Snapped Read Free

Where was the shooter? She eased up slowly and peered around the base of the bronze statue.
    Crack
.
    An agonized scream behind her. Sophie recoiled. She peeked beneath her quivering elbow and saw a man hunched at the base of a flagpole, clutching his bloody ankle.
    Sophie’s gaze was drawn to the corpse behind her, now baking on the sidewalk. At the edge of the grass, another man lay sprawled across the ground, a backpack beside him. A student. Sophie’s heart jackhammered against her rib cage as she watched the flies already buzzing around him.
    This can’t be happening
.
    The crying intensified. Sophie glanced again at the child, who was hunched over her mother, sobbing uncontrollably. She had to be only two, maybe three years old. The woman twisted onto her side, probably trying to shield the girl with her body. They were behinda large oak tree, thank goodness. But if the child moved too much—
    Crack
.
    Glass shattered on a building nearby.
    Crack. Crack. Crack
. One by one, the second-story windows exploded. She thought of those shooting games at carnivals where the targets were little yellow ducks.
    Sirens grew louder as Sophie scoured the rooflines for any sort of movement or muzzle flash. She went from building to building all around the quadrangle, searching the red tile roofs and the highest row of windows.
    Her gaze came to rest on the white limestone monolith that sat atop the hill, overlooking the entire campus like a giant Sphinx. And suddenly she knew. The gunman was on top of the library.
    And from there he could see everything.

 
    Bo McCoy sprinted up the steps to his fraternity house and shoved through the front door. A couple of guys playing Ping-Pong shouted at him, but he couldn’t hear them over the music blaring from someone’s stereo. He took the stairs two at a time, then tore down the hallway. He slipped on a puddle outside the bathroom, but scrambled to his feet and kept going, not stopping until he was standing in front of his closet and staring up at the long plastic case. He yanked it down, then grabbed a box of bullets from the top shelf and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans. The fluorescent orange hunting cap on the shelf caught his eye. It was a hundred degrees out, but he grabbed it anyway just for luck and stuffed it down the front of his pants. He raced out of his room and down the stairs.
    “Hey, McCoy, where’s the fire?” one his brothers called from the doorway as Bo leaped down the porch steps and sprinted across the lawn.
    Bo ignored him and raced toward the quad.
    The hastily designated command post was the lobby of the psychology building on the south side of the quadrangle.The east facade was made of glass, unfortunately. But as an advantage, it had a clear view of the entire quad, plus protected accessibility through an underground maintenance tunnel that connected it to several other buildings. Jonah stood in the lobby now, juggling calls from two different bosses—Reynolds, his police lieutenant, and Cosgrove, his SWAT commander. Cosgrove and most of Jonah’s SWAT teammates were at this very moment hauling ass down here from Austin.
    “We’ve got officers setting up barricades at all entrances to campus,” Reynolds was telling him over his cell phone. “Campus security evacuated the buildings facing the quad and the rest are in lockdown. Still no confirmation on our guy’s location.”
    “We got a location on the shooter?” Jonah yelled across the room at Ric, who was on his radio.
    “Dispatch just took a 911 call,” Ric shouted back. “From a woman pinned down at the base of a statue. She says the shooter’s on top of the library.”
    Jonah rushed to the window and looked out. “Shit! He’s got the high ground.”
    Jonah hoped to hell the caller was mistaken, but he doubted it. The library was the highest point for miles. If Jonah had wanted to set up a position, he’d have picked the exact same spot.
    A cold ball formed in the pit of his