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He’d thought he had a second to get a better picture of what was going on.  He’d stopped, taken a look in the house.

Why hadn’t he chased?

What would chasing achieve?  Dangerous people might see his face, but in exchange, he might figure out where they were going?  Or something else?

He had a sense of where they were going.

He dialed, as he got out of the car.

Natalie first.

There was a man lying beside the front steps.  He might have gone over the railing.  His pants and one side of his abdomen were spotted with spreading bloodstains.

Natalie wasn’t answering.

There were more casualties inside.

He set his phone to record and slipped it into a shirt pocket, camera peeking out over the top.

“Who’re you?” the man asked, grimacing.

“A neighbor,” Ben lied.

Another neighbor was running over.  Others had poked their heads outside.

“I need to get the fuck out of here,” the guy said, groaning as he tried to stand.  Ben could see his leg quaver, fighting to find the right angle where it didn’t hurt too much, but still provided support.  He gripped a supporting pole of one of the railings at the side of the porch.

“What happened?”

“They’re crazy.  Fuck.”

It looked like this guy had been hit by flecks of something.  A shotgun?

Ben backed away a couple steps as the man pulled himself to his feet.

“My friends.”

Ben paused, watching as the man limped inside.

“Do you know them?” the neighbor asked.

“I… think they’re intruders.”

“Oh my god.  There’s blood everywhere.”

The man returned, carrying someone who was much more wounded- the same spots of open bleeding were on the man’s face and upper chest, not his lower body.  A teenager, it looked like.

He made it down two steps, and his leg failed to support him.  Ben caught him, helping to catch the boy he was carrying.

That got him a glare, a snarl.  The man dropped one leg, putting a free hand closer to his hip.

Gun.

“Not your enemy,” Ben said, keeping his voice level.  “It’s in everyone’s interest if you walk away.  Get your buddy help.”

“Yeah.  Get the fuck out of my way.”

Ben did.  So did the other neighbor.

Ben paused a second, eyeing the surroundings.  Flecks of blood in places.  Like it had been sprayed unevenly.  Small holes all over every surface.  Some broken glass, thick.

A piece of torn metal on the wood of the porch.  A black cylinder, exterior in rough shape, dinged by the same shrapnel that had gone everywhere, had wedged itself into the space between the raised railing and the porch below.

More, similar damage inside.  More glass.  No cylinder that he could see.

How?

His eyes went up.

The light fixture was missing.

He headed to the door.

Similar inside.

“Do you know the Hursts?” he asked the neighbor.

“Some.  My daughter does.”

“I have a bad feeling you’re going to regret letting her spend time around them.”

“She’s at school.  What do you mean?  What do you know?  Do you know them?”

“I thought I did.  I’m a journalist.  I was looking into them.”

I wasn’t, enough.  Still, he wanted to be seen as legitimate.

“What is this?” the neighbor asked.

I wish I knew.

He bent down by one of the bodies in the hallway.

They were barely breathing.  And they were bleeding enough that it was basically impossible to kneel beside them without kneeling in blood.

“Oh my god.  Are they government?”

“No,” he said.  Maybe she thought that because some were wearing suits.  He considered the image he’d seen.  With the proposed links between the Cavalcanti crime family and the government and media.  “Maybe.  “Call for an ambulance.  Multiple.  Um, there were-”

He tried to recall.  The chaos of it all made it hard.

“-ten men.  Plus two others.  Two left, so that’s eight injured or dead.”

She was dialing.  “Ten?  Eight- I don’t- I’m-”

This was a lot.  She wasn’t thinking straight, and he was communicating stream of consciousness.  “Eight injured,” he told her.  “Tell them there’s eight injured.”

“Hello?  I-”

A movement in the corner of his eye made him startle.  Something falling in the living room.

He got to his feet, moving toward the neighbor in the same motion.

There was no way to handle it, except to throw himself at her.  Knocking her off her feet.

He’d barely made contact with her when the first device went off.

An ear-splitting bang, and a flash of brilliant light, painfully bright even in the next room, a wall between them and the device.

It was loud enough he barely registered that the second device had activated too.  Presumably on impact with the floor.

A window cracked.  A picture on the wall shattered.  And small holes, too small to put a finger through, opened up in the wall, stairs, and the door between front hall and kitchen, that was in the line of fire when open.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She stared at him, eyes wide.  She didn’t look okay.  But it wasn’t because of injuries.

“Phone, call for help.”

“Was that a bomb?” she asked.

The man who was bleeding out had also been in the line of fire, lying in the front hallway.  Hit once by the front hall one, which had been bad enough to essentially kill him, caught by some of the living room.

“That was a bomb,” she said, answering her own question.  She scrambled to leave the house, stepping out onto the patio.

Ben’s eye went to a fallen fire alarm, above the base of the stairs.  A plastic cap?

Looking up at the ceiling, there was a hole above it.

They’d cut a neat little hole into the ceiling, put these grenades up in the hole, one atop the other, and set it up so the fire alarm and cap would fall out, grenades following.  There were light fixtures and maybe even a ceiling fan that were the same, by the looks of it.  Essentially filling the ground floor of the house with flashbangs and shrapnel if needed.

“Was there a big explosion a few minutes ago?”

“It’s why I stepped outside.  There was gunfire, too.”

“Not a bomb, exactly.  A trap.  They rigged the entire house.”

“The invaders did, or-?”

“The Hursts.”

She didn’t seem to comprehend that.

One more man was halfway up the stairs.  Ben moved with more care, now.  The neighbor got up, putting phone to ear.

The man on the stairs was dead.

Three more in the kitchen-dining room area.  A lot of the appliances had been dinged and damaged.  Plastic and glass had broken for blenders, mixers…

“The person on the phone is saying to get out of the house, clear the area.  Secure our own safety first.”

“You go,” he told her, as he opened the door to the basement.

Two more were lying on the stairs.  One had his throat slashed.  The other had his eyes open, unblinking.

He took the stairs carefully, bent down, and checked. Fingers to throats.

A trace below normal body temperature, no pulse.  Both very dead.

The basement was partially finished, with struts up, wires threaded through holes in the wood, but no drywall on them.  They blocked off a play area, littered with toys, and a laundry area.  There was a safe in the laundry area.

Guns?

Ben started back up the stairs, then paused.

There was a fusebox in the corner of the basement.  And another, smaller one near the door up to the kitchen.  He opened it, looking.  He couldn’t make heads or tails of the labeling.  IP, UR, LC.

The other fusebox was normal.

Had this been how they’d done it?

He could imagine how it had played out.  Them entering, making it into the basement.  The door shutting and sealing, maybe.  One of them using this little fusebox to trigger the traps.  That’d leave them the two on the stairs to deal with.

Which they had.

There might even have been a trap for the stairs.

If things had played out differently, and it had been the Hurst household that Natalie, Roderick and I had gone to, three hours ago, would they have been ready to do this to us?

His heart beat a rapid rhythm as he took it all in.

There was still someone missing.  Maybe he was further upstairs.  Or maybe he’d left.

He stopped the recording and dialed Natalie again.

He heard a shout upstairs, before she could pick up.  He headed up the stairs before he heard a repeat of the cry.

“Fire!” the neighbor called.

He hit ‘record’ again, slipping phone into pocket as he rushed upstairs.  He saw the orange glow of fire in the kitchen, and felt the wash of heat against his face

“It happened all at once!”

An outlet near the stairs flared.

Ben wasted no time in getting out of the house.  He and the neighbor moved out into the front lawn, standing back on the grass, staring as orange glows appeared at the windows.

“What in the hell?” the neighbor asked.

Was it something I did?  I walked downstairs, looked around.  Opened the doors of the real fuse box and the fake little one...

He checked his phone.  Natalie hadn’t picked up.

“My phone just cut off,” the neighbor said.

He checked his.  It still recorded, but…  No service?

Was that why Natalie hadn’t called back?  Or had it just happened?

He ran to his car, climbed in, and drove.

He was at the end of the block when his phone chimed.  He felt a crawling sensation across his back and the back of his neck.  Had she done that too, in conjunction with the traps and the fire?  A jammer?  What else had she done?

What was he up against?

He tried Natalie, fingers fumbling with the contact list.  He wished he’d gotten the food and drink, if only to have something to wet his mouth and throat.  He leaned his chair back, reaching his arm out, got his backpack, and found some water and juice boxes he’d grabbed for when he’d taken Sterling to the park.  He drank greedily, trying to center himself.

No response, even after it had rung a while.  He hung up.

He searched through the contacts, found a neighbor of Natalie’s, and called.

“Hello?  Deb Vasquez.”

Need to get a release for her part on this.

“This is Benito Jaime, I’m staying with Natalie Teale, she lives at 1211?”

“I know Natalie.  Is there a problem?”

“Emergency, big one, and I can’t get ahold of her at her place.”

“I’m not in the neighborhood, but let me call someone who is.  What do I say or do?”

“Have her call Ben,” he said.  He thought of the state he’d left her in.  “If she’s not responding, break in.  She may not be okay.”

“Okay.”

Fuck.  Fuck all of this.

Roderick.

He dialed.  This time, he cut off the recording.

“Ben.  What’s going on?”

“Roderick.  Did you get the judge?”

“It’s Rider, and yeah.  School’s handling that end of things.  Tell me.  Why?”

“It’s the Hursts.  And they rigged their house.  Explosives, flashbangs, fire.  Even a cell jammer, I guess so they could make sure anyone caught inside couldn’t call for help.”

“No shit?  That makes me think of a larger scale trafficking operation.  Or pervs covering their tracks.  If what you have on a hard drive is bad enough…”

Ben didn’t want to think about that.

“Were you breaking in when you found those things?”

“No.  Can you back me up here?  There’s more I haven’t gotten into.”

“More in what direction?”

“Eight bodies, two injured, to start with.”

“Right.”

“Someone tried to get me to leave the Hurst’s neighborhood before stuff went down, and they handed me a packet of info.  Massive government conspiracy stuff.  As a distraction.”

“Where do I meet you?”

“The school.  At Foley and Austin.”

“I’m already there.  I thought I should be, after that call from you.  Do you want me to call friends?”

Did he?

If there really was a complex conspiracy tying into the police, then that meant anyone could be compromised.  Roderick wasn’t from this state and lived elsewhere even now, even if he was licensed here.  That reduced the risk.  It would be hard to sort through a list of other names with those ideas in mind.

“Let’s run through that later.  Be-”

Ben’s phone alerted him.  Natalie was calling.

“-careful.  Let the school know the Hursts may be coming to pick up their kid.  They filled their house with shrapnel and flashbangs and had it rigged to burn.  I’m guessing they’re armed.”

“Got it.”

He hung up, then answered Natalie’s call.

“Is it Sterling?”

Her first words.

“No.”

Where to even fucking begin?

He switched to speaker, got his camera from the passenger seat, positioned it, and turned it on.

“Camera’s running,” he let her know.

“Camera?  What’s going on, Ben?”

“I was watching the Hursts, some things happened.  Nothing’s confirmed, but it’s safe to say they’re involved in something criminal.  In a big way.  Roderick talked to a judge.  They’re holding the Hurst children at the school.”

He swallowed.

What the hell was he meant to say or do?

“You found her?”

“Nothing’s confirmed.  But they jumped to the top of my list in a big way.  Are you clear to drive?”

“I- that’s a whole conversation.  Yes.”

“If it’s a whole conversation where you’re not safe to drive, I can pick you up.  It might be better if I do.”

“I’ll drive.  To the school?”

“Nat,” he said.  He wished a moment later he hadn’t said ‘Nat’ for the camera.  “Be careful.  I’m pretty sure they killed eight, maybe nine people.”

“Cammy’s been exposed to that?”

Her voice cracked at ‘exposed’.

“No.  She’s at school.  Eight or nine people this morning.  I’m not even sure what’s going on.  They are likely armed and the are very, very serious.  I’ve called Roderick back in.  Make sure you aren’t being followed or intercepted.”

“I’m getting in the car now.  I talked to her.”

“To Mia Hurst?”

“In the parking lot on school grounds.  She gave me bad vibes, but I told myself I probably give people bad vibes too.  I thought it’d be nice if we could become friends.  Is that weird?”

Ben really, really wished Natalie hadn’t taken it on herself to approach Catherina Grant and Mia Hurst on her own.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Ben?  How much of you saying this isn’t confirmed is because of this morning?  Maya?”

“All we know is that they’re tied up in murders, had weapons, had their house rigged with traps, and on two separate instances, when I was close to them, someone tried to distract me.”

“The accusation at the school.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god.  Okay.  I’m going to the school.”

“Be safe.  I’m serious.  If this is Cammy, then you don’t do anyone any favors if you get hurt.”

“Yeah.  Eight or nine bodies?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t start driving until I’m off the phone, bye.”

“Natalie?  You only get one shot at a first impression.  If you go straight at her, telling her you’re her mom, it might hurt things.  She seemed like a happy enough kid, and even if you’re in the right, it’ll be traumatizing.  If it’s you breaking the news, it’s you upending her life.  Hold off?”

“I’ve spent a decade imagining this, Ben.  I’m not an idiot.  I know I- I got my dose of humility this morning.  I’m-“

He could hear her rustling.  Getting things.

“-I’ll talk to you while I’m there, I’m pulling out of the driveway.”

“Okay.”

“…I’ll hold off.”

She hung up.

He sighed heavily.

He didn’t want to be around here if the police decided to show up.  That could mean hours of questioning, especially if he was the person who had the best sense of what was going on, in a clusterfuck like this.  They’d hold him as long as possible to try to answer questions.

The house was gone.

A lot of evidence and leads gone with it, which he supposed was the point.

School.

He belatedly turned off the camera, then changed the battery and storage drive, so he wouldn’t be doing it later.  It did a lot to center him.

There was a chance all the footage might be vital to unraveling this later.

The morning was late enough that they were approaching lunch, which was why some early lunchgoers had been clogging up the drivethrough.  Traffic was picking up, and he didn’t really mind. Stopping at lights or waiting for a gap gave him time to think.

It might be impossible to make sense of this situation right now.  He had things on his phone, and there was some small chance that if he searched through it all, he might find something, but he was pretty sure there were no direct links to names.

If the names the Hursts had been using for over a decade were their actual names.

Was there a danger?  He’d warned Natalie, because he could imagine very dangerous people like this deciding that the best way to resolve the issue of who Cammy was meant to go to would be to kill Nat.

Was there a danger to him?

Did they know who he was?

Were they watching, even now?

While he waited for a green light, his eyes scanned nearby parking lots and parked cars.  Just people.  Regular people.  Someone had been in the car that had picked up Mia and Carson Hurst.  That meant they had help, the same way Ben had Roderick.

They were probably watching the school.  Taking stock.

Thinking along those lines calmed him.  Imagining he was being tracked or watched wasn’t a good feeling, but it narrowed things down from him having a thousand things he could be doing to something more manageable.

If they were watching, he didn’t see them, but the idea they might be focused him.

He pulled into the school parking lot.  One of the younger kindergarten classes was out, playing with the teacher’s supervision, and some parents had already arrived for the lunchtime pickup.

He had a bad feeling, seeing that.  His eyes scanned the houses surrounding the school, the parked cars… nothing.

He grabbed his camera and camera bag, strap slung across his body.

Inside the school, a security guard was talking to a twenty-something woman.

If they didn’t stop Ben, would they stop the Hursts?

The front office wasn’t far from the kindergarten entrance.  There was a nook beside it with a seating area, and both Natalie and Roderick were there.  Natalie stood from her chair as she saw him.

Inside the office, a row of chairs faced the front desk.  The Hurst children were there.

“Sir!”

One of the secretaries.

“You’re not supposed to be here.  You were banned from the premises.”

“That’s the least important thing right now,” he told her.  He got his phone, opened the video, and played it.

She frowned for the seconds it took to process what was on screen.  him leaving his car.  Walking over to the house.  Natalie stepped around to look.

“Oh my gosh,” the secretary said.  “What is this?”

“Their house,” he said.

He let his eyes communicate who the ‘their’ was.

“What?”

“Can we talk to the principal?”

“I’ll go check.  Can you stay seated?  Don’t engage with anyone, don’t go anywhere?”

“Yeah.  Of course.”

He sat between Roderick and Natalie, and showed Roderick the video.

“What was this explosion?” Roderick asked.

“House-wide traps.  Light fixtures rigged to drop down.  There was one in the living room that deployed late.  Maybe an accident, something that didn’t deploy when it should have, got stuck on the way down?”

“House wide?”

“They set the house to burn, too.  I’m not sure if I triggered something by accident, or if that got stuck too.”

“Or if it was time delayed.”

“I’m… really glad it wasn’t their family that we confronted this morning,” Ben restated his earlier thought.  He looked at Natalie as he said it.

She had tears in her eyes, and looked upset.

Sitting there, aware of this danger, seeing the girl who might be her daughter, sitting across from them, in the front office.

“Where’s Sterling?” Ben asked.

“School.  Class.”

“Kindergarten gets out for the day at lunch.”

“Yeah.  Um.  I should pick him up.  Except I don’t want to leave,” Natalie said.  She blinked rapidly, to clear her eyes.

“Just, um, so I know, I asked about substances…”

“No.  No,” she told him, putting emphasis on the second ‘no’.  “I- what I was going to say was I was debating it.  I thought my first priority was getting it together enough I wouldn’t upset Sterling.  If I could sleep, maybe I could reset.  I considered taking something.  But ever since Cammy was taken, I’ve been terrified about going down that road.  Especially since Sterling was born.”

Her eyes went to Ripley Hurst when she said ‘Cammy’, and didn’t leave after that.

Ripley, for her part, was occupying her younger brother.  Tyr.  They were reading one of the younger-age bits of reading material together.

“Yeah,” Ben said.  She’d mentioned a little bit of this before.

“One of ten different internal debates and wars I’ve been having with myself.  I’m not sure any of it matters now.”

“I was telling Ben I think the patterns fit large-scale trafficking operations,” Roderick said.  “And even if it’s not that, it’s a good mental map to fall back to.”

The principal had come outside, and the staff were having a huddled conversation at the far end of the office.

Another student had showed up.  She went straight to Ripley and Tyr, checked in with them, then went to the desk.

“Um, excuse me?” she called across the office.

Ben, camera sitting on his camera bag, which rested on his knee, turned the camera on.

“Josie.  We were debating calling you in.  Can you sit for a minute?  We’re working things out.”

“My mom texted me, I think it’s an emergency?”

“We know, we’ll get to you in a second.”

One woman, the vice principal, walked over.  Ben could see the principal going to the back of the office, sitting down.

“How credible a threat is the woman we’re talking about?” the vice principal asked.

“Very,” Ben said, at nearly the same time as Roderick.

“I’m going to need you to turn that camera off.”

“I’m not-”

A loud ringing made Ben nearly jump out of his seat and drop the camera he was about to put a protective hand over.

Fire alarm?

“That’s a trap.  That’s them,” Ben said.

“That’s us,” the vice-principal said.  “We discussed and decided.”

The school announcement system came on.  Ben could see the principal speaking into the microphone.  “Teachers, please escort students to the black zones.”

“That’s code,” Roderick said.

“There’s been a bomb threat,” the vice-principal told them, quiet.  She looked spooked.  “Don’t make a commotion.”

“It’s them.”

The entire school was noisy with the sound of desks and chairs screeching upstairs, the noise of the alarm.

“It’s very probable it’s them, but we’ve seen on camera how they do actually use explosives.  Unless the secretary was mistaken?”

Natalie gripped Ben’s arm.  “Sterling.”

“You find and get him as soon as possible.  I’ll watch things here.  Okay?  I watch Camellia.”

“Ben, no, I can’t.  What about Roderick?”

“Roderick isn’t allowed, and neither am I.  Nat, they won’t even let me pick him up.  I got taken off the list when they accused me, remember?”

“She can’t slip through my fingers like this.”

“Get Sterling.  Trust.”

“Okay.”

But that was a whole complicated issue, wasn’t it?  What were they going to do?  Use the chaos?

“Roderick?  Any ideas?”

“It’s Rider, and we stay close.  I wish you would’ve let me bring in other people.  They might not wait for us to get outside where things are calmer.  Or they may escalate.”

“Escalate as in-?”

“Wading into the schoolyard with guns.  I don’t know.”

“Let’s pray they don’t,” the vice-principal said.

The first students from the nearest classrooms were coming down the hall now.

“Can you add to the announcement?  No parents do any pickups.  In this chaos, it’s too easy for something to go wrong.”

“Yeah.”

A male secretary was listening in.  The vice-principal motioned for him to go and pass that on.

“Is there a resource teacher in the senior kindergarten?  Or training student?  Second adult?”

“It’s- not today.  It’s even numbered days only, for senior kindergarten.”

“I was hoping we could hold Sterling Teale behind, or take him somewhere else.”

He was talked over by others.

“Everyone out of the office.  Ripley and Tyr Hurst, miss…”

“Josie.”

“Josie, all three of you come with, stay close to the front office staff.  We stay in the center of the crowd.”

“Nobody even told me why I got called to the office,” Ripley said.  “Am I in trouble?”

“No, honey,” the principal said.

A secretary locked the door to the office.

It was a tide of kids, ranging from ages seven to ten, he guessed- more younger ages were closer to the front office.  Teachers tried to manage the chaos, keeping kids in single file.  Natalie forged her way forward, half-jogging down the hall, toward the front of the pack.  The kindergarten classes were basically just inside the front door.

He made sure to get footage.

Every doorway was a threat.  Someone could step out, and if they had a gun, Ben wasn’t sure they could stop him.

His eyes fell on the girl.  Josie.  She was holding Tyr’s hand.

“Josie, you’re the emergency contact for the Hursts?”

“Huh?  I can barely hear you,” Josie said, turning.

It was true.  The alarm rang, and a hallway full of kids talking over one another was loud.

“You’re their contact?”

“Babysitter.”

“Did you talk to Mia at any point recently?”

“Not really, why?” she asked.

She looked scared.  Was it the evacuation?  The chaos?

Natalie exited the kindergarten class ahead of them, barely glancing at him before going outside.

“Josie, I think I saved your mom from an accident earlier.”

“Accident?  What?”

“Mr. Jaime, please don’t engage with the children until we get things sorted,” a staff member said, behind him.

He made brief eye contact with Roderick, who nodded.

“Josie, why do you think we’re here?” he asked Josie.

“There was an accident?”

He pulled out his phone.  The video was the most recent thing he’d shown on it.  He passed it to Josie.

“Please, let’s focus.  I don’t want people discussing things- I’d rather find a peaceful moment.”

“This is part of something bigger!” Ben raised his voice.  “There won’t be a moment!”

The sudden intensity seemed to spook some kids, and one teacher nearby.  Roderick touched Ben’s arm.

He was on camera.  His own.

Hundreds of thousands or millions might end up watching this clip.  If he included it, which he pretty much had to.

“Please watch.”

Video was truth.  Truth made the shadows smaller, gave the dangerous people less places to hide.

“This is their house?”

“What’s going on, Josie?” Ripley Hurst asked, from further back.  She looked really bothered to be escorted by multiple faculty, shrugging away from a hand that tried to rest on her shoulder.

“Don’t say anything that’ll spook anyone,” Ben said.  “Watch.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate for a person her age,” the secretary said.

They stepped outside into the bright outdoors.

It looked like all the teachers were taking students to the point of the extended schoolyard that was furthest from the main building, around the fence, and lining up on the far side of the street.

They-

An abrupt cracking sound, like thunder striking, followed with a feeling like Ben had just taken a steep descent on a rollercoaster.  He was on the stairs, stumbled, and nearly dropped his camera.

Shitty as it was, the kids in front of him who’d fallen were a bit of a cushion.  He stood and helped them with one hand, turning.

Far corner of the school, to go by the dust cloud.

“Don’t, no!  Do not!” Roderick bellowed.

He stopped Ripley from running down the narrow side path to the side parking lot, away from the pack of people.

Kids were screaming, crying, and a lot of forward momentum had stopped for those already outside or on the stairs, while others were rushing out the door.

“Go,” Ben said, using one hand, holding the camera awkwardly with the other.  He pulled on one kid’s arm, got them moving, spotted the next big roadblock, touched the back of their head.  “Go!”

Roderick steered Ripley back to the faculty she’d broken away from.

Had she had a plan or message telling her to go that direction?  Ben glanced that way, then kept ushering kids forward.

Breaking up the clog before anyone could get trampled.  A male teacher was doing the same.  Kids were still crying, or shouting.  It took work from the various teachers to keep them organized.

He’d seen the teachers before, when studying everyone at the school.  One hour’s work to look into faculty, when two of the potential Camellias attended the same school.

Natalie was further down the way, and stood off to the side, looking through the fence.  “Ben!  I’m not seeing Sterling!”

There was a hysterical note in her voice.

“Go to the end of the schoolyard, it’s where everyone is!”

“I looked!”

“Check again!  He’s shy, he hides!  He might be at the back of the group!”

No, this was chaos.

Parents had broken away from the parking lot.  There were resource officers trying to hold them back -basically striking cops acting as school security guards- but the explosion had erased any patience or willingness to listen.

It wasn’t a lot of parents, but it was thirty or so people, nannies.  Two elderly people.

“What’s going on?” Ripley Hurst asked.

“Hold on,” Josie said.  “Stay close to me.”

Teachers were telling parents they couldn’t pick up their kids.  But it was still a problem- teachers with attention divided.

“Everyone line up, be good, we’re safe out here!” the principal cajoled the crowd of younger grades.

Who was a danger in that crowd?

He didn’t see Mia or Carson Hurst among the parents.

“Emily!” one mom called out.

“Boone!”

“I’m not trying to cause trouble, but I’m here and if there’s a danger you have to let me see my kids!”

“Mom!” one kid cried out.

“Mary!”

“I don’t get it.”

Ben looked over at the babysitter, Josie.  She’d said that last bit.

“Fire?” she asked.

He put out his hand for his phone, and she gave it back, semi-reluctantly.

“Let me see my fucking kids!”

“Ben!”

“None of us get it right this minute,” he told Josie.

“Sterling’s not with his class,” Natalie said.

She didn’t look okay.  Of course she didn’t.

“Josie, you have to tell us, did Mia talk to you this morning?”

“She’s been away, she’s been handling family stuff.”

“I don’t think she has,” he said, leaning down to speak into her ear. “And I think that bomb was set by her.  I think this was her.”

“Who are you?  You were creeping on kids.”

“Ben,” Natalie said, with quiet terror.

“I know.  I wasn’t creeping on kids, Josie.  I was investigating.  To try to stop this from happening.”

Not entirely true, but it was the answer she might need right now.

“I talked to her a few minutes ago,” Josie said.

“Okay.  What did she tell you?”

“That you guys were dangerous and wanted to hurt those kids,” Josie said, still looking scared.  She stood so she was between him and Ripley, and him and Tyr, more or less.

Some of the front-office staff glanced sideways at Ben.

“Emily!” a father bellowed.

“Sterling!” Natalie’s voice joined his.

There were a lot of parents looking for their kids.  A few had come out of houses around the school- people who’d basically moved next door to the school itself, now alarmed for their children, after the explosion and visible smoke plume.

Few, Ben guessed, would be as scared as Natalie was in this moment.  Because she’d already suffered that loss once.

“Sterling!” Natalie shouted.

“Sterling!” Tyr joined in.  “Guys!  Where’s Sterling!?”

The teacher that was supposed to be in charge of Sterling was talking in hushed tones to the vice-principal.

“Sterling!” Tyr shouted.

“Mary!” a parent called out.

“He’s a little leader,” Josie said, more to a faculty member than to Ben, who she still seemed wary of.  “Usually by being the loudest, biggest, and bravest, but he’s a good kid.”

“Did you know him as a baby?” Ben asked, eyes scanning the crowd.

“That’s a really f-ing weird question,” Josie said, giving him a wary look.

“As a newborn?”

“I would have been like, eleven, I wasn’t babysitting then.”

It was commotion, kids milling around.  Teachers tried to corral them, get them lined up, along fence or sidewalk.  One hand on the chain-link fence.  But they were also trying to stop parents from causing an issue.  Still, the organization helped.  Kids being lined up made it easier for parents to verify their kids were okay, which made them less intense.

“Ben,” Natalie said, plaintive.

“I know.  Maybe he hid.”

“I thought he was safest in his class.  I should have gotten him sooner.”

“We couldn’t know.  He may still be okay.”

“Mary!” a father shouted.

One parent whistled.

“Ben!” Roderick called out.

Ben looked, and then started running.  Roderick was moving too.

Tyr had broken away, running- to his dad.  To Carson.

“Josie!” Carson motioned.

Ben looked back.  Josie was with Ripley…

And as Ripley moved to run forward, Josie grabbed the strap of her overalls.  Ripley nearly fell, spinning in a three-quarter circle, and pushed at Josie.

“Let a parent pick up their damn kid!” the dad who’d been shouting ‘Mary’ bellowed, getting in Roderick’s way.

Carson swooped Tyr up off the ground.

“What’s wrong with you!?” Ripley asked Josie.

It was like she could sense something was wrong.  Face red, tears in her eyes, not understanding why teacher, babysitter, and parent weren’t all in alignment, in this scary situation.

“I am armed!” Roderick shouted.  “I am licensed as proxy law enforcement, Carson Hurst, I need you to kneel!”

Carson barely seemed to care, smiling lightly, his kid in his arms.

The ‘Mary’ dad grabbed for Roderick’s arm, which was closest to the gun, gripping it.  “What’s wrong with you!?  A gun around kids!?”

He put his weight back on his leg awkwardly.  Like it hurt.

“He’s part of it!” Ben called out.  “He’s running interference!”

The ‘Mary’ dad let go, backing away a step, his expression grim.

When Ben turned the camera directly toward him, he shielded his face a bit.  Still limping backward.

“Do you know what you’re a part of, here?” Ben asked.

“Do you?” the man asked back.

“Explain.”

“Ripley, your mom and dad love you, they’ll find you.  Ben Jaime, Natalie Teale, do not let Roderick ‘Rider’ Kaplan be alone with the kids.  He’ll sell them to the Cavalcantis.  Rider, don’t pull that gun out.  I wouldn’t be here if I thought there was a chance you or any of the resource officers could stop me by holding me at gunpoint.  We took measures.”

The man limped backward, a teacher keeping rough pace with him so he couldn’t lunge for or draw on any kids.  He kept his hands raised, one between his face and the camera.

“Did you take Sterling?” Natalie asked.

“No.”

Natalie didn’t look like she believed him.

“Hey!” Ben called out.

The man shook his head.  He’d reached a gate in the fence.

“I’m an investigator!”

“I know!”

“I was investigating Camellia Teale!”

The man shot him a weird look.

If there was any chance he’d been lied to, if he really did believe he was doing the right thing…

A car pulled up, and the man climbed into the back.

It did a u-turn, driving away.

Was that it?

They’d lost Tyr and Sterling.

An entire school of kids scared and bewildered.

Ripley was sobbing.  Natalie was crying, still looking around, but staying back, looking as lost as Ben had ever seen her.  And he’d seen her in the moment she’d fully realized Maya Grant wasn’t her daughter, earlier that day.

Josie was trying to console, but Ripley seemed to want to fight her and be angry at her as much as she needed and wanted that consolation.

“What’s going on?” Ripley asked, balled up fists resting against Josie’s shoulders, where she’d just been drumming them.  Josie had started to pull her into a hug, but Ripley wasn’t one hundred percent agreeing to it, so they were halfway there, Josie crouched in front of her.  “Who is Caramel Teale?”

“Camellia,” Natalie said.  Her eyes went to Ben.  Her voice took on a bit of a croaking sound.  Hollow, without any emotion, even as her face was wretched with it.  “She’s-she’s my daughter.  She’s been missing for a long time,  We think your- Mia and Carson know where she is.  But they’re in a scary situation, it’s complicated.”

“No kidding it’s complicated,” Ben said.  He glanced at Roderick.  How much of that had been true?

“You could have let me go to my mom and dad.”

Those words, ‘mom and dad’, seemed to cause Natalie physical pain.

“I don’t know everything that’s going on, but I think your mom and dad are confused,” Josie said, standing, leading Ripley to one side.  “Let’s get safe and talk things out, hopefully people can explain things and get on the same page.”

Ripley let out a huff of a breath, her expression changing.  “I’m not a kid.  I’m not dumb.  I remember when you were telling Carson about the magic words.”

“Come.  This way.”

Josie leading Ripley aside, the main faculty, and one or two parents who might’ve known people here all moved away from the row of kids at the fence, so those kids weren’t involved.

The vice principal and principal exchanged quick words.  The vice principal took over managing the evacuated classes, motioning for teachers to approach.

“Can I go back to the school?  To look for Sterling?” Natalie asked.

“They won’t let you,” the male secretary from the front office told her.  “Not until things are cleared.  But if they find him, they’ll let him outside.

She looked like she was going to be sick.  She looked over at Ripley, and her expression went through another few different expressions of pain, before she managed to pull herself together and ask, “What do you mean by magic words?”

“There was a video on Woobtube where someone messed up put some real life gore and porn at the end of things that started off like it was meant for kids.  Tyr saw by accident.  Mom and dad didn’t know how to handle it.”

Again, Natalie flinched at those words.  She hugged her arms to her bodies, looking around for her son.  Shell shocked, maybe.

Ripley explained further, “Josie said you say ‘they were confused’, those are the magic words, if you’re trying to explain why grandma’s a racist or if you need to explain something really messed up to a little kid.  They understand that.”

“I didn’t think you were listening,” Josie said.

“Honestly,” Ben said.  He could see the pain on so many people’s faces.  The stress on the school faculty’s.  Natalie’s more than anyone’s.  “I think we’re all pretty confused right now.”

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