A Maidens Grave

forward as Handy pressed the gun into it.
    “And we get an extra hour for the chopper?” Potter asked. “Makes it about six-fifteen.”
    “Safety’s off,” Dean Stillwell sang out.
    Potter closed his eyes.
    Not a single sound in the van. Complete silence. This is what Melanie lives with day after day after day, Potter thinks.
    “Deal, Art,” Handy said. “By the way, you are one bad motherfucker.”
    Click.
    Potter slumped into the chair, closed his eyes for a moment. “You get all that, Henry?”
    LeBow nodded and typed away. He rose and started to lift Shannon’s marker out of the slaughterhouse schematic.
    “Wait,” said Potter. LeBow paused. “Let’s just wait.”
    “I’ll get that beer,” Budd said, exhaling a sigh.
    Potter smiled. “Getting a little hot for you, Captain?”
    “Yeah. Some.”
    “You’ll get used to it,” Potter said, just as Budd said, “I’ll get used to it.” The captain’s voice was far less optimistic than Potter’s. The agent and the trooper laughed.
    Budd started like a rabbit when Angie squeezed his arm. “I’ll come with you to see about that beer, Captain. If that’s all right with you.”
    “Uh, well, sure, I guess,” he said uncertainly, and they left the van.
    “One more hour,” LeBow said, nodding.
    Potter swiveled around in his chair, staring out the window at the slaughterhouse. “Henry, write down: ‘It’s thenegotiator’s conclusion that the stress and anxiety of the initial phase of the barricade have dissipated and subject Handy is calm and thinking rationally.’ ”
    “That makes one of us,” said Frances Whiting, whose shaking hands spilled coffee on the floor of the van. Derek Elb, the red-haired trooper, gallantly dropped to hands and knees to clean up the mess.

5:11 P.M.
    “What’s he doing with Shannon?” Beverly signed, her chest rising and falling as she tried to breathe.
    Melanie leaned forward. Shannon’s face was emotionless. She was signing and Melanie caught the name Professor X, the founder of the X-Men. Like Emily, the girl was summoning her guardian angels.
    Bear and Brutus were talking and she could see their lips. Bear gestured to Shannon and asked Brutus, “Why . . . giving them away?”
    “Because,” Brutus answered patiently, “if we don’t they’ll break in the fucking door and . . . shoot us dead.”
    Melanie scooted back, said, “She’s just sitting there. She’s all right. They’re going to let her go.”
    Everyone’s face lit up.
    Everyone except Mrs. Harstrawn’s.
    And Kielle’s. Little Kielle, a blond, freckled bobcat. An eight-year-old with twenty-year-old eyes. The girl glanced impatiently at Melanie and turned away, bent down to the wall beside her, working away at something. What was she doing? Trying to tunnel her way out? Well, let her. It’ll keep her out of harm’s way.
    “I think I’m going to be sick,” signed one of the twins, Suzie. Anna signed the same but then she usually echoed everything her very slightly older sister said.
    Melanie signed to them that they wouldn’t be sick. Everything would be fine. She scooted over beside Emily, who was tearfully examining a rip in her dress. “You andI’ll go shopping next week,” Melanie signed. “Buy you new one.”
    And that was when de I’Epée whispered in her useless ear. “The gas can,” he said, and vanished immediately.
    Melanie felt the chill run down her back. The gas can, yes. She turned her head. It sat beside her, red and yellow, a big two-gallon one. She eased toward it, snapped closed the cover and the pressure hole cap. Then looked around the killing room for the other thing she’d need.
    There, yes.
    Melanie slid around to the front of the room, examined the back of the slaughterhouse. There were two doors—she could just make them out in the dimness. Which one led to the river? she wondered. She happened to glance down at the floor, where she’d written the messages in the dust about the hand-shape game. Squinting, she looked at the floor in front of each door—there was much less dust in front of the left. That’s it—the river breeze blows through that one and has swept away the dust. Enough wind for there to be, just possibly, a window or door open far enough for a little girl to scoot through.
    Beverly choked and started a crying fit. She lay on her side, struggling for breath. The inhaler hadn’t done her much good. Bear frowned and looked at her, called something.
    Shit. Melanie signed