Page 36 of Home Free

“Stay low,” Ronan said as they reached the bottom of the staircase.

He didn’t need to tell Finn twice. The gunfire from the mezzanine was ear-splitting and endless. It sent a visceral bolt of alarm through Finn’s body, and adrenaline had taken over in a rush of manic energy he knew was dangerous.

It took training to react like Ronan, to survey all the dangers, all the possibilities, when your nervous system was getting cues that you were about to die.

They pushed through the crowd, some trying for the main exit, others looking for a less crowded way out of the hall.

Finn homed in on the area where he’d spotted Elise and Julia, by the giraffe exhibit near the middle of the hall. There was no time to think about anything but getting them out before they were trampled by the crowd.

She was still there, crouched on the floor with her hands over her head.

He touched her and she flinched, her eyes full of terror until she realized it was him. “It’s okay,” he said. “Take my hand.”

She did and Finn pulled her up off the floor.

Julia was already up.

“Side entrance,” Ronan said. “Stay behind me. Finn, bring up the rear.”

“What about them?” Elise asked as they headed toward the gun-wielding men who’d taken up position on the main floor.

“If they wanted to shoot, they would have done it already,” Ronan said.

Finn saw what he meant. Their compatriots where still shooting from the mezzanine, but the ones on the ground were letting the panicked crowd leave. Then he noticed something else: there was a reason glass was shattering everywhere, a reason there were no dead bodies on the floor.

The men shooting from the mezzanine weren’t shooting to kill. This was an exercise in chaos.

A message. A warning.

The danger came from the crowd, panicked and desperate to escape, shoving each other to the ground in their efforts to find an exit, trying to avoid the men with guns even though they weren’t shooting.

Ronan led the way, Finn dropping to the back as Julia and Elise moved between them. A big man in a tux smacked into Elise so hard she staggered sideways.

Finn reached for her arm to keep her from dropping to the floor under the stampeding crowd, then moved in closer behind her, scanning left and right, trying to spot any threat before it got close enough to do her any damage.

He braced himself for a fight as they approached the men with guns, half expecting them to notice their small group, to start firing at them.

The men looked past them. Whoever was in charge of the attack wasn’t there for them.

Ronan moved past them, followed by Julia and Elise. Then Finn was stepping into the night behind them, sirens piercing the air, blue and red lights sweeping the ground as police officers rushed toward the museum.

20

Elise looked at the newspaper in Finn’s hands, the nightmare of the previous night summed up in the photograph of people scattering across the museum floor, the men who’d shot at them visible only as black shadows.

They’d followed coverage on social media the night before, but seeing it in black and white was surreal.

“That’s him,” Finn said, pointing at the photograph of an old man under the headline RECLUSIVE PHILANTHROPIST TARGETED AT BOXGROVE GALA?

“How can you be sure?” Ronan asked. “You said you barely got a look at him.”

“Because I recognize this.” Finn unfolded the paper and pointed to another picture, this one taken just outside the museum’s door.

In the picture, four men in black suits were rushing for a black SUV, a small, bald man barely visible behind their broad shoulders. Elise hadn’t seen them making their escape — she’d been too busy hitting the floor, trying not to get shot — but Finn had told them about the bodyguards who’d ushered their charge out the door.

“These are the same guys I saw making a beeline for the doors when the shooting started,” he said, handing the paper to Ronan. “And two of the terrorists went after them.”

“Doesn’t look like they caught them,” Ronan said. “It says here the guy’s name is Aldrich Cromwell, and he got away without injury.”

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