"Listen to me. He's got a wall there covered in newspaper clippings, case files, names. The four victims. All crossed out with dates. An open box of .308 match ammunition. And a flyer for this event with Luther's face scratched through."
McKenzie looked at the stage. Luther was at the podium now, speaking into the microphone. The crowd was attentive, some standing, some in chairs. Campaign volunteers moved through the rows with flyers and donation envelopes.
"You're telling me the sniper is here. Right now."
"I'm telling you he might be. And he's military trained. He won't be in the crowd."
“Then where?”
"Three hundred to five hundred yards. That's been his range on every kill."
McKenzie looked at the rooftops. His hand moved to his radio. "I've got Ray inside. Two High Peaks officers on the perimeter. That's it. This was supposed to be a campaign event, not a security operation."
"It's both now. You need to alert him."
"If I pull Luther off that stage and nothing happens, I'm finished. If I don't and something does, I'm worse than finished." McKenzie's eyes were moving the way Noah's were moving, scanning the upper floors, the angles, the gaps between buildings. "Who is he? The shooter. Give me a name."
"Liam Hale."
McKenzie's face changed. "Rebecca's son?”
"Yeah."
"Jesus." McKenzie pressed his radio. "Ray. We have a potential threat at the event. I need eyes on every elevated position within five hundred yards of the stage. Get your officers moving. Quietly. Do not pull Ashford yet."
The radio crackled back. "Copy. Moving now."
Noah turned to the crowd. He wasn't looking at Luther. He was looking at everything else. The windows of the building across the street. The roofline of the hardware store. The gap between the post office and the old bank building. The second-floor balcony of the inn on the corner.
Then he saw Hugh.
His father was in the crowd, fifteen feet to the right of the stage, standing near the drinks table. He wore a dark jacket and a white shirt. He was talking to a woman Noah didn't recognize, holding a paper cup, nodding at whatever she was saying.
Hugh Sutherland at Luther Ashford's fundraiser. The two men whose secrets were woven through the same case, standing in the same crowd, twenty feet apart.
Noah started moving toward Hugh. Not to talk to him. To get him away from the stage. Away from the open sightline. Away from whatever was about to happen.
He was twelve feet away when it happened.
Not a sound, a movement.
A woman near the stage flinched and looked up. She had seen something — a reflection, a glint of light from an upperwindow in the building across the street. It was an old brick office block that had once housed an insurance company and a dentist, its flat roof rising three stories above the crowd.
She grabbed the arm of the man beside her and pointed.
Luther was mid-sentence. Something about community investment. Something about the future of High Peaks. His voice was amplified and steady and completely unaware.
The crack split the air.
It was louder than Noah expected. Sharper. The kind of sound that doesn't register as a gunshot until a half-second after you've already reacted to it. It bounced off the stone facade of the museum and came back as an echo that made it impossible to locate the source.
Noah dropped. Instinct kicked in. Muscle memory from two decades of training taking over before his conscious mind could process what was happening. His knees hit the grass. His hands went flat on the ground. He was already looking up, already tracking.
The crowd erupted.
Screams. Chairs toppled. People ran in every direction with no idea which direction was safe. A drinks table went over. Glass shattered on the flagstone path. A woman fell and someone tripped over her. Campaign signs blew sideways as bodies pushed past them. The amplified system let out a shriek of feedback as someone knocked the podium.
Two men in dark suits, Luther's private security, had Luther on the ground behind the stage. They had moved fast. Faster than the crowd. One was on top of him. The other was crouched with a handgun drawn, scanning the rooftops.
