Chapter Twenty-TwoKami
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when I found out the person they’d rescued from the roof was Kate. They brought her into the same tent as me. She looked terrified, and all I could do was scream on the inside. Nothing else could be done by that point: I’d told them everything I knew, everything I’d seen, everything I thought was going to happen.
“What’s your name?” the captain asked her when they sat her next to me, wrapped in a blanket.
Thiago’s mother looked at her with pleading eyes, as if she might have all the answers.
In a desperate voice, I asked Kate, “Did you see them? Did you see Thiago or Taylor?”
The captain cut me off: “Miss Hamilton, let me be the one—”
“He saved me,” Kate said, looking at her hands.
“Who?”
“He told me there was a way out. He asked me… He asked me to tell you…”
“Who, Kate?!”
“Thiago.” She looked me in the eyes. “I’m so sorry, Kami. I didn’t want—I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
She looked at Thiago’s mother, who was listening in silence, and started crying and trembling, on the verge of a panic attack.
“Call a medic!” the captain shouted.
“Wait!” Kate said, wiping her face. “He asked me some stuff. He said he needed to buy some time, stretch things out for as long as possible until the police could get inside.”
“I told you!” I said to the captain. “They have to hurry!”
“Kamila,” she replied, “I already gave the order. Did he tell you where they’d be?”
Kate nodded. “They’re in the principal’s office. Second floor on the right, behind the staircase that leads to the laboratories.”
The captain stood, walked over to her agents, and picked up a walkie-talkie, saying, “We’ve confirmed the perps’ whereabouts. They’re on the second floor.”
“They won’t get there in time,” Kate observed.
“Why?” I asked, grabbing her arm and forcing her to look at me.
“I told him. I told Thiago. My brother doesn’t care about me. Using me to threaten Jules so he’ll give up Taylor would never work.”
“Was that Thiago’s plan?”
Kate nodded.
“Oh my God,” Ms. Di Bianco said, trembling and stifling her sobs.
“I told him to come with me, Kami, I promise I did, but he refused. He said there was no way he’d leave his brother there. He told me—he told me to tell you he loves you, and please forgive him.”
I could barely see through the blur of tears rolling down mycheeks, and that was when we heard the shots. First there were just two, sounding much farther away than the shooting had when we were still inside the building.
“No!” I screamed, running out of the tent toward the school I’d attended since I was a little girl, but that was when someone grabbed me and held me back.
“Get her out of here; it’s too dangerous,” one of the cops yelled.
I could hear Ms. Di Bianco screaming to get through. All she wanted was to feel closer to her boys, but there was nothing we could do except wait. It was like a war zone, with police holding pistols, shotguns, assault rifles.
I heard a voice coming through a walkie-talkie. “They’re down. We got all three of them, sir.”
