Page 43 of Five Survive

Stop that. Up to channel eight now. Should she go back to three and make sure the sniper wasn’t trying to talk to them?

“Like our mom always says.” Oliver turned to Maddy. “A planmust have two parts, and you have to make sure either way plays out in your favor.”

“That’s win-win,” Maddy said, completing it for him.

Yes, Catherine Lavoy always had a plan, Red knew that. Birthday presents and reserves. Two different flavors of ice cream. Red herselfpreferred the lose-lose system: no plan at all and no backups. She pressed the down button back to three to check for the sniper’s voice. Nothing. Back up to eleven. Click, static, click.

“And what is the plan?” Simon said, his words more slurred now, but Red couldn’t tell if he was putting it on to irritate Oliver. “You’re the leader, the most high-value person here. What is your brilliant plan to escape the active shooter out there in the pitch-black who can see us but we can’t see him?”

Oliver’s jaw snapped open, hanging ajar as his eyes spooled in his head again, working loose.

“That’s it,” he laughed, slapping one hand against his hip. “That’s his only advantage, that we don’t know where he is.”

“I’d say his advantage is the giant fucking rifle with the laser sight,” Simon muttered.

Oliver didn’t hear him, or didn’t listen. “That’s the plan, that’s all we have to do. Work out exactly where he is out there. Find thesniper.”

1:00a.m.

“Find him?” Arthur said, at the same time as Reyna, voices clashing, each leaning on a different word.

Finding a sniper in the pitch-black wide-open nothing. Something about needles and haystacks, Red thought, or a shot in the dark. Literally. She scrolled up through the channels on the walkie-talkie, the flickering of the static not quiet enough to be just background noise. Nothing. More nothing.

“Yes,” Oliver said, his eyes too wide and his voice too loud. “Don’t you see, if we work out exactly where he is, we can use the RV to cover us while we run the other way. He’ll never even know.”

Oliver turned his wide shoulders, head following a moment later. He looked up at the mattress covering the broken window as though imagining the bullet, bringing it back to life in his head.

“From the positioning of the shots through both windows, and the first tire he shot out, he was definitely on this side.” He gestured beyond the front door. “I guess at an angle, though, if he was able to shoot out the tires on the other side, most likely aiming underneath the RV. So he must have been somewhere over there, low to the ground, hiding in the long grass.”

Oliver held out his arm at a diagonal, pointing his finger between the right side and back end of the RV.

“Okay.” Reyna swallowed, letting her hand skim Oliver’s as she came to stand beside him. “That narrows it down.”

Oliver moved his hand away, shaking his head. “No, hewasthere. But then he came up to the RV to plant the walkie-talkie on the driver’s-side mirror. He could have moved position after that, knowing we’d think about this.” He sighed. “Realistically, he could now be anywhere, on either side.”

Arthur nodded, eyes darting to the corners of the RV, like it was starting to shrink around him. At least it had that extra foot, thirty-one feet instead of thirty. “So how would we find him now?” he asked.

Oliver scrunched his face, thinking. And if that wasn’t enough, he said: “I’m thinking.”

How to find a shooter in the dark? Red should make another joke to cheer Maddy up, talk about the night-vision goggles she’d packed in her suitcase.

“Is now a good time to mention I packed my thermal imaging goggles?” Simon said, rising from the sofa. Hey, that was her line. A bit better, actually. Simon could have it.

“Shh,” Oliver hissed, pressing his fingers to his temples to think even harder. “Red?” he said suddenly, turning his attention to her.

The static fizzed as she looked up.

“When someone shoots a rifle, is there something other than the noise? Does it give off any light, a flash?”

Red shrugged. Why was he askingherthat? Oh, right, because her mom was a police captain and she would have known the answer. Oliver seemed like he was waiting for more.

“I don’t—” she began.

“—Yeah, there’s a muzzle flash,” Simon said, his arm knockinginto Red’s as he rejoined the group. Arthur was right; it was too small in here, and it was getting warm now too.

Everyone turned to look at Simon.

“It’s like that little explosion of light when you fire,” he said, finally looking up, noticing their eyes. “Why are youse all staring at me? What, you don’t watch movies? I mean the muzzle flash is not really there, it’s normally added in postproduction. But yeah: gun goes off, there’s a flash.”

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