Jack pulled the earpiece loose, let the wire dangle free.

His entire brain relaxed. Music and lights and bodies formed a multidimensional map that rotated and tilted, allowing him to mentally place each itchy finger. He searched for Jill, found her on the outside, keeping a path free. He headed for the door at stage right, owning every bit of the cheesy park uniform, as if it belonged to him, passed one armed man, avoided eye contact with the other, who blocked the door, kept the semiautomatic as low and as inconspicuous as a hunk of metal ever could be.

Clare’s training told him to fire now, eliminate the nearest enemy.

Gunshots would send the theater into a mad scramble for the exits.

The panic would provide him ample cover to get out.

But panic also got people trampled, killed in the crush, and there were an awful lot of little kids in here. If he could settle this quietly, he would.

He pried knife from sheath.

Clare joined the voices in his head.

Are you mad? Only a fool would gift the enemy his own weakness.

He shut her down.

This was his life, and these were his mistakes to make.

The heat of threat burned behind him, rising, closing in fast.

Time slowed, ticking between strobe pulses, hovering between blinks on rapt audience faces, and Jack felt the weight of footsteps and shifted.

A suppressor rose to meet the base of his skull, but he’d moved first.

Fingers scraped air where his collar had been.

His blade swung over and down, connected with forearm, sliced tendons. The shooter’s cry rose with the music and died with his own bullet, muzzle twisted back, spitting into his face due to his own uncontrollable finger, and was drowned by pounding drums.

An eight-year-old boy in the nearest seat turned and watched wide-eyed.

Jack pulled the deadweight close, leaned in toward the kid, said, “It’s part of the show,” and he dragged the body far enough forward that the kid wouldn’t be able to see once the theater began to empty.

The music stopped, and the lights shut off.

The dark was made for speed.

He rushed that stage-right door. Two seconds was all he got, but he closed most of the distance, and when the next note rose and softer lighting followed, he was feet from a man in shooting stance, suppressor aimed six inches to Jack’s left and moving toward center chest. Every rubber-bullet bruise and hand-to-hand fight, lost and won, said he’d be dead before he could place a fatal round.

Clare shoved him. Jill shoved him.

He dove into the man’s feet, knocking him off balance, and they rolled, tumbling, fighting to incapacitate, to kill, to gain control of scattered weapons, while high schoolers crooned the lyrics to “Winter Wonderland” and the nearest audience members no longer watched the stage.