‘I have friends in the documentary world all over this country. You hurt or kill me or Carrie, you’re on the evening news, and you won’t be able to spot the hidden camcorder before my friends get away. I told you my demands for giving you the files. Let me talk to Carrie. Now.’
Jargo beckoned with a single finger and Carrie hurried over to them. Dezz stayed put.
‘Evan,’ she said.
‘No touching.’ Jargo raised an arm, kept her back.
‘Are you all right?’ Evan asked in a low voice.
She nodded. ‘Fine. They didn’t hurt me.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it.
‘She leaves, just as I described,’ Evan said.
‘You’re not very smart,’ Jargo said. ‘You showed too much of your hand. I would have been willing to let Carrie go once you gave me the files. But film of me? No. I’ll need that as well.’
‘When she’s gone.’ Evan narrowed his stare. ‘Soon as Carrie’s safely away, I’ll give you the film and hand you a music player that has the files stored on it. I don’t have copies. Understood?’
‘No. Give me the files and the film, then she walks. If you’ve got a camera on us, I certainly am not going to harm you, if that’s what you’re so wrongly worried about. Then we can all part ways, if you’re so determined not to see your dad,’ Jargo said.
Carrie broke free from Jargo, closed her arms around Evan. Sobbed into his shoulder. He embraced her, smelled the soft peach scent of her hair, kept his stare locked on Jargo.
‘Trust me,’ Carrie whispered into Evan’s ear. Then she pulled a small gun free of her coat and jabbed it under Jargo’s chin. ‘Tell Dezz to walk away or I shoot you through the neck.’
Jargo’s eyes widened in shock.
She pulled Jargo in front of her and Evan, putting him between them and Dezz. ‘It’s okay, Evan. We’re getting out of here. He’s got a gun in his pocket. Take it.’
‘Carrie, what the hell…’
‘Do what I tell you, babe,’ Carrie said. Evan did, pulling a gleaming pistol free from Jargo’s coat. He risked a look the other way – toward where Shadey actually stood, under the awning at the edge of the food court. With a duffel, one side cut out, the camera resting inside.
Dezz, now hurrying forward, stopped, fifteen feet away from them, staring at the small gun pressed into his father’s neck. Carrie moved the gun down, pressing into Jargo’s back, where it wasn’t so visible.
‘Back off, Dezz!’ Carrie shouted. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Evan, if he comes any farther, shoot him.’
Evan, still stunned, nodded.
‘Evan. You’re making a mistake,’ Jargo said. ‘I’m the one who can help you. Not this lying bitch.’
Dezz’s mouth worked, watching his father, and he ran ten feet to one side, grabbed a young mother pushing a stroller with a fussing toddler. He jabbed a gun into the young woman’s throat, yanked her around, put her between himself and Evan. The young mother’s face blanched in shock and terror.
‘Shit,’ Carrie said.
‘I’ll trade you!’ Dezz yelled.
Another woman saw the gun in his hand, shrieked for security, began to run.
Carrie shoved Jargo to the ground in a hard sprawl. ‘Run, Evan,’ she said.
Dezz pushed his hostage away; she grabbed her baby and fled. Dezz ran toward Evan and Carrie. Pistol out, readying to aim.
Screams erupted around them. Carrie fired past Evan. Dezz ducked behind the bench and shrubbery.
Around them, people panicked, stunned for a moment at the oddity of gunfire, then stampeding for cover or for the entrance, teachers herding kids, parents carrying children.
Jargo grabbed at Evan and Evan popped him in the jaw, sent him sprawling back over the bench.
A zoo security guard advanced toward them, yelling an order. ‘Down on the ground! Now!’
A bullet splintered the palm trunk by the guard’s head. Dezz had fired. The guard retreated behind the thick trunk.
Carrie gripped Evan’s arm. ‘Run. If you want to live and get your dad.’
He ran with her, dodging through scrambling tourists, deeper into the zoo. He glanced back. No sign of Shadey; he would blend in with the retreating crowd, escape. Evan had told him to make sure whatever footage he got of Jargo made it to safety, no matter what happened to Evan.
‘The entrance,’ Evan said. ‘It’s the other way-’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But they can cut us off. This way.’
He didn’t argue. He was the faster runner and he clutched her arm.
Dezz moved through the fleeing crowd, pursuing fast. Gun drawn, people veering away from him in every direction, giving him a clear path. Jargo followed. A man, wearing a Tulane sweatshirt, made a lunge at Dezz, and Dezz hit him hard across the face with the pistol. The man went down. Dezz and Jargo didn’t slow down, Dezz handing Jargo a second pistol.
Evan and Carrie ran past the singsong of the zoo’s carousel, firing up for its first ride of the day, and onto a tram path where the Swamp Train looped around the zoo. The next section held animals from South America. Evan looked around for an exit sign. Or a building where they could hide. They kept running, onto a wooden walkway. It bordered an algae-topped pond for a flock of flamingos on the right and pine-studded land for llamas and guanacos on the left. A family with three kids stood at the walkway’s halfway point, admiring the flamingos, snapping photos.
‘Over the railing,’ Evan said. They couldn’t run past the family, who would be caught between Carrie and Evan and their pursuers.
Carrie bolted over the wooden divider, dropped down into the exhibit. A small herd of llamas watched them with disinterest. The ground, groomed to look like Louisiana’s best approximation of the pampas, was hard and dusty, and they ran to a dense grove of pines near the exhibit’s back perimeter.
‘Get the trees between you and them,’ Carrie said. They ducked into the short maze of pines. A bullet smacked against the trunks.
‘Over the fence,’ he said. They climbed in a fast scramble, toppled over the barrier onto an unpaved trail behind the exhibit. The musky smell of wolves in a neighboring exhibit filled their noses. They ran down the service path. Maintenance buildings lined one side, the back of the South American exhibits the other. Tried the doors. Locked.
Through the foliage and the fencing, Evan saw Jargo running past the family on the wooden walkway, spotted Dezz following in their tracks through the South American grounds.
Trying to catch Evan and Carrie between them. ‘Keep your head down.’ Carrie grabbed at the back of his head. ‘Security camera up ahead, don’t want it to catch your face.’
He obeyed. They ran, eyes to the ground. The service road dead-ended. A glass and stone building to their right held a family of jaguars. Jaguar Jungle was a major attraction of the zoo, a re-creation of a Mayan temple.
They clambered over the padlocked fencing at the dead end, dropped onto a stone visitors’ path by the jaguars, who lounged behind thick glass. One yowled at them, baring curved fangs.
Jargo huffed into the Mayan plaza, saw Carrie, fired. A bullet pinged against the Mayan stone carvings. The jaguars raised a ruckus of snarls and snaps.
Carrie and Evan sprinted through dense growth and stone paths, past another faux temple with spider monkeys, past a children’s archaeological-dig play area. They stumbled down a creek lined with thick bamboo, hurried back up the other side to the stone path. A few moms and kids ambled along and they stared.
‘Crazy guy with a gun!’ Carrie yelled. ‘Take cover!’
The moms jumped for cover in the bamboo or off the path. Jargo ran past the women, ignoring them.
‘Evan!’ he yelled. ‘I can give you your dad!’
Carrie spun and fired at him. Jargo ducked back into the bamboo. Evan ran past a sign that read NO TRESPASSING, ZOO EMPLOYEES ONLY, Carrie following. It had to lead to a building, he decided, a place they could barricade themselves in – Jargo would flee to avoid the police, who would be racing into the zoo now.