Amina shakes her head. “Not unless they have a key for this store. And only employees have those.”

So the five of them can’t leave, but it’s not safe to stay, either. According to Javier, bullets could stitch through the metal shutter like it was tin foil.

“Everyone, turn off the ringers on your phone.” Cole slices his hand through the air. “We don’t want them to hear us.”

Miranda’s phone is already on silent. Closing her eyes, she forces herself to stop picturing how they are going to die. Forces herself to think. Three months ago, her school did a lockdown drill. She remembers sitting in the far corner of a dark classroom while someone out in the hall rattled the locked door. It was like playing hide-and-seek, holding your breath in the gloom and trying not to giggle. Fun, not frightening. Sure, you knew bad things went down in other schools, other places. But stuff like that always happened to someone else. It would never happen to you.

What had the sheriff’s deputy told them in that assembly? Now it comes back to her. To run if they could. To hide if they couldn’t. To fight back if they must.

With killers at both store exits, running is out of the question. They’re hiding now, but if Javier is right, sitting behind this metal roll-down shutter isn’t offering them much protection.

A man’s voice, just outside the shutter, makes her jump. Addressing himself to anyone hiding in the mall, he says that this is their one chance to leave. That he will let people go now and only now. And that if they stay and are found later, they will be killed. After a pause, he repeats himself, only he sounds farther away.

“Maybe we should open the shutter and go?” Grace whispers.

“No! We can’t trust them.” Cole’s voice breaks. “They’ll just kill us all.”

“But if we stay here and Javier’s right, that metal shutter isn’t enough protection,” Miranda says. “We need to get farther back from it.” She points. “Where does that other door go to?” She thinks she knows, but she’s not sure.

Amina follows her finger. “A storeroom.”

“Let’s go.” Miranda gets to her feet and looks at Cole. “Help me get Javier back there.”

The World’s Best Reality Show

THE WORLD’S BEST REALITY SHOW

4:07 P.M.

After the kid named Joe or Joel runs off, Parker and the other thirty or so trapped shoppers stare at Wolf in silence, a silence broken only by a little boy who is crying hysterically.

“That’s getting on my nerves.” Lips raises his gun. “Make him stop.”

His mother desperately tries to shush the boy, but he just cries harder.