“You’re their brother, aren’t you?” Miranda says. “But you said your brothers were dead.” Hadn’t he? Or had he just said his brothers were in the army as he’d looked toward the food court, and she had misunderstood what the past tense meant?

Cole straightens up as much as he can with the muzzle of a rifle pinning him to the wall. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“Oh, so it’s okay to kill my mom but it’s not okay to lie?” Grace scoffs.

“Look, what I told you guys was true. My parents died the way I said. And my two brothers, Gabriel and Zach”—Golf and Zulu, Miranda translates in her head—“were in the army. I grew up wanting to be just like them. Only after they were discharged, they couldn’t find work. The only jobs they could find were at this cruddy mall where everyone calls them wannabe cops and makes fun of them. But they’ve opened my eyes. Now I know what’s really going on overseas. What’s really going on in this country. And we joined a group of other people who felt the same way. This guy Karl, he’s in charge. He picked this mall because my brothers and Ron, the guy who took Amina, worked here. And they got another of the guards to join them.” Cole sucks in his lips until they disappear. “Karl said the only way to get America to listen would be to do something so big that no one could ignore it. And it all made sense, I swear it did. But then today…” His voice dwindles. He tries again. “Today, after I…” Cole looks from Miranda to Javier and finally to Grace. His mouth closes, opens, and closes again.

“What?” Grace bites off the word. “Come on, say the rest of it. ‘After I shot your mom.’ You do something so awful and then you can’t even be man enough to own it, to live with it?”

“I’m—I’m sorry.” He blinks, and a tear runs down his face. “As soon as I did, I realized it was all a terrible mistake.”

Grace’s incredulous smile is like a gash in her face. “It doesn’t make it any better that you’re sorry. In fact, it makes it worse.” She gives her head a short, sharp shake. “Because if you had only thought to be sorry before all this happened, then maybe it wouldn’t have. Or at least my mom would still be alive.”