Page 2 of I Will Ruin You

“Now,” I said, and because Emma already had a phone secreted in her hand, I pointed and said firmly, “Emma, nine-one-one.”

She looked at me blankly, as though asking what it was she was supposed to say when her 911 call was answered.

“Armed intruder,” I said. There wasn’t time for specifics. And then I bolted from the room, slamming the door shut behind me, trusting the kids would do as I’d said and start building a barricade. Not a bad plan to keep a gunman out of the room, but would it be enough to save them from an explosion?

The west-end doors were at the far end of the corridor, which in the fifteen-plus years I had worked at Lodge High School here in Milford had never looked longer. The hallway was a mile-long tunnel stretching out in front of me. I needed to get to those doors before that man with the explosives strapped to his body.

I ran flat-out, shouting as I went.

“Lockdown! Lockdown!”

I sped past classroom doors, open and closed, lessons underway. Jerry Hillier, door open, droning on in front of his calculus class. The students in Rhonda Flynn’s chemistry class, visible behind the door window, conducting God knows what kind of experiments. Social studies teacher Preston Hindle, visible for a millisecond through the small pane of glass, no doubt trying his hardest to turn his kids into well-rounded citizens.

I heard doors closing behind me. We’d done the drills. You think it will never happen but know it might. And yet, despite that, no one had fixed that fucking door. Par for the course for our caretaker, Ronny Grant.

Not everyone remembered our emergency procedures. Instead of closing her door, Rhonda stepped out into the hall and called out after me: “Is this for real or just a prac—”

Somewhere, someone wiser shouted: “Get inside!”

My route took me past the office. As I flew by I caught a glimpse of our principal, Trent, and shouted, “Lockdown!” one more time.

The double doors, with a steel pillar in the center, were thirty feet away. From this distance, they didn’t appear to line up, which told me the door on the right was not securely latched.

Shit.

Twenty feet away.

And then, suddenly, there he was, in the window of the right door. Pulling it open wide with his left hand, his right hand still clenched around something, and stepping into the school.

I hit the brakes. We were practically face-to-face. It’s possible I startled him as much as he scared me. He clearly wasn’t expecting to encounter anyone, what with classes in session.

I said, “Stop.”

He looked at me and blinked a couple of times. And that was when it hit me.

I know you.

I struggled for a second to come up with a name. “Mark,” I said.

“Hey, Mr. B.,” he said. It was what most of the kids called me. Short for Mr. Boyle.

Mark LeDrew. He’d been in a couple of my classes when he attended Lodge. First time was way back in ninth grade, an English class, then in senior year, an American literature course he never read a single book for. He was a kind of benign fuckup, the kid who never remembered to bring a pen to an exam, who forgot to double-check that his locker was actually locked.

It had to be three or four years since he’d left. I wasn’t even sure he’d earned a diploma, so it was unlikely he’d gone off to UConn or Yale. A tech school, maybe. Or, judging by his garb, he’d been living in the Michigan woods with a survivalist cult intent on overthrowing the government.

Firmly, and calmly, I said, “You have to leave the school, Mark. You can’t come in here.”

He swallowed. His eyes danced.

“I got something to do,” he said.

“No.”

The half-open door had come to rest on his back. He’d tucked his free hand into his pocket, an oddly casual gesture considering the circumstances.

I kept looking at his right fist held close to his body. His thumb was holding something down. I could make out the edge of what appeared to be a red button. My guess was, a wire led from that to the four sticks of dynamite tucked into the front of his vest. Two on his right side, two on his left. And if he let up pressure on that button, they would detonate.

“I’ve got a list,” Mark said.