Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (66 page)

I called Mo on my way out, relieved that she picked up after the first ring.

“Which high school does Devin go to?” I said, a high-pitched shakiness in my voice.

It was 7:55. There wasn’t much time.

“Abby?” she said, sounding distracted.

“He’s got a bomb, Mo,” I said. “And he’s going to use it today. Which high school?”

“I… I guess Bend High,” she said. “That’s where Spenser was supposed to go. Hey, how do you know all this?”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Wait,” she said as I started to hang up. “I want in.”

“Where are you?” I asked, hitting the garage door opener and jumping in the Jeep.

“At work. I opened this morning.”

“All right, it’s on the way. I’ll be there in five minutes. Be waiting outside. We don’t have much time.”

“I’ll be ready,” she said.

***

After Mo got in the car, I stepped down hard on the gas and raced down Franklin. I threw her my phone and told her to hit number two and put it on speaker.

“Kate. He’s going to blow up the school,” I shouted. “Bend High. Devin’s got a bomb. I saw it in a vision.”

“Wait, what Abby? Calm down. Tell me where you are.”

A car honked at us as I swerved around him, cutting back in his lane.

“He’s at Bend High. Mo’s with me. I saw it, Kate. The bomb. The time. Devin. It’s going off at 9:15.”

I glanced down at the clock on the stereo. There was just over an hour left.

“Okay,” Kate said. “I’ll make some calls. In the meantime, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Thanks.”

I crossed 3
^rd
as the stoplight went from light to dark.

“So you have visions, too?” Mo said. “In addition to seeing ghosts.”

“Yeah, I’ve got more gifts than Santa Claus,” I said.

I turned right on 6
^th
. Groups of kids were walking lazily toward the school on both sides of the street. I forced myself to slow down.

The visitor parking lot was full, so I left the Jeep in the bus lane in front of the school. An incensed bus driver waved his arms and yelled at me as we ran up the steps to the office building.

“We need to talk to the principal now,” I said to a woman behind the counter. The front office was full of students.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman said, her voice heavy with smugness. “You need to make an appointment.”

“Now!” Mo screamed. “It’s a fu— It’s an emergency.”

A look of terror passed over her face.

“There’s a bomb in the building,” I whispered.

She picked up the phone and a few moments later we were escorted back to a conference room.

The man at the table motioned us to sit down.

“Yes,” he said into the phone. “That’s right. We are evacuating the school. This is
not
a drill.”

“I’m Principal Mulwray,” he said, looking at me after he hung up. “You must be Abby.”

“Yes, but how—”

“Your sister just called,” he said as piercing bells starting going off. “She told me you have some information about a bomb?”

“Yes,” I said. “One of your students has brought a bomb to school today and it’s set to go off at 9:15.”

I didn’t know how I was going to explain how I knew all this, but he didn’t ask. He started typing something in a computer.

“Do you know his name?” he said. “This student.”

“Devin,” Mo said. “Devin Cypher.”

He looked up, shaking his head and swinging the screen toward us so we could see his picture.

It was the same face I had seen in the vision. Same hair, same dead eyes.

Devin.

“Yes, that’s him,” Mo said.

“That’s good and bad,” he said. “He’s not here.”

He picked up the phone again and punched in some numbers.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He held up his hand.

“Hello, Linda,” he said. “You might have a serious problem over there. I just learned that one of your students, a Devin Cypher, might have a bomb on him. Yes, that’s right. Supposedly he’s planning to set it off at 9:15. Okay.”

“He used to go here,” Mr. Mulwray said to us. “But now attends the new high school, Desert Wind. Almost a third of our students made the move this year, including Devin Cypher.”

“Damn it,” I said to Mo. “We’re in the wrong place.”

We passed two security guards as we ran toward the Jeep. Several classes were already outside.

The alarms kept sounding.

CHAPTER 44

8:39

Jesse was right. It hadn’t been Nathaniel in my visions. It had been Devin all along.

I thought about this as we sped over to Desert Wind, Mo giving me directions.

And I was there. I was watching Devin the whole time, not realizing it. As the years went by, he had descended deeper into evil, from torturing helpless animals to being responsible for Spenser’s death to
this
.

“Right here,” Mo yelled.

I hit the brakes, the tires squealing as I took a wide turn.

“Then left up there at the stop sign.”

There was a lot of commotion when we pulled up. Sirens wailed from all directions and mixed in with the alarms coming from the school. Students were being led in the direction of the football field, away from the buildings. Several classes were already there. School buses were lining up in front of the stadium.

The teachers did their best to keep order, but just as I remembered when I was back in school doing fire drills, it was hard for students to take it seriously. Practicing these things was important, but it also couldn’t help resulting in a
boy who cried wolf
kind of reaction.

It’s real this time
, I thought.
He’s here. The wolf is here.

8:47

Police were pouring into the school.

I gripped the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking as we sat in the Jeep across the street, watching as some of the loaded buses began leaving.

“Where do you think they’re going?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Mo said. “I guess they want to get them as far away as possible.”

I wondered where he was. Where the bomb was.

“Where do you think he is?” Mo said.

“I was just asking myself the same thing. I don’t know. Maybe he took off.”

A car pulled up behind us. It was Kate.

“Have you seen a photographer?” she said, walking up.

“No,” I said.

“I can’t believe that guy. He should be here. He left 10 minutes before me.”

“Kate, this is Mo,” I said.

“Hi, Mo,” she said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your brother.”

Mo nodded.

A small crowd had gathering by the parking lot. The police began blocking off the perimeter of the school. Kate tried to get through, but she was turned away. She interviewed a few bystanders and came back to where we were.

8:58

We stood in the weak sunlight, listening on Kate’s police scanner.

“All clear,” we heard. “All civilians have been evacuated. Repeat: all clear.”

9:03

The street was jammed with cars, mostly parents coming to pick up their children. They were being directed to go to the parking lot by the football stadium.

“The device has been found,” a voice said on the scanner. “Bomb Disposal Team report to the gymnasium. BDT to the northwest end of the gym.”

“Roger that.”

I looked at my watch.

“Hurry,” I mouthed. “Hurry.”

9:08

The seconds ticked by, simultaneously in slow motion and at the speed of light. An eerie hush fell about the place. Kate shook her head.

“How can this be happening?” she said.

“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often,” Mo said, blowing a ring of smoke into the air. “There are a lot of broken, messed up freaks walking around out there. Busloads of ‘em.”

9:13

I braced myself for what was coming, not wanting to look in the direction of the building.

“Device has been neutralized,” we suddenly heard a moment later. “Repeat: device has been neutralized.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. It felt like my first breath of the entire morning.

Kate reached out and squeezed my hand.

“You did it, Abby,” she said.

“I had some help,” I said slowly, looking at her and Mo and thinking of Spenser.

9:21

“Suspect’s name is Devin Cypher. Whereabouts unknown. Suspect considered armed and dangerous. Proceed with extreme caution.”

It was only a matter of time now before they caught him.

9:28

“Suspect is on one of the school buses. He may have hostages!” we heard a voice shout from the scanner. “Bus Number 9243. In the stadium parking lot. Bus Number 9243. All available units report to the stadium parking—”

Suddenly a loud, sickening explosion came from that direction. Flames and smoke rose in the air.

People were screaming.

CHAPTER 45

Devin had boarded one of the buses and was sitting in the back. One of the other students came up and told the teacher he thought Devin might have a weapon. Mr. Collins, my old history teacher from Bend High, then told the bus driver to make an announcement, saying that the bus was having mechanical problems and that students would need to start getting off.

What happened next is unclear, but apparently at some point someone shouted, “My God, he’s got a bomb!”

“All hell broke loose,” one of the students later said during an interview. “Everyone started pushing and running.”

Everyone except Mr. Collins.

According to the bus driver and several students, Mr. Collins went toward the back of the bus, where Devin was sitting. No one knows what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to keep Devin away from the other students and give them enough time to get off the bus. Maybe he was trying to talk Devin down.

All that we know for sure is that a minute later the bomb strapped around Devin Cypher’s chest went off, killing him and Mr. Collins.

CHAPTER 46

I found my black skirt in the back of the closet, went into the bathroom, and slipped it on.

“Not used to seeing you in a dress, Craigers,” Jesse said.

I sighed.

“It’s a skirt. And if I never have to wear one of these stupid things again in my life, that’d be okay,” I said, pulling it around in circles on my waist after I realized it was on backwards.

He was sitting on my bed, playing with my iPod as I got ready for the funeral.

“It’s nice you’re going,” he said, not looking up.

I hated funerals. I hated everything about them. The smell of the incense hanging in the air, the way the light looked as it filtered through those stained glass windows. The shiny casket up front. All those tears and swollen faces.

But mostly I hated that somber, dark feeling that lodged deep down between the ribs when everything was over, that feeling that stayed around for a long, long time.

“He was a good guy,” I said. “And a cool teacher. One of the few I ever had.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said.

I clipped my hair back and closed the closet door.

“I just wish I could have…” I said.

“You saved hundreds of people,” he said. “I know it’s hard to remember that now, but you will someday.”

I wiped at my eyes and Kate called from the living room.

“Almost ready, Abby? We have to get going if we want to get seats. It’s going to be packed.”

“One minute,” I yelled back.

I grabbed my black cardigan off the chair and put it on.

“Hey, by the way, you never went to mine,” Jesse said, standing up.

“I would have loved to have gone to your funeral but I was in the hospital recovering, remember? You should know, you were there with me.”

“No,” he said. “I mean my grave. You still haven’t gone to my grave, Craigers.”

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Well, maybe it’s time,” he said.

I grabbed my phone.

“See you later, Jesse,” I said, squeezing my arms tight around him.

***

I was glad that Kate had made us get there early so we could get a seat. We sat in the back, but with an hour to go before the services, every seat in the church had been taken and there was a large crowd standing behind us.

The pews were filled with some of the people I had gone to school with. I talked to a few of my old soccer teammates, said hello to some teachers, and nodded at Conner sitting a few rows up.

The administrators at Desert Wind had closed the school for the day in remembrance of Mr. Collins and to allow students and faculty to attend his funeral. But because they were expecting so many people, cameras were set up and the service was broadcast back at the school.

As I sat listening to the priest, my mind began to wander over the events of the last few days.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Devin. It came out in the newspaper articles that he had been in trouble a lot. His father refused to talk to reporters when they asked him why Devin did it.

During a search of Devin’s room, police found something strange. It was mentioned in one of the stories in
The Bugler
and later picked up by the local TV stations. Devin had a series of photos of an injured boy who was bleeding from the head. Officials weren’t releasing his name.

When investigators got around to asking me how I knew what Devin was planning, I just came out with it.

“I had a dream,” I said.

They seemed skeptical. I didn’t care.

Dr. Krowe had been able to see me the day after the bombing. I had asked him about evil. Because I couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t get a hold on it. Were people just born that way, like babies with a birth defect, or did it have to do with how they were raised? In many ways Nathaniel and Devin couldn’t have been more opposite, yet they were both killers.