Chapter 4
Peter
Peter Ash pushed hard up First Ave with the Space Needle on his right, leaning on his horn as he rolled through a series of red lights.
He thought he might have seen the gray hatchback a block back, but it was hard to tell.
The rain was heavy, and his side mirrors were small. The old truck’s wipers did their best.
He hadn’t been back to Seattle since he’d first met June, who’d lived in a garage apartment up on Capitol Hill.
But he still had the city map in his head.
It was a gift that he had first discovered in Officer Candidate School, the ability to study a map and retain it.
In combat, it had saved him and his guys more times than he could count.
At West Roy, he ducked right for a block, then turned left and powered up Queen Anne Avenue, downshifting for the steep grade.
Apartment buildings lined the road on both sides.
Because of the hill, he could see more of the vehicles behind him, and the hatchback wasn’t one of them.
Ahead, a slow line of cars crept up the incline, blocking the road.
He goosed the gas and slid into the oncoming lane, ignoring the horns and raised middle fingers.
KT was curled into herself, one hand grabbing the oh-shit handle and the other braced on the dashboard. But she didn’t scream and she didn’t complain, which let Peter focus on getting where they needed to go.
She’d almost lost it earlier. But she’d managed to collect herself when he mentioned her daughter.
That was better than many people would be able to do after some asshole in a clown mask pointed a gun at them.
June had told Peter that Katelyn Thorsen was the toughest reporter she’d ever met.
Coming from June Cassidy, a very tough reporter herself, that was a major compliment.
At the top of the hill, Queen Anne Avenue became the neighborhood’s main commercial strip. The south end was still sleepy and relatively undeveloped, although Peter felt strongly that the 5 Spot café should be a national landmark.
McClure Middle School was a few blocks down and one block west. Peter stopped at the corner by the park and looked north toward the school.
With cars parked on both sides of the street, it was only wide enough for a single lane, and that was filled with a long line of idling cars, he assumed drivers waiting to pick up their kids.
But he didn’t see any police cruisers. Surely there’d been one cop on Queen Anne when he’d called.
She said, “What are you waiting for?” Her fists were clenched on her thighs.
“Too many cars,” Peter said. “I don’t want to get stuck in there.” Thinking the guy in the clown mask could walk up the sidewalk behind the line of parked cars and Peter wouldn’t see him until it was too late.
“Let me out here.” She unbuckled her seat belt. “I’ll find Ellie, and you can pick us up on the other side of the park.”
“No.” He turned left, away from the school. “Let me find a spot for the truck and we’ll both go.”
There were no spots this close to the school. He had to drive around the park to find a space. Getting out, he scanned for the hatchback as he peeled off his black slicker. “Take my jacket. Your guy’s seen you in that orange coat.”
“I told you, he’s not my guy.” She stood on the parking strip and peeled off her coat and pulled on his larger one. He stood bareheaded in a thin blue fleece in the falling rain. Tall and lean, muscle and bone, nothing extra. “What are you going to wear?”
He reached behind the seat and pulled out his old brown duck Carhartt jacket.
“This’ll do.” It wasn’t remotely waterproof, but the school was only a few blocks away.
He ran the zipper up, pulled a faded blue baseball hat down over his damp, shaggy hair, then tucked the pistol into his pocket and slipped the keys above the sun visor.
“Leave your door unlocked,” he said. “Can you drive stick?”
She blinked. “Why do you ask?”
“In case something happens to me.”
Her eyes widened and her voice rose. “What would happen to you?”
“Katelyn.” He gave her a steady look. “Can you drive stick?”
She stared at him for a moment, then swallowed hard. “It’s been a while. But yes.”
“Excellent.” He smiled at her. “If something happens, anything, you and your daughter run for the truck and get the hell out of Dodge. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Ready?”
“Definitely not.” She pulled in a breath, let it out. “Let’s go get my daughter.”
Peter tended to put people into two categories. Those who stepped up when the time came, and those who didn’t.
KT hadn’t asked for this, but she was stepping up. For all the right reasons.
Peter liked her an awful lot just then.
—
They walked up the sidewalk, almost as if they weren’t on the lookout for a possible killer. Peter kept his hand on the pistol in his pocket, his head on a swivel. Had he imagined the hatchback? Maybe. Better to assume it was out there, though.
“Where are the police,” she asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “They’ll be here soon. A gun threat at a school will have their attention.”
They crossed the road and cut through the park.
It wasn’t large, just big enough for a couple of Little League fields and an open space for soccer or whatever.
Ahead, a slow stream of middle-school students walked toward them in groups of two and three, shoulders hunched against the rain.
The big pistol didn’t really fit in his coat pocket.
He didn’t want to start a panic. He unzipped his jacket, then tucked the gun into his waistband at the small of his back, where the hem would cover it.
The cotton canvas was absorbing water like a sponge.
Passing a trio of students, they found the gate at the last baseball diamond. Past it was an ugly low redbrick and concrete building with a blue and white sign that said it was a community center. “The school is just up there,” she said.
The line of cars was moving slowly, a few with doors open, loading kids. “Where does she usually wait for you?”
“Under the covered entryway,” she said. “With her friends.”
Peter turned to look over his shoulder again, scanning the street and the opposite sidewalk.
How vulnerable these kids were, he thought.
All the school shootings in the last few years, it made him sick.
And here he was, walking up with a pistol.
It was the other guy’s fault, Peter knew, the asshole with the clown mask and the cheap sneakers.
But these kids shouldn’t have to deal with any of it.
“Call her again,” he said. Still no police.
Her phone was already in her hand. She hit speed-dial and put it to her ear, listening. Then made a face and shoved it back in her pocket. “It went to voicemail.”
Now he could see the entryway. It had concrete pillars and a broad, flat roof that ran between the community center and the school.
The school was nicer than the community center, more redbrick and windows and less concrete, but it still had an industrial look.
Or maybe a little like jail, Peter thought.
That’s how he’d felt about school, growing up in northern Wisconsin.
Even then, before his wars and their aftermath, he’d always preferred being outside. Even in the rain.
Students stood in clumps under the flat roof, talking, laughing, most of them in shirtsleeves, some alone and on their phones. Kids being kids. “You see her?”
“No.”
He steered KT toward the entryway, checking the street, the sidewalk. No hatchback. “Where else would she be?”
“I don’t know. Inside somewhere?”
“She have a favorite teacher?”
“Yes. Mr. Huth, her English teacher. Wait, there she is.”
KT arrowed through the clumps of students toward a slender girl with jet-black hair, an ancient Sex Pistols T-shirt under an unzipped black hoodie with a line of safety pins down the arms, seriously shredded jeans, and black high-top Doc Martens with bright red laces.
She leaned against one of the concrete pillars, talking animatedly with a group of boys and girls decked out in similar outfits.
Punk rock was back, apparently. At least in middle school.
“Ellie. You didn’t get my message?”
“Uh, no?” The girl smirked at her friends, sarcasm dripping.
KT grabbed her arm. “We have to go.”
The girl pulled her arm back, eyebrows scrunched in scorn. “I’m going to Susanna’s house. We have a project due Monday.”
Although connected to the school and the community center, the covered entryway was wide open on the other two sides.
Behind him, the scrum of students and the cars with waiting parents blocked his view.
Looking ahead, past Ellie and her friends, Peter could see all the way through to the next block.
Partially screened by parked cars, a gray hatchback ghosted past.
“This isn’t good,” he told KT softly. “We need to get moving.”
Eleanor looked up at him. “Who’s this meatball?”
Her friends stared at Peter with all the disdain available to eighth graders, which was considerable. He was pretty sure “meatball” was not a positive term.
Peter gave the girl a smile and took her elbow. “I’ll explain on the way. Our ride’s on the other side of the park.”
“Get your hands off me.” She tried to pull away but he didn’t let her. “Let me go or I’ll scream my head off.”
Peter let her go, then looked at her mother. “Can I tell her?”
Ellie said, “Tell her what, Mom? Who is this guy?”
KT gave Peter a nod.
He stepped between Ellie and her friends and leaned close.
Despite the punk rock outfit and attitude, she smelled like shampoo and fruit roll-ups.
Voice low, he said, “Shut up and listen, kid. Don’t say anything.
Somebody tried to kill your mom about half an hour ago.
They’re still out there. You need to come with us. Now.”
Ellie’s eyes widened. She looked at her mom and hissed, “Is he for real?”
KT held out her hand. “Unfortunately, yes. Can we go now?”
Ellie took the hand. The attitude was gone and suddenly she was just a thirteen-year-old girl, scared and wanting her mother.