There were no spots this close to the school. He had to drive aroundthe park to find a space. Getting out, he scanned for the hatchback as he peeled off his black slicker. “Take my jacket. Your guy’s seen you in that orange coat.”
“I told you, he’s not my guy.” She stood on the parking strip and peeled off her coat and pulled on his larger one. He stood bareheaded in a thin blue fleece in the falling rain. Tall and lean, muscle and bone, nothing extra. “What are you going to wear?”
He reached behind the seat and pulled out his old brown duck Carhartt jacket. “This’ll do.” It wasn’t remotely waterproof, but the school was only a few blocks away. He ran the zipper up, pulled a faded blue baseball hat down over his damp, shaggy hair, then tucked the pistol into his pocket and slipped the keys above the sun visor. “Leave your door unlocked,” he said. “Can you drive stick?”
She blinked. “Why do you ask?”
“In case something happens to me.”
Her eyes widened and her voice rose. “What would happen to you?”
“Katelyn.” He gave her a steady look. “Can you drive stick?”
She stared at him for a moment, then swallowed hard. “It’s been a while. But yes.”
“Excellent.” He smiled at her. “If something happens, anything, you and your daughter run for the truck and get the hell out of Dodge. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Ready?”
“Definitely not.” She pulled in a breath, let it out. “Let’s go get my daughter.”
Peter tended to put people into two categories. Those who stepped up when the time came, and those who didn’t.
KT hadn’t asked for this, but she was stepping up. For all the right reasons.
Peter liked her an awful lot just then.
—
They walked up the sidewalk, almost as if they weren’t on the lookout for a possible killer. Peter kept his hand on the pistol in his pocket, his head on a swivel. Had he imagined the hatchback? Maybe. Better to assume it was out there, though.
“Where are the police,” she asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “They’ll be here soon. A gun threat at a school will have their attention.”
They crossed the road and cut through the park. It wasn’t large, just big enough for a couple of Little League fields and an open space for soccer or whatever. Ahead, a slow stream of middle-school students walked toward them in groups of two and three, shoulders hunched against the rain. The big pistol didn’t really fit in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to start a panic. He unzipped his jacket, then tucked the gun into his waistband at the small of his back, where the hem would cover it. The cotton canvas was absorbing water like a sponge.
Passing a trio of students, they found the gate at the last baseball diamond. Past it was an ugly low redbrick and concrete building with a blue and white sign that said it was a community center. “The school is just up there,” she said.
The line of cars was moving slowly, a few with doors open, loading kids. “Where does she usually wait for you?”
“Under the covered entryway,” she said. “With her friends.”
Peter turned to look over his shoulder again, scanning the street and the opposite sidewalk. How vulnerable these kids were, he thought. All the school shootings in the last few years, it made him sick. And here he was, walking up with a pistol. It was the other guy’s fault, Peter knew, the asshole with the clown mask and the cheap sneakers. But these kids shouldn’t have to deal with any of it.
“Call her again,” he said. Still no police.
Her phone was already in her hand. She hit speed-dial and put it to her ear, listening. Then made a face and shoved it back in her pocket. “It went to voicemail.”
Now he could see the entryway. It had concrete pillars and a broad, flat roof that ran between the community center and the school. The school was nicer than the community center, more redbrick and windows and less concrete, but it still had an industrial look. Or maybe a little like jail, Peter thought. That’s how he’d felt about school, growing up in northern Wisconsin. Even then, before his wars and their aftermath, he’d always preferred being outside. Even in the rain.
Students stood in clumps under the flat roof, talking, laughing, most of them in shirtsleeves, some alone and on their phones. Kids being kids. “You see her?”
“No.”
He steered KT toward the entryway, checking the street, the sidewalk. No hatchback. “Where else would she be?”
