“Do the same with this one,” he said to her.
She looked at the gun. Then at him. “I thought Tabloski was dead.”
“He is.”
“The threat isn’t over?”
“It probably is,” Boone said, “but just in case.”
Charly understood his concern. And she gladly took the gun.
“Kentucky is an open carry state, so don’t worry about getting in trouble. I’ll have that gun registered to you.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Boone said.
“A perk of being the boss?”
“You got it.”
“Well, I’m not the boss. I’ve got to get to work and get there on time.”
He waved at her as she drove away. He’d never felt prouder to have somebody representing him the way Charly represented him. She was, in his eyes, the very definition of classiness. And sexy? There was nothing sexier to him than to see her driving his car. He liked it. It made a statement, he felt.
He kept watching her until she was clean out of sight. His men would be shocked by his behavior, because he was shocked too. That was why he got into his truck, and sped off too.
Tabloski was gone, just as he told her, but he couldn’t stop wondering if the threat was over. Why he wondered it, he couldn’t say. But that pesky gut of his started bothering him again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Charly drove into the Dean of Students parking spot at Saint Christopher Academy, everybody in that parking lot was staring at her. That was Boone Ryan’s car, and they knew it. What in the world, they all wondered, was she doing behind the wheel?
They’d heard about the shooting, and how Boone just happened to be to her house at the time, but they still couldn’t believe he’d be that interested in her. He wasn’t that interested in anybody else, why would he be that interested in her? It was baffling to them.
But when Charly stepped out of that car, she wasn’t thinking about their prying eyes. She smiled at them, said hello to the few she knew by name, and made her way toward the school’s entrance. But if she were to be honest with herself, it felt good. By letting her drive his car, Boone wanted to make a statement to all of those in town who would doubt his allegiance to any woman, and particularly to her, and she had to admit it was working like a charm. Like a bludgeon over their heads.
Charly was never the showoff type. She kept her head down and got her work done. That was how she rolled. But to be Boone Ryan’s woman, as he called her, felt awesome.
She didn’t rub it in, however. That wasn’t how she rolled either. She made her way into the building as if it was any other day. She let her high-held head, her high-stepping feet, and that Ferrari do the talking for her.
But she had only made it to the main office, and was asking Minnie Fennel to pull up the absentee list from last week, when both of them heard a bloodcurdling scream that seemed so far away, but was so loud it seemed as if it was right in their own eardrums. And then they heard many screams, even louder screams, and the sound of students running.
Minnie ran to the office door and locked it, as if there was no one else on that campus, but Charly ran behind her and pushed her away. “There’re students out there!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
Charly quickly unlocked the door and as soon as she did, students ran into the office as if their lives depended on it. “Go to the back!” she yelled to the students as they ran in. “Go to the back!”
And all of them obeyed as if, for the first time in their lives, they were happy to be ordered about, and ran toward the back where the principal and vice-principal, and Charly’s offices were. Amos was still in jail, and Dr. Dorsett never arrived to work that early, so nobody was there but Charly. She was, by default, the senior staff in charge.
And she took charge, grabbing the gun Boone had given to her out of her purse so fast that the purse spilled all over the floor. Then she ran out of the office and into the hall. Minnie had run in the back with the students, but Charly knew she couldn’t hide back there.
“What’s happening?” she was asking the students who were running past her, but none of them could answer. They were running for their lives.
Charly never dreamed she’d be running to trouble. That wasn’t her on any given day. But these were kids. She had a gun. She had no choice.
But when she ran toward where all of the students were running from, and she saw what they were running from, she stopped in her tracks. She could hardly believe it.
And then another door opened, and the students that had been in the gym came rushing out, and the stampede was on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A chair flew all the way across the squad room and crashed through the window, shattering it so completely that the cops sitting anywhere near that window had to jump up and move out of the path of the flying glass.
But that glass was the least of their worries. Boone Ryan was pissed and he wasn’t holding back. “How in the world could this happen?” he was asking them. “He was booked yesterday and already he got out?”
“Looks like it might have been a processing error, Chief,” said Sarge.
“Processing error my ass!” Boone shot back. “What are talking about? I had him under house arrest until Tabloski was handled, and he didn’t escape then. But when we bring him to the station and put him in one of my cells, then he escapes? How in the world did that prisoner escape? How in the world is that even possible?”
Boone was beside himself with anger, as nobody could answer his questions. “Nobody’s leaving this building until I get answers,” he said. “He escaped? Are you kidding me? As long as it took me to find that asshole, and you’re telling me he escaped? I want an accounting of every man’s time from the moment he was brought to this station up until this very moment. I want cameras seized. I want phone records. I want laptops seized. Nobody in or out until I find out how the hell did this happen!”
The phone was ringing, but nobody dared answer it.
“Answer that gotdamn phone, what’s wrong with y’all?” Boone yelled, and Dontay quickly answered the call.
“When was the last prisoner check?” Boone asked Sarge.
Sarge looked at the logs. “Six-fifteen this morning.”
“And he was there?”
“He was there. Joby said he laid eyes on him and everything.”
Dontay stood up. “Chief?”
“What was he doing when Joby laid eyes on him?” Boone asked Sarge.
“Chief?” Dontay said again.
“He was asleep in his cell,” said Sarge.
“Chief?” Dontay said yet again and Boone yelled, “What?!”
“There’s been a shooting at the school, sir,” Dontay said.
“A school shooting?” Sarge said, jumping to his feet.
“At Hemingway High?” Boone asked, hoping that it wasn’t the other school.
“No, sir,” said Dontay. “At Saint Chris. And sir, there’s a fatality.”
Boone’s heart dropped. And he ran out of that squad room.
“Dontay, you and Morley go with him,” Sarge ordered since Boone didn’t bother to do so, and Dontay and Morley began hurrying out too. “I’ll get the cops on patrol over there too.”