School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,82

smirk on his face. He said, ‘That’s a shame. USC will need to find another player. Maybe this one without his numbers.’”

Jackson rubbed his temple. “Wait a minute.”

“What?”

Oh, the puzzle pieces were about to click. “Wait a minute.”

“Waiting, dammit!”

“Wait—no—fuck!”

They heard the report of the gun just as the glass next to Jackson shattered.

“Get down,” Jackson yelled to Henry and Mrs. Eccleston. “Ma’am, under your desk. Henry, you okay?”

“I’m under my desk,” he called back. “Me and my delicious sandwich. We’re chilling.”

There were another couple of shots and more shattered glass as Jackson crawled past the window to take shelter back behind the desk with Mrs. Eccleston.

“Ma’am, you okay?” he asked.

She nodded, her squishy body tucked neatly in the recess under the desk. He noted that the desk was in a corner with two filing cabinets and a closet, providing her with cover on all three sides. Henry, on the other hand, was nearly naked.

Jackson handed her his cell phone, unlocked. “Call 911,” he told her. “Tell them who you are and where you are and repeat the words ‘active shooter’ until someone says them back at you.”

He left the phone with her and stayed low, snake crawling back behind a table that sat in front of the white board. There were boxes of books and art supplies under the table—unless someone was shooting through the wall to his left, he was pretty safe. Books were damned dense, and so were reams of copy paper.

“Henry, tip those desks over and surround yourself. You need better cover!”

“Where are you going?” Henry asked, doing what Jackson told him to.

“Heading for the door.”

At that moment, a flurry of shots came at the door, but they didn’t penetrate.

“What in the hell…?”

“Steel reinforced,” Mrs. Eccleston said, her voice thready and bright with fear. “They wanted to put in a skylight. I asked for a better door.”

“Henry, stay surrounded by the desks. I’m going to do a thing.”

“Oh God,” Henry muttered.

“Keep talking. Say something stupid.”

Jackson turned and started to belly crawl toward one of the two shot-out windows, double-checking to make sure it wasn’t the kind with the embedded wire inside. In the breathless silence, he could hear Mrs. Eccleston’s shaky voice as she engaged the 911 officer, and Henry said, loudly and without context, “Don’t worry, Jackson. I’m only bleeding a little.”

“You’d better not be bleeding at all, asshole,” Jackson muttered. He grabbed a box of Kleenex and held it above his head, waving it as if to get someone’s attention.

“You told me to say something stupid!” Henry retorted, and Jackson couldn’t be sure whether to smack him or kiss him.

“Mission accomplished.” The Kleenex box remained un-shot-at, so he pitched it through the window and waited a heartbeat.

The response was more shots at the door, which told him everything he needed to know about how smart the shooter was. With a deep breath and a prayer, he vaulted over the bookshelf and through the shattered window, feeling some of the glass shred through his new cargo shorts and catch some skin.

Wasn’t fatal, but God, Ellery was going to be pissed. He landed neatly in the gravel strip that separated the portable buildings from the fence that encircled the school and started running for the opening by the gate as soon as his feet touched the ground. The cuts on his thigh burned, and the blood sliding down his leg into his tennis shoe wasn’t comfortable either, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. If the guy shooting from the other side of the portable building figured out he was there and caught him in this tiny crawl space, he’d be a big fat walking target and probably a dead man. He needed free air for any sort of self-defense.

He got to the corner of the building and peered around just in time to see cleated tennis shoes disappear behind a large, permanent structure about thirty yards away, the clopping sound of the cleats absurdly loud in the silence after the shooting. He called out, “Henry, collect the shells!” before taking off after those disappearing footfalls.

He turned left between two buildings and kept running until the space opened up to a quad area in the center of the school. The quad itself was empty except for a couple of teachers wandering around looking at each other uneasily.

“Hey!” one of them called out. “Did you hear shots?”

“Cops are on the way,” he replied. “Did you see someone running by?”

“Heard someone—breathing hard. But didn’t see them. Who