She had an off-and-on boyfriend, but the last word he heard said off. He could try his luck there and maybe score a date with somebody whose miserable schedule matched his own.

He moved fast on long legs through shoppers, through cliques of teenage girls and the teenage boys who scouted them, around moms pushing strollers or herding toddlers, through the incessant brain-numbing music he no longer heard.

He had a mop of black hair—his mother’s Italian half. Dory didn’t bug him about getting a trim, and his dad had finally given up. His eyes, deep set, pale green against olive-toned skin, brightened when he saw Angie at the kiosk. He slowed his pace, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets—casual—and sauntered over.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

She flashed him a smile, rolled her pretty brown eyes. “Busy. Everybody’s going to the beach but me.”

“And me.” He leaned on the counter with its display of sunglasses, hoping he looked smooth in his uniform of white shirt, black vest and pants. “I’m thinking of catching The Island, it’s got a ten-forty-five last show. It’s almost like a trip to the beach, am I right? Want in?”

“Oh … I don’t know.” She fussed with her hair, a beachy blond that went with the golden tan he suspected she got from the self-tanner in another display. “I do kind of want to see it.”

Hope sprang, and Chaz was bumped off his list.

“Gotta make some fun, right?”

“Yeah, but … I sort of told Misty we’d hang after closing.”

Chaz jumped back on the list. “That’s cool. I was heading down to see if Chaz wanted to catch it. We could all go.”

“Maybe.” She flashed that smile again. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll ask her.”

“Great. I’m heading down to see Chaz.” He shifted to give more room to the woman waiting patiently while her kid—another who hit about fourteen—tried on half a zillion pairs of sunglasses. “You can text me either way.”

“If I could have two pairs,” the girl began, checking herself out in a pair with metallic blue lenses, “I’d have a spare.”

“One, Natalie. This is your spare.”

“I’ll text you,” Angie murmured, then shifted to work mode. “Those look awesome on you.”

“Really?”

“Totally,” Reed heard Angie say as he headed off. He quickened his pace—he had to make up time.

GameStop buzzed with its usual crowd of geeks and nerds and, for the younger geeks and nerds, the glazed-eyed parents trying to move them along.

Monitors previewed a variety of games—the PG variety on the wall screens. The less friendly ones were on individual laptops—for use with over-eighteen ID or with parental supervision.

He spotted Chaz—king of the nerds—explaining some game to a confused-looking woman.

“If he’s into military-style game play, strategy and arc building, he’d go for it.” Chaz shoved his coke-bottle glasses up on his nose. “It’s only been out a couple weeks.”

“It seems so … violent. Is it appropriate?”

“Sixteenth birthday, you said.” He gave Reed a quick nod. “And he’s into the Splinter Cell series. If he’s good with those, he’d be good with this.”

She sighed. “I guess boys are always going to play war. I’ll take it, thanks.”

“They’ll ring you up at the register. Thanks for shopping at GameStop. Can’t hang, man,” he told Reed as the customer walked away. “Slammed.”

“Thirty seconds. Late show, The Island.”

“I’m all about it. Clones, baby.”

“Solid. I’ve got Angie on the hook for it, but she wants to bring Misty on.”

“Oh, well, I—”

“Don’t let me down, man. It’s the closest I’ve got to a date out of her.”

“Yeah, but Misty’s a little scary. And … Do I have to pay for her?”

“It’s not a date. I’m working on turning it into a date. For me, not for you. You’re my wingman, and Misty’s Angie’s. Clones,” he reminded Chaz.

“Okay. I guess. Jeez. I wasn’t figuring on—”

“Great,” Reed said before Chaz changed his mind. “Gotta book. Meet you there.”

He rushed out. It was happening! Group nondate could clear the way for a one-on-one let’s-hang-out and that opened the door to the possibility of a little touch.

He could use a little touch. But right now he had three minutes to make it back to Mangia or Dory would scorch his ass.

He started to lope when he heard what sounded like firecrackers or a series of backfires. It made him think of GameStop’s shooting games. More puzzled than alarmed, he glanced back.

Then the screaming started. And the thunder.

Not from behind, he realized, from up ahead. The thunder was dozens of people running. He jumped out of the way as a woman careened toward him racing behind a stroller where the kid inside wailed.

Was that blood on her face?

“What—”

She kept running, her mouth wide in a silent scream.

An avalanche rolled behind her. People stampeding, stomping on discarded shopping bags, tripping over them, and as some fell, over each other.

A man skidded over the floor, his glasses bouncing off to be crushed under someone’s foot. Reed grabbed his arm.

“What’s happening?”

“He’s got a gun. He shot—he shot—”

The man shoved to his feet, ran on in a limping sprint. A couple of teenage girls ran weeping and screaming into a store at his left.

And he realized the noise—gunfire—came not only from in front of him, but also from behind him. He thought of Chaz, a thirty-second sprint behind him, and his restaurant family, double that ahead.

“Hide, man,” he muttered to Chaz. “Find somewhere to hide.”

And he ran toward the restaurant.

The cracking, popping sounds went on and on, seeming to come from everywhere now. Glass shattered and crashed, a woman with a bloodied leg huddled under a bench and moaned. He heard more screams—and, worse, the way they cut off, like a sliced tape.

Then he saw the little boy in red shorts and an Elmo T-shirt staggering like a drunk past Abercrombie & Fitch.

The display window exploded. People scattered, dived for cover, and the kid fell down, crying for his mother.

Across the mall, he saw a gunman—boy?—laughing as he fired, fired, fired. On the ground, a man’s body jerked as the bullets tore into him.

Reed scooped up the kid in the Elmo T-shirt on the run, hooking him under one arm like the football he’d never been able to handle.

The gunfire—and he would never, never forget the sound of it—came closer. Front and back. Everywhere.

He’d never make it to Mangia, not with the kid. He veered off, running on instinct, did a kind of sliding dive into the kiosk.

Angie, the girl he’d flirted with five minutes before, a lifetime before, lay sprawled in a pool of blood. Her pretty brown eyes stared at him while the kid hooked under his arm wailed.

“Oh God, oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, oh God.”

The shooting wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.

“Okay, okay, you’re okay. What’s your name? I’m Reed, what’s your name?”

“Brady. I want Mommy!”

“Okay, Brady, we’re going to find her in just a minute, but now we have to be really quiet. Brady! How old are you?”

“This many.” He held up four fingers as fat tears splashed on his cheeks.

“That’s a big guy, right? We have to be quiet. There are bad guys. You know about bad guys?”

With tears and snot running down his face, eyes huge with shock, Brady nodded.

“We’re going to be quiet so the bad guys don’t find us. And I’m going to call for the good guys. For the police.” He did his best to block the boy’s view of Angie, did his best to block his own mind from the idea of her, of her and death.

He yanked open one of the sliding doors for storage, shoved out stock. “Climb in there, okay? Like Hide and Seek. I’m right here, but you get in there while I call the good guys.”

He nudged the kid in, got out his phone, and that’s when he saw how badly his hands shook.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“DownEast Mall,” he began.

“Police are responding. Are you in the mall?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a kid with me. I put him in the stock cabinet in the Fun In The Sun kiosk. Angie—the girl who worked it. She’s dead. She’s dead. God. There are at least two of them shooting people.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Reed Quartermaine.”

“Okay, Reed, do you feel you’re safe where you are?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Sorry. You’re in a kiosk so you have some cover. I’m going to advise you to stay where you are, to shelter in place. You have a child with you?”

“He said his name’s Brady, and he’s four. He got separated from his mother. I don’t know if she’s…” He looked around, saw Brady had curled up, eyes glazed over, as he sucked his thumb. “He’s probably, you know, in shock or whatever.”

“Try to stay calm, Reed, and quiet. The police are on scene.”

“They’re still shooting. They just keep shooting. Laughing. I heard him laughing.”

“Who was laughing, Reed?”

“He was shooting, the glass exploded, the guy on the ground, he kept shooting him and laughing. Jesus God.”

He heard shouting—not the screams, but like war cries. Something tribal and triumphant. And more shots, then …

“It stopped. The shooting stopped.”