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“Maybe I’d be dead now if you’d gone low-key,” I countered. “Or maybe he’s dead—for all we know, Satterfield bled to death after Waylon winged him, or choked to death on a chimichanga last night—or he’s in lockup somewhere, busted for DUI. Who knows. Who the hell knows.”
“Sorry, Doc. It was worth a try, and you were brave to do it.”
“Thanks. Now get me out of this getup, because by now I really do need to pee.”
THE BATHROOM WAS DOWN ONE FLIGHT OF STAIRS from my office, positioned halfway down the staircase that descended to the bone lab. As I was about to enter the restroom, I thought I heard footsteps, followed by the rasp of the lab’s steel door scraping across its sill. “Miranda?” I called, “are you here?” There was no answer, and the noise filtering down from the crowd in the stadium made it difficult to know what, if anything, I’d heard at the base of the stairs. I hurried into the restroom, grateful for the chance to pee at last.
Leaving the restroom, I heard another sound from below, definitely—a forceful thud, and then another. What the hell? I trotted down the stairs, delighted by how easy it was to move, and move quickly, now that I was no longer encased in the bomb suit. I tried the doorknob and was surprised to find it unlocked—surprised because the UT Police required the entire building to be secured and empty during football games. The sole exception, of course, was professors who were being trussed up in body armor and trotted out on stage as live targets for psychopaths to shoot at. Or not.
Just as I was about to open the lab’s door, I looked outside—out the glass exit door at the base of the stairwell—and paused. Something had caught my eye . . . but what? I looked down at the floor, at my feet, to reset my vision, then quickly looked up again, hoping that whatever had caught my attention subliminally would do it again, but overtly this time. The Homecoming bunting was unusual, of course, as was the “Congratulations Dr. Bill Brockton—U.S. Professor of the Year” banner. But neither of those was the thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was smaller and subtler than either of those gaudy decorations. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was barely noticeable, up there amid the spiderwork of steel I-beams supporting the stadium. The thing that had flipped a switch in my subconscious was . . . a slender, horizontal aluminum angle bracket, attached to a vertical I-beam with what appeared to be a cable tie. Looking left and right, I saw identical brackets. their silvery luster contrasting with the reddish brown of the steel, fastened to the neighboring I-beams as well. Fingers shaking, I grabbed my phone, found Decker’s number, and hit the “call” button. Answer, Deck, I prayed. For God’s sake, answer the damn phone.
“Doc? What’s taking you so long? Did you get lost, or did you need to download a file, as my kids would say?”
“Deck, listen. Are you still in my office?”
“Yeah. I thought you were—”
“Shut up. Listen. Go to the window and look out.”
“What?”
“Go look out my window. At the vertical I-beams. What do you see?”
“Doc? Are you okay? I don’t quite—”
“Do it now, Deck—look!”
“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m at the window. I’m looking out. I see two big ol’ grimy I-beams . . .” The phone went silent.
“You see them?” I said in an urgent whisper. “Those brackets? Aren’t those demolition charges? Cutting charges?” What was the term I’d learned at the ATF lab a few months before? “LSCs? Linear shaped charges?”
In my ear, I heard Decker begin to whisper, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
“Deck, what do we do?”
“Holy Mary, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
Christ, I realized, it’s his PTSD again. “Decker, come on, man—get a grip. I need you. We need you. Stop praying and start being a cop.”
Behind me, I heard the bone lab door rasp open. I turned and saw Miranda’s face leaning around the door frame, her hair rumpled, her eyes wide and wild. “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here? You know the campus police don’t want us using the building on game days, don’t you?”
Instead of answering, she took a step forward, and I saw a huge handgun pressed to her head. Then, prodded by the barrel of the gun, she took another step, and I saw one of Decker’s SWAT guys behind her, in olive-drab fatigues and a vest. Only it wasn’t one of Decker’s men; it was Nick Satterfield close behind Miranda, his left hand gripping her upper arm. “Do come in,” Satterfield said. “We didn’t want to start the party without you.”
Stunned, I walked slowly toward them, my hands up, my fingers spread wide. He was leaning against the door to hold it wide, and as I passed them in the doorway, entering the lab, he shifted the barrel, pressing it hard beneath her ear, causing her to grunt in pain. “We were just about to call you, weren’t we, Miranda? But you saved us the trouble. Very thoughtful of you.”
“This place is crawling with cops,” I said. I turned to face him, my knees weak, halfway sitting on the table at the center of the lab for support. “If I’m not back in my office in five minutes, they’ll start looking for me.”
“And I’ll be part of the search party,” he said, a cold, smug smile on his serpent’s face. “In fact, I’m going to be the one who finds you.” On the desk just inside the door sat a matching helmet, and I realized with horror that once he put the helmet on, Satterfield would look exactly like all the other SWAT team officers. “And then I’m going to lead you and your teacher’s pet back onto the field—we’ll have to call a time-out—and we’ll get a microphone. And then you’ll tell all those people that you’re a fraud. That you pose as a good man, but you’re not.”
There was the sting of truth in his words. I’d gotten Waylon killed, and now I’d led Miranda into deadly peril. And as the implications of what I’d seen through the window continued to sink in, I realized that perhaps I had led thousands of people—no, tens of thousands—to their deaths. If Satterfield had rigged the stadium’s supports with demolition charges, the entire upper deck could come crashing down. “You’ll tell them you’re an evil man, and you’re about to prove it.”
I snuck a glance at Miranda. She was motionless and silent, but tears coursed down her face, and the sight ripped my heart open. Stall, Brockton, I thought. Keep calm and stall. Get him talking—isn’t that what they do on TV? “And how am I going to prove it?”
“By pressing this button,” he said, holding up a gizmo that resembled a cell phone or a garage-door opener.
“And how will pressing that button prove I’m an evil man?”
“By killing everyone in this stadium, while you watch from center field, untouched by the carnage happening all around you.”
Do something, Decker, I prayed. “You’re insane,” I said. “You can’t possibly kill everyone in the stadium.”
“I won’t,” he said. “You will.”
“Bullshit. I don’t believe you.” I saw Miranda’s eyes flicking back and forth, from me to Satterfield and back again, and my sense of helplessness was maddening.
“Oh, but you will soon,” he told me. “Seeing is believing. You will see, and you’ll believe, and you’ll wish you were never born.”
“Can’t be done,” I said. “You can’t kill all those people unless you’ve managed to hide a nuclear weapon in the stadium. And you don’t have the ability to do that.”
“I don’t need a nuclear weapon. The stadium is my weapon.”
“You’re bluffing. You aren’t capable of it,” I said, hoping my face didn’t betray the fact that I knew he was.
“Oh, but I am,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter if you believe me. But I’ll explain it, so you can start dreading it in detail. There are demolition charges—cutting charges—all around the stadium. When you press that button, they’ll slice through every
