Midnight

doorbell ring down in the house below him.
    His stomach twisted. He felt as if he were in a roller coaster, just pulling away from the boarding ramp.
    The bell rang again.
    A long silence followed. They knew he was crippled. They would give him time to answer.
    Finally it rang again.
    He looked at his watch. Only 7:24. He took no comfort in the fact that they had not put him at the end of their schedule.
    The bell rang again. Then again. Then insistently.
    In the distance, muffled by the two intervening floors, Moose began barking.

15
    Tessa grabbed Chrissie's hand. With Sam, they hurried out of the computer lab. The batteries in the flashlight must not have been fresh, for the beam was growing dimmer. She hoped it would last long enough for them to find their way out. Suddenly the school's layout—which had been uncomplicated when they had not been in a life-or-death rush to negotiate its byways—seemed like a maze.
    They crossed a junction of four halls, entered another corridor, and went about twenty yards before Tessa realized they were going the wrong direction. "This isn't how we came in."
    "Doesn't matter," Sam said. "Any door out will do."
    They had to go another ten yards before the failing flashlight beam was able to reach all the way to the end of the hall, revealing that it was a dead end.
    "This way," Chrissie said, pulling loose of Tessa and turning back into the darkness from which they'd come, forcing them either to follow or abandon her.

16
    Shaddack figured they wouldn't have tried to break into Central on any side that faced a street, where they might be seen—and the Indian agreed—so he drove around to the back. He passed metal doors that would have provided too formidable a barrier, and studied the windows, trying to spot a broken pane.
    The last rear door, the only one with glass in the top, was in an angled extension of the building. He was driving toward it for a moment, just before the service road swung to the left to go around that wing, and from a distance of only a few yards, with all the other panes reflecting the glare of his headlights, his attention was caught by the missing glass at the bottom right.
    "There," he told Runningdeer.
    "Yes, Little Chief."
    He parked near the door and grabbed the loaded Remington 12-gauge semiautomatic pistol-grip shotgun from the van's floor behind him. The box of extra shells was on the passenger seat. He opened it, grabbed four or five, stuffed them in a coat pocket, grabbed four or five more, then got out of the van and headed toward the door with the broken window.

17
    Four soft thuds reverberated through the house, even into the attic, and Harry thought he heard glass breaking far away.
    Moose barked furiously. He sounded like the most vicious attack dog ever bred, not a sweet black Lab. Maybe he would prove willing to defend home and master in spite of his naturally good temperament.
    Don't do it, boy, Harry thought. Don't try to be a hero. Just crawl away in a corner somewhere and let them pass, lick their hands if they offer them, and don't—
    The dog squealed and fell silent.
    No, Harry thought, and a pang of grief tore through him. He had lost not just a dog but his best friend.
    Moose, too, had a sense of duty.
    Silence settled over the house. They would be searching the ground floor now.
    Harry's grief and fear receded as his anger grew. Moose. Dammit, poor harmless Moose. He could feel the flush of rage in his face. He wanted to kill them all.
    He picked up the .38 pistol in his one good hand and held it on his lap. They wouldn't find him for a while, but he felt better with the gun in his hand.
    In the service he had won competition medals for both rifle sharpshooting and performance with a handgun. That had been a long time ago. He had not fired a gun, even in practice, for more than twenty years, since that faraway and beautiful Asian land, where on a morning of exceptionally lovely blue skies, he had been crippled for life. He kept the .38 and the .45 cleaned and oiled, mostly out of habit; a soldier's lessons and routines were learned for life—and now he was glad of that.
    A clank.
    A rumble-purr of machinery.
    The elevator.

18
    Halfway down the correct hallway, holding the dimming flashlight in his left hand and the revolver in his other, just as he caught up with Chrissie, Sam heard a siren approaching outside. It was not on top of them, but it was too close. He couldn't tell if the patrol car was actually closing in on