As for herself, her adrenaline had spiked the moment she saw the alert.
During her years on the police force, she’d been in numerous dangerous situations. She’d faced every type of scenario, chased offenders, and put more than her fair share of them in handcuffs, many of them fighting her every step of the way. Drug addicts suffering psychotic breaks, hostage situations, and even had criminals aim guns and threaten her directly. Several times, she had to discharge her weapon, and once she wounded a man fleeing a domestic violence call. Nothing could have prepared her, though, for having to potentially face someone—possibly even a teenager—threatening so many young people at one time.
With the lockdown in place, they needed to do everything possible to help law enforcement find the creator of the social media post and take them into custody, whether it was a real threat or a hoax.
“Dr. Vaughn, move the office staff into a secure room with laptops and at least one that has a hardline connection to a printer. The Wi-Fi will go down at any moment, so they’ll have to work in offline mode. Have Juliette pull up a roster of everyone who’s out of school today. We can pass that to the tech guru at the local FBI office so they can start by checking their IPs to see if it’s one of them. If they have a second tech, they can search the district in case it was someone inside the building.”
He nodded. “It should take two minutes. It’s usually fully updated by now, except for late arrivals and early departures. There could be some of those in her email and voicemail yet.”
“The FBI will be able to access that and cross-reference.”
“I’ll start drafting a media statement,” Sealy said.
Lucas asked, “What about the handheld radios? Will those still be usable?”
“Yes, but the police will be quick to tell people to get off the frequency so that speakers don’t share information with anyone who might be listening in. They’ll be on their own frequency, and it will be a coded conversation. If someone managed to get on the same frequency, they’d need to know the codes to understand it.”
“All right. Let’s get on this.”
After they hung up with Sealy, Lucas looked at her. “Ezra.” His voice cracked. “He’s in honors study hall. He usually hides out in a corner hallway of the theatre wing because it’s quiet there since the theatre teacher doesn’t have class this hour. Since I know where he goes, I’ve never forced him to be in a traditional space. I shouldn’t play favorites?—”
“Stay here. You’ll be needed as a contact point. I’ll go retrieve him.”
“Thank you.” He gave her hand a squeeze, then kissed her cheek. “You can yell at me later for the public display of affection at work.”
She smiled, but she knew it was brittle. “I think it’s allowed, given the circumstances. Stay safe. No heroics if something comes up.”
“I promise. You as well.”
She nodded, then started moving toward the theatre wing.
THE LOCKDOWN
LUCAS
By the timehe finished his office tasks, Ezra was in his office and sitting at the worktable. He filled his son in on what was happening, extracting a promise that he would not turn on the light—which was easy enough to do since he was on his laptop with the screen dimmed a bit—and to stay out of sight by sitting behind the worktable. He could rest a little easier now that his son was behind a locked door and out of view of the window.
By now, a small number of students who had disobeyed the lockdown procedures had filtered into the main office. With help from the assistant principals, they secured those students in the in-school suspension room with an aide, and then they all returned to the main office area, where law enforcement began to gather.
Elyxandre was standing with Quint Axton at the front counter. Glancing at his watch, he saw they were just past ten o’clock. “How are we doing?”
“So far, so good. You holding up okay?”
“Yeah. Just hoping this blows over as a hoax. No teacher or admin wants to be in this situation. Even if it’s just some kid being stupid. Any word on tracing our hacker yet?”
“FBI is tracking it now and updating Quint every ten minutes or so. Whoever it was knows how to hide themselves. They’re bouncing the IP all over the place.”
“Could a high schooler do that?” he asked in surprise. “Sounds awfully advanced.”
“A smart one could. Ezra could probably tell you how to do it.”
He blanched.
“Relax, Lucas. I don’t for one second believe it’s Ezra.”
Quint asked, “Does he have other friends gifted in computer science?”
“I don’t know all of the students personally, but Ryker Sealy and Judah Lawson are both in his AP Computer Science class. Not sure how good they are compared to him. I can access grade reports for the class, but those don’t always tell me exactly how good a student is at something. Unfortunately, grades sometimes reflect timeliness more than ability.”
