The ensuing silence swallowed Jake.
“None of us,” said a voice.
Jake thought it was David, but it could have been another kid. Not Pixie. Not Andy.
“None of you?” Fausto repeated.
Jake heard footsteps that grew louder until they hammered right above his head. Fausto was on the stage, pacing directly over his head.
“None of you has two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars! None of you has it? Really? The drill I put in Javier’s leg is nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you. You want to change that answer?”
“We would give it to you. We promise.”
The voice that spoke cracked with emotion. Something told Jake it was Solomon who had spoken. Jake’s head was spinning. What could Andy and his friends have to do with $200 million of missing money?
“That’s the truth,” Solomon said. “Somebody must have stolen it from us.”
“You better hope that it’s not true, piggy boy,” Fausto said. “Because if so, I will kill you first and do it slowly.”
“Please just make an exchange,” a boy said. “Let us go, and get them to let you go.” Again, the voice sounded like David’s.
Fausto snorted a laugh.
“You think that will happen? No, hijo. No. They will-¿Cómo se dice en inglés? They will play with us, make us think they do this thing you say. But they will not. No. They will arrest us. Or shoot us. With or without the money, either way, we are as chingados as you. I’ve got to get something out of this mess. So it’s the money or your blood.”
A different set of footsteps stomped onstage. “Debes darte prisa, Fausto,” somebody said. “No tenemos tiempo que perder.”
“Yes, you’re right. We don’t have time to waste,” Fausto said. Jake heard footsteps walk off the stage and return to the auditorium floor. “I’m setting a timer starting now. I give you an hour. One hour. I’d make it less, but I understand technology can be hard. We have a laptop right here. The Internet. All that. If you can’t get me the money, I’m going to start killing, starting with you, big boy. Ready. Set. Go!”
Jake heard those final words as he bounded down the rolling staircase. When he reached the pit floor, Jake set the timer on his watch to one hour. He moved the stairs back to where he found them without making a sound. Then he dragged the bodies close to their original landing spots. Valuable minutes off the clock, but he couldn’t risk someone going into the pit and seeing the contents disturbed in any way. Jake opened the tunnel door and unclipped the cell phone from his belt.
Ellie had to know there wasn’t much time.
CHAPTER 38
Jake navigated back through the tunnels and returned to the janitor’s closet, where he could get a cell phone signal again. He checked his watch. The countdown on Fausto’s deadline continued to tick away.
Jake made the call. Images of death came at him like wraiths in the dark.
Ellie answered on the first ring. “Jake, where are you?”
Jake noticed an edge to Ellie’s voice, a tone he had never heard her use.
“I’m in the school. Listen, Ellie, there are at least six kids who have been taken hostage. I can confirm four of the hostage takers are dead, but I don’t know how many are left. One called himself Fausto. They may be from Mexico, I’m really not sure.”
“Jake, you need to get out of there. You need to get out of there now.”
Jake’s pulse spiked. “There’s a deadline on their lives, Ellie,” he snapped. “We’ve got less than an hour to rescue them before they start killing hostages.”
“Jake, you should have told me.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“They don’t want you anywhere near that school.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“They’ve been to your house. They know what you do. What you believe. They think you’re unstable.”
“You should have told me.” He understood. “We don’t have time to bullshit about what I believe, Ellie.”
In the background, Jake heard a gruff voice say, “Is that him?”
“Yes,” Jake heard Ellie answer.
A moment later, the gruff voice barked into Jake’s ear, “Listen to me, Jake. This is Special Agent Leo Haggar, with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. I’m ordering you to evacuate the premises immediately.”
Jake’s inner dialogue was rambling, but he silenced the noises in his head. His mind could work that way. Brain waves like an earthquake one second, flatlining like a corpse’s the next. It was the same mind control trick he used to shake off a home run and strike out the next batter. It was imperative he sound calm and composed. He already had a three-ball count against him. They knew he was a prepper. They would be biased. He was the only inside man, and they wouldn’t use him as an asset.
“Agent Haggar, there is a hostage situation here at the school,” Jake said.
“No shit, Detective,” Haggar said.
Jake ignored the rebuke. “My son and his friends. Six kids. Four armed men are dead. I engaged with one myself. He’s in the second-floor boys’ bathroom of the Society Building. The other three were dead when I found them. I believe all of the kids are being held in the Feldman Auditorium on the first floor of the Academy Building.”
“You ‘engaged’?”
“I shot him.”
“Shit,” Haggar muttered. “And how do you know the other information?”
“I have access to the underground-tunnel system at the school. I overheard conversation from a pit underneath the stage. That’s where I also found three additional dead guys.”
“You killed them?”
“No, somebody else did.”
“Who did?” Haggar asked.
“Look, I don’t know. I don’t know how many hostage takers there are, or what they’re armed with. But I think it has something to do with missing money. A lot of money. Two hundred million, I heard one of them say. I told Ellie they might be Mexican, or South American, but I don’t know. One of them is called Fausto.”
“That’s all really helpful information, Mr. Dent. Now you need to get out of there right away and let us do our job.”
“Aren’t you hearing me?” Jake said. “There’s a deadline. One hour.”
“Yeah? And now you listen to me. You might be doing a lot more damage than you realize.”
“The bomb,” Jake said. He needed something to build up his damaged credibility, and this was it.
“What bomb?” Haggar asked.
“You know. A radioactive bomb of some sort. It’s all bullshit. It’s a lie. It’s a trick. They’re trying to buy more time.”
“Yeah, and how do you know that?”
“I heard him say it.”
“From under the stage,” Haggar said.
“That’s right,” Jake answered.
“You know what I heard?” Haggar growled. “I heard you think the world is coming to an end. I heard that you store food somewhere, and lots of it, and guns, too, and you’re just waiting for the day when all hell breaks loose.”
“That has nothing to do with this,” Jake said.
“How do I know that you’re not just looking for any excuse to make that day happen sooner rather than later? You already shot one guy, you said. Hell, maybe you’re tired of shooting things with four legs.”
“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re saying,” Jake said. “I don’t want to hunt people.”
“I’m not saying anything except you have to vacate the premises.”
“They won’t negotiate. They know you won’t honor any exchange for immunity.”
“Please, Jake,” Haggar said. “Let us do our job and you do yours by getting the hell out of there.”