Only the Hunted Run Read Free Page B

like a cattle stampede, screaming ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ Like that. Bursts of shots, one, two, half a dozen, you can’t really tell because it’s all marble and tile and everything echoes. So I ran downstairs, heardsome fire, hit the floor, but then the next volley was from upstairs because—”
    â€œClarifying. You were going
toward
the gunfire?”
    â€œâ€”it, what, yes, what? For all I knew it was firecrackers. Didn’t see a body till I got downstairs. Shooter ran upstairs after I went down.”
    â€œSo, wait, did you come in through that east entrance to the building, same as the shooter?”
    â€œYes. Peaches and cream at the time. But that was a couple hours ago. Look, I can’t hear shit in here. I got to move.”
    â€œSullivan. Sit tight. The SWAT team, the Navy Seals, the fucking cavalry, is coming. We’ll get eyewitnesses, survivors, from outside. What you—”
    â€œDid you see the video from Columbine?”
    â€œâ€”gave me just, wait, what?”
    â€œThe video. Columbine. You mentioned it. Did you see it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen you should know I’m not going to sit under a desk and hope the douche bag with a gun doesn’t come find me. I’m going to do my job, with a reasonable share of prudence and concern, and report in. What did you think I was doing abroad all that time? We need the scenery from when they take this guy down, the—”
    â€œI am telling—”
    â€œâ€”visuals of that. Do me a solid though, hey? My nephew, Josh? He’s staying with me for the summer? Call the house, tell him not to freak about the news. There’s stuff in the freezer he can microwave for dinner or—”
    â€œSullivan!”
    â€œâ€”just get whatever. Gotta run, brother. Turning this thing off. Keep 1-A open. I’m coming back to you, and it’s gonna be a freight train.”

FOUR
    HE OPENED THE door to the conference room a few inches. Nothing but the endless, bell-clanging alarm. His head was really thumping now. It was jabbing at his vision, shards of light. You’d think somebody would shut that fucking thing off. Down he went to his good knee, to bend and—“Ay!”—he staggered, his good leg bent beneath him and the other, gimpy, suddenly splayed out. His head clipped the edge of the door. Beads of sweat burst out on his forehead. He wiped them away with a shirtsleeve. His scars itched.
    His fingers found the edge of the door. He pulled it open an inch, then another. He peered out, looking far to the right and to the left. Empty. A deep breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Calm. He was calm as fucking little white clouds above a flat blue ocean.
    Exhaling, he shoved off and was sprinting to the Speaker’s chamber, completely exposed, nowhere to hide—and then the door to the chamber burst open. A herd of humanity shot out of it, ten or fifteen or twenty of them, struggling to get through the doorway all at once, arms here and legs there, women in skirts, men in suits, nobody in charge, faces tight and drawn, everybody coming at him so hard he couldn’t register what anyone looked like. They swept past him helter-skelter, churning hard, no one speaking, just grunts and gasps, the last guy through in hissixties but a hard-ass, had to be former military, you could tell, that gait. Sully reached out from the wall to take his arm.
    â€œWhere is he? How many?”
    The man snatched his arm back. Never slowed, but half turned in his retreat. Hissed, pointing: “Down that hall! White. White male.” And he was gone, the herd stampeding ahead of him, out of sight down the corridor.
    Sully waited a beat, then two, to see if there were footsteps coming in pursuit of the herd. None. He shuffled forward, now almost flat against the wall.
    The corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the right up ahead, a hard L. Across