Jim Holliman fired a wild shot into the ceiling with his left hand, and while the shot only dislodged plaster dust onto his head and the floor, it seemed to energize Joe Lambert. He dashed forward away from the desks, dragging Leah behind him over the top of the desk. She still had the letter opener clutched in her fist, so she plunged the pointed blade into the side of his neck.

Holliman’s next shots hit one of the desks and the wall above it, but Lambert was on his hands and knees, struggling to raise himself to his feet with Leah on his back. She grasped his rifle, but his hands were too strong for her to wrench it away. Leah managed to reach the trigger guard and fire a shot in the general direction of Lee Wolf, who dove to the end of one row of built-in wooden seats and out of Leah’s view.

Lambert’s breaths were making a terrible rasping noise as he tried to suck in air past the blade in his throat. He rolled to use the weight of his body to keep Leah’s hands away from the trigger, but she fired off three more shots that went to Holliman’s part of the room before Lambert’s shoulder pressed her wrist to the floor and she couldn’t reach the trigger.

Her body seemed to know what the only possible move was. While Lambert was down, Wolf was lying between seats, and Holliman had dropped to the floor beyond the conference table, she withdrew her hand, leapt up, and charged. Her life depended on reaching Holliman before he could train his rifle on her and fire. She dashed toward him, her long legs taking yards at a stride. Holliman clutched the foregrip of the rifle, fumbled with the receiver to get his finger into the trigger guard, and raised the barrel. Leah’s time was gone.

She grasped the edge of the conference table as she reached it, and pulled it upward as hard as she could. The table tipped, the near side rising and the far side falling down hard between her and Holliman.

He fired four rounds through the tabletop, but she was moving fast, and he couldn’t actually see her because of the table, and he couldn’t adjust his aim any faster than he did. He kept firing even after she was past him, his shots pounding into the walls on the other side of the council chamber.

Now there were other shots coming from the direction where Lee Wolf lay, but none of them hit flesh. As Leah dashed toward the door, she sensed another body close to her right side, running with her. Once she was through the door, she turned her head and saw Phil Haymes beside her.

She said, “Lock the back door. Buy us time.”

He turned and ran along the hall toward the back door.