Of the two brontosaurus-sized issues confronting him, the missing bitcoins and Laura, it was Andy’s mother who occupied most of his waking thoughts. What would he say to her? Would he even speak? Could he? Should he have let his dad come along, like Jake had wanted? Andy contemplated canceling; but in his heart, he wanted to meet her, get to know her, and maybe even come to know more about himself. He wasn’t even angry that she had created a bogus profile to reach him.
The messages exchanged with Andy when Laura wasn’t being Laura were innocuous, limited mostly to talk about cool bands and interesting or funny websites. Ironically, it was the effort that went into pulling off the ruse that made Andy feel as if his mother cared. The same night Laura showed up at Andy’s house she sent a new friend request that also confessed to her deceit. The Facebook messages she sent him as Laura were cordial, but nothing more. Unless they met in person, a hole in Andy’s history would remain, and what he wanted was a complete picture.
Beth turned and saw Andy walking behind her, which brightened her smile even more. The hormone soup swimming about Andy’s body made him momentarily clumsy. He stumbled in the stairwell and had to grab a railing to regain his balance. Instead of tumbling down the stairs and into the throngs of students marching below him, Andy’s fast footwork put him in lockstep with Beth. She reached out and touched his arm. The contact sent bolts of electricity shooting through his veins.
Lydia rolled her eyes. Like a lot of the students making their way to the exit, she turned her attention to her smartphone. Andy figured Vine was probably already full of posts about the fire drill, with captions like, Here we go again.
“Do you think Mr. Forbes will notice if I don’t come back to class?” Beth said. The stairwell amplified the noise level, and Beth shouted to be heard over the persistent din. Andy didn’t mind leaning in close to hear her more clearly. He was thinking about a joke he could make that would get her to laugh again, when he caught a flash of something yellow at the bottom of the stairwell.
It took a moment to register, and even after the yellow-clad figures came in full view, he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
“I don’t think we are going back to class.” Andy pointed at the three figures encased in chemical suits stationed at the bottom of the stairs, urging the students to hurry. A fresh surge behind Andy came like a tide picking up speed as more students saw what he did, and the realization set in that this might not be a drill.
Andy was glad to have his backpack with his insulin, glucose tablets, and emergency glucagon kit with him and not in the classroom. In the fracas, Andy became separated from Beth. He was looking for her when a strong tug on his arm refocused his attention. Andy turned to see who had pulled on him. His eyes narrowed on Ryan Coventry’s snarling face.
Ryan gave another hard yank. There was no resisting. The only direction Andy could travel was the one Ryan wanted him to go: up. Like a salmon fighting a steady current, Ryan shoved students aside to make a space large enough to drag Andy up the stairs with him. Andy fought for a foothold, but Ryan exploited his advantage and Andy could do nothing but stumble along behind him.
The bodies thinned at the second-floor landing. Ryan tossed Andy through the stairwell’s open double doors. Andy’s arms spun for balance as his legs kicked out like a boy on ice skates for the first time, but there was no stopping his fall.
Ryan charged as Andy, still a bit dazed, staggered to his feet. Lowering his shoulder like a battering ram, Ryan plowed into Andy’s exposed right side with the full force of his two-hundred-pound frame. The blow flattened Andy against the unforgiving wall. He made a loud wheezing sound when the breath left him.
“Bet you’re not feeling like a big shot now,” Ryan said, standing over Andy’s crumpled body.
“Ryan, what the hell?” Andy said, still gasping for breath. “We’ve got to get out of here. There’s some chemical spill or something and we’re all being evacuated.”
Ryan’s expression suggested a different plan. “Yeah, that’s why I’m leaving and you’re not.”
Concealed inside a bright yellow chemical suit, Efren moved freely among the real employees from Clean Air Environmental Services. As Fausto had predicted, all it took to look like a person of authority were the proper uniforms and attitudes.
Efren had come to the Terry Science Center, knowing which exit was closest to Andy Dent’s classroom. Fausto had given his team everything they would need to accomplish their mission. They had building plans and, thanks to the help from a man called The Lion, they also had class schedules of all six targets. Efren had memorized Andy’s face, and it was easy to spot the boy on the stairwell behind a pretty blond girl with a long ponytail. Fausto was right, as usual. The chaos was ideal for concealing the abduction; the smile beneath his faceplate was not so easy to hide.
Efren directed a mob of students to the nearest exit, but mostly he was mindful of the classroom down the hall, its door intentionally left open. As Andy passed, Efren would follow. Within a second, he would have his target trapped inside that room, where they would wait for the evacuation to conclude.
That was the plan, until another student had intervened.
Students asked questions as they flooded down the stairs.
“What’s going on?”
“Are we in danger?”
Efren didn’t respond. Instead, he tapped the suits of the two men stationed with him. They were contract employees of Clean Air, and each thought Efren was the same. Efren pantomimed his intention to go upstairs to have a look around. The other men nodded their understanding and consent. Soon Efren was on the move. Students alarmed at the sight of a man in a yellow chemical suit parted to make room for him to pass. Efren found it cumbersome to walk in the suit, and the guns and knives he carried didn’t make it any easier.
Hilary followed the herd, walking with her head bent and eyes fixed on the marble floor. She had barely been paying attention to her French teacher; the break could not have come at a better time. Her thinking was addled, and she worried about her upcoming midterms.
Before joining The Shire, Hilary had been a straight-A student who had no clue where the dean of students’ office was even located. Now she was a felon, several times over. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Hilary couldn’t believe how quickly her life had come undone. She was the third and youngest daughter of Sam and Renee Eichel, of Westport, Connecticut. Nothing in her background even hinted at a future life of crime. No abuse. No neglect. Hilary’s parents were pillars of the community, and both loving and devoted to their daughters.
By any measure, Hilary had enjoyed an enviable childhood. She got along well with her two sisters and partook in lavish family vacations, including trips out west to ski and April vacations spent under the Caribbean sun. Her mother was a big corporate attorney and her father ran a hedge fund, so she had grown up knowing nothing of financial hardship.
All that changed in middle school. In some ways, Hilary had Mrs. Lewis, her seventh-grade social studies teacher, to blame for her recent criminal behavior.
Each year, Mrs. Lewis taught a segment on poverty. For her class project, Hilary pretended to be an unemployed single parent. She was given a fictional minimum-wage job and each day scrounged the Internet looking for an apartment she could afford, a car, day care for her fictional kids, and, of course, a better-paying job. Hilary had found it impossible to get by on such meager earnings. During the project, she learned about various federal-assistance programs; but even with those, her imaginary kids went hungry most of the time. In a few months, Hilary had come to know a good deal about affordable housing, welfare reform, and, most devastating of all, poverty’s heart-wrenching effect on children.