“Don’t pull it out, Zach!” Cole yells, but his brother doesn’t listen. And suddenly bright red blood is fountaining. A burst of noise at the entrance makes Miranda turn her head. On the far side of the glass doors is an army of uniforms. Some of the men and women have bolt cutters, some have pry bars, and all of them have guns. One by one the doors pop open and the cops surge in, shouting.

“EVERYBODY FREEZE!”

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

“PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEADS!”

Miranda drops her rifle, as does the guy with gauges who had earlier taken the security guard’s gun. Javier throws down his BB gun.

But Grace is still holding the jammed rifle, staring at Zulu and the blood spurting from his neck. And she doesn’t move.

Miranda sees what the cops must. A woman with an assault rifle, seconds away from finishing off a gravely wounded hostage.

One of the cops trains his pistol on her. “Drop your weapon!” he roars. “Now!”

“Grace!” Miranda shouts, trying to break the spell. “Grace!”

But Grace doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink.

Miranda watches the cop take careful aim. “Grace!” she screams again.

Just as Cole leaps in between Grace and the cop.

And the cop’s bullet that was meant for Grace strikes Cole instead. He makes a terrible groan as he lands on the floor next to his brother.

Grace finally drops the rifle. She falls on her knees beside Cole. Screaming, screaming.

Over

OVER

6:27 P.M.

It’s over. At the cop’s commands, Parker raises his hands, ignoring how the movement makes something grate in his side. Ignoring how his left pinky finger juts out at a weird angle from the rest of his hand.

The girl in the bloodstained shirt is screaming over the dead or wounded killers, Mole and Nicholas—the brother who stabbed him, the one Miranda marched in and who just got shot by the cops. Ron is still unconscious.

That leaves Wolf, and no one should leave Wolf.

Because instead of raising his hands, he bolts. As he runs, he reaches into the back of his waistband and pulls out something long and silver. It’s that pistol with a silencer screwed onto the end, the one he used to shoot the guy whose phone rang. And then he darts toward Stanford and snatches Moxie out of her arms.

A cold fist of horror squeezes Parker’s heart as Wolf points the gun at his sister’s head.

“Parker!” Moxie screams, her arms reaching out to him. “Parker!”

All Too Much

ALL TOO MUCH

6:28 P.M.

It’s all too much, Miranda thinks as she looks at Grace screaming over the bodies of Cole and his brother—only a few feet apart from each other. There’s been so much carnage today. She can’t do this anymore. She just can’t. She squeezes her eyes closed.