Just then the wild-haired woman pulls an object from her purse.
It’s a small pistol, matte black metal clutched in her hand.
I’m watching an assassination attempt unfolding. An inexpert one. The way she holds the gun, I can see this English teacher is not a trained assassin.
She’s rushing toward Moore, trying to swing the pistol free from her purse when her wrist snags in the purse handle. She fights to free it, losing a precious two seconds.
Her loss is my gain.
I calculate the distance, the time it will take me to get to her.
And I calculate something else—the chance of her success. Because if she shoots and kills Moore, I can walk away, my mission accomplished without my having to be involved at all.
But one look at her tells me the odds are bad. She’s sweating and terrified, stumbling as she rushes toward him.
If she shoots Moore and misses, the security cordon will close down around him. He will retreat to his encampment, and I will not get another chance.
So I make a choice.
I tense my shoulder, lift and then snap my elbow down quickly, breaking Swivel Neck’s grip.
I leap away, dodging another security guy in the process.
The security guards are reaching for me and shouting. Lee turns toward us, surprised to see me still there.
All attention on me now, none on the woman with the gun.
She raises the pistol, her face a mask of anger.
That’s when I leap, propelling my entire body toward the woman.
I shout “Gun!” at the same time, hoping the word will be enough to set off a well-practiced response from Moore’s bodyguards.
I hit the woman from the side and the gun goes off high, shattering a light fixture above us. Someone screams in the room behind me. The woman fires twice more as she goes down, but by then I’ve got her arm extended away from her body and toward the wall, where the rounds can do no harm.
The woman is shouting beneath me.
“Let me go! My daughter, he can’t take her!”
I clamp her wrist hard, forcing her to release the pistol.
As soon as it’s out of her grip, she cries in rage and frustration, collapsing into a heap under me.
Young people from the camp are on us by then, one pinning the woman’s arms, another sitting on her chest so she won’t be able to get away.
“You can’t have her, Moore!” she shouts. “Not my baby!”
One of the boys is clamping her mouth, her screams muffled beneath his hand.
I glance behind me, and a group of young people have surrounded Moore. They’re rushing him out of the room.
“Call the police!” one of the recruits says.
“No,” his camp minder says. “There’s no need for that.”
I look to the back of the room to see where Moore exited, and I’m surprised to find him still in the room, arguing with a group of campers.
They’re trying to get him to go, and he’s refusing to leave.
The English teacher is still pinned on the ground crying. Suddenly she gets a second wind, fighting her way out from the grip of several boys.
“Mooooore!” she shrieks. “You can’t do this!”
That’s when Moore comes striding forward through the crowd.
He touches the shoulder of one of the boys sitting on the woman’s legs, and the boy stands up. He nods to the other boys holding her, and they, too, let go.
The woman doesn’t know what to do. She lies on the ground like a turtle turned on its back. She looks up at Moore helplessly.
He comes closer to her and kneels down.
It’s possible I could get to Moore, approaching in the confusion until I am close enough to touch him. But it’s too risky.
I’m going to have to find a different way.
Moore whispers to the woman too quietly for me to be able to hear it. Her face goes from hatred, to surprise, to something else, something almost peaceful.
After a moment he extends a hand to help her up. She takes it without a word, brushing herself off as she stands.
The two of them face each other—
Then Moore holds out his arms, and the woman steps into them, embracing him.
Several people in the room gasp. Next to me, a girl wipes tears from her eyes.
Moore hugs the woman, and a moment later he is on the move again, walking toward the back of the room surrounded by his people. He looks at me as he passes by but doesn’t speak. He quickly disappears through the back door.
A number of girls cluster around the distraught woman. They seem to know her, stroking her shoulders and back and leading her away.
A moment later Lee is by my side.
“Are you okay?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say like I’m shaken up, even though I’m quite sure I’m fine.
Lee checks me from head to toe, performing a quick injury assessment like someone with advanced first aid training would know to do.
“You weren’t hit,” he says.
“Thank God,” I say. “Are the police here yet?”
“No police,” Lee says. “We’ll deal with this internally.”
“Earlier you said you know that woman.”
Lee looks toward the ground.
“Her daughter is at camp, but she’s convinced that something bad is going to happen.”
“Is it?”
“On the contrary,” Lee says. “It’s something good.”
There’s a joyful light in his eyes that troubles me.
I look around the room, gauging the reaction among the other campers. They are strangely quiet, going about their business cleaning up and organizing the room as if nothing happened.
They may be quiet, but I react like a normal boy would after the shock of an intense experience wears off. I start to shiver, let my breathing get shallow and rapid.
“I think I need to sit down,” I say.
Lee looks worried. “Try to relax,” he says. “It’s totally normal to feel like this after your body gets a shot of adrenaline.”
“I can’t believe what just happened,” I say. “She tried to kill your father.”
“She tried,” Lee says. “But you stopped her.”
He backs away a little, his demeanor shifting.
“How did you stop her, Daniel?” he says.
“I don’t know exactly, I just grabbed her.”
“You didn’t just grab her. You tackled her and held her gun arm out of range so she wouldn’t have a firing solution.”
He’s much more perceptive than I realized. I have to be careful now.
“You looked like a pro out there,” he says.
“A pro what?”
“A security pro.”
“I have some training,” I say.
“What kind of training?”
“Martial arts. My father thinks it’s important that a person knows how to defend himself.”
He glances over my shoulder toward the back door.
“You’ll need to tell my father about that,” he says.
“Your father?”
“He wants to talk to you now.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MOORE STANDS IN THE GLARE OF TRUCK HEADLIGHTS BEHIND THE COMMUNITY CENTER.
I cannot see his face, only his profile behind those of the young men who protect him.
Lee guides me in. We pass Miranda, one side of her face lit by headlights, the other in darkness.
Lee stops suddenly and gestures for me to continue forward on my own. The security people stand in a line on both sides, but they let me pass.
I step into the glare of the headlights. Moore waits for me to come closer.
Four steps away now. The air seems to vibrate around him. He stands with one hand on the truck hood, his lower half lit by the headlights, but his face in darkness.