Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,87
die here today. Nora’s own fists curled as she turned, ran down the stage stairs, and disappeared into the crowd.
“Strike will endure.”
As the film ended a chant rose from the seats, insistent and guttural. It drowned out the emcee. Nora made it to the edge of the floor just as she heard C.J.’s voice speaking over the crowd. She was too busy working her way through the press of suddenly still bodies and half-lowered phones to follow everything being said until she realized the chant had washed out of the stadium like a tide and two words distinguished themselves from the rest.
Nora Trier.
She looked up and saw her own face on the jumbotron. They were hunting for her.
GREGG
DURING THE promo film, C.J. kept muttering the advantages and disadvantages of picking each champion through a brilliant lock-jawed smile. The words rolled like scattered coins in all directions. Hopeful. Symbolic. Raw. Young. I didn’t try to chase them down, or assign any of them to the fleet of fighters standing on the opposite side of the stage, worthless checks in hand. Merritt was bleeding in a goddamn ambulance and none of the people left standing could fill the magnitude of Logan’s void. None of them shone bright enough to blind this whipped-up, fight-fueled crowd. Every choice was the wrong choice.
My vision was blurring, my head pounding. The only thing anchoring me at that moment was Nora’s hand, the firm pressure of hope or at least sanity. I heard myself telling her about the police, pathetic, like a child asking his mother to make it better, but I’d hardly gotten two sentences out before I heard her sharp inhale.
“Have they searched the park?”
Then her hand was gone. She backed into the crowd, eyes wide and instantly averted, a woman who knew she’d said something wrong. The body language was unmistakable. How the hell did Nora know about the park?
I tried to follow her. I needed to hold her in place until my head could process what her body was communicating, but C.J. pulled me in the opposite direction and Nora slipped away. When Logan’s voice surrounded us, the crowd screamed. She talked about dying in a locker room and blood-splatter flashed through my head, but it wasn’t Logan’s blood. Logan was in a park in Eagan where—I finally made the connection—Nora lived. She’d told me the other day when we walked across the Stone Arch Bridge. I’m married to a cook. I’m a mother. We live in Eagan.
I caught a glimpse of Nora’s hair as she ducked around a group of people and descended the stairs from the stage. My hand was still warm from her grip.
“Tell them Logan’s missing.”
“What?” C.J. hissed through a seething caricature of a smile. “Are you fucking kidding me? The internet will explode. Some of these people traveled thousands of—”
“We can’t pick a new face for Strike until we find out what happened to Logan.”
“What … happened … ?”
As she struggled to make sense of what I was saying, I took her phone out and pulled up Nora’s picture from the partner page of Parrish Forensics. “This is a person of interest. Put it on every screen. Now.”
C.J. gaped at the phone and swiveled to look behind us. “She was just here. Where did she go? Gregg, what happened to Logan?”
The film ended and as the emcee took the microphone, a low chant started and spread in every direction. Logan. It gained volume and rhythm until I couldn’t even hear the emcee, who stood inches away from me. Logan, Logan.
I shouted directly into C.J.’s ear. “We want an army out there looking for her. Tell them to search parks and suburbs, to turn over every rock, but most importantly, we need to find Nora Trier. Understand?”
“Gregg—”
But I’d already left the stage, walking purposefully down the stairs. I couldn’t see Nora, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to run. She might think she was invisible, that a quiet, dark-suited accountant could do something horrifying and slip away unnoticed, but she couldn’t hide from fifty thousand of us. I strode in the direction she’d gone, pushing through the groups swarming the aisles, feeling calmer than I had in months.
I know you don’t understand. At least at first you don’t, but give yourself a minute and forget about me. Who the hell am I anyway? Just another suit, another strange creature speaking a strange language. I want you to consider your life for a moment and the things or people