as police officers rushed toward the museum.