Desperate Measures

had dropped from six names to five.

Derrick Meecham was no longer enrolled.

Why? Had Meecham gotten sick? His grade from the previous semester had been an A, so he couldn’t have found the course so difficult that he’d dropped it. Besides, Pittman had the suspicion that at Grollier, students didn’t have the option of dropping courses. Rather, Grollier dropped students.

Then why! Pittman thought again. He became more convinced that his memory hadn’t failed him, that Derrick Meecham had, in fact, not been in the yearbook for the following year. Pittman rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze wandered to the bottom of the screen, where the course’s instructor had signed the grade report, and suddenly he felt as if he had touched an exposed electrical wire, for the instructor’s ornate signature seemed to come into focus. Pittman tried to control his breathing as he stared at the name.

Duncan Kline.

Jesus, Pittman thought. Duncan hadn’t been a student. He’d been a teacher. That was the connection with Grollier. Duncan Kline had been Millgate’s teacher. All of them. He had taught all the grand counselors.

13

A noise made Pittman stiffen. Despite the whir of the fan on the microfilm machine, he heard footsteps on the stairs beyond the door. Angry voices rapidly approached.

Startled, he shut off the machine.

“… can’t believe you didn’t leave someone on guard.”

“But the two of them left. I made sure.”

The voices became louder.

“Were they followed?”

“To the edge of campus.”

“Stupid…”

“It’s a good thing we flew up here.”

“The outside door was still locked. That proves the records are safe.”

“It proves nothing.”

Lights came on in the hallway outside the door. Their illumination glowed through the opaque window. The shadows of men loomed beyond it.

“I took the yearbooks they were looking at.”

“But what else might they have come back to look at?”

Someone tried to turn the knob on the door.

“It’s locked.”

“Yes, I secured that door, as well. I told you no one’s been here.”

“Just get out your key and unlock the damned door.”

Pittman’s chest cramped. He couldn’t get enough air. In desperation, he swung toward the murky room, trying to figure out where he could hide, how he could stop the men from finding him.

But he remembered how the room had looked during daylight. There’d been no other door. There was nothing to hide behind. If he tried to conceal himself beneath a table, he’d be found at once.

The only option was…

The windows. As he heard a key scraping in the lock, a voice saying, “Come on, hurry,” Pittman rushed to a window, raised its blind, freed its lock, and shoved the window upward.

“Stop,” one of the voices in the hallway said. “I heard something.”

” Somebody’s in there.”

Bennett’s unmistakable nasally voice said, “What are you doing with those guns?”

“Get out of the way.”

Pittman shoved his head out the window, staring down. He had hoped that there might be something beneath the window to break his fall, but at the bottom of the two-story drop, there was nothing except a flower garden.

“When I throw the door open, you go first. Duck to the left. Pete’ll go straight ahead. I’ll take the right.”

Pittman studied the leafless ivy that clung to the side of the building. The vines felt dry and brittle. Nonetheless, he had to take the chance. He squirmed out the window, clung to the ivy, and began to climb down, hoping that there weren’t other men outside in the darkness.

“On three.”

Pittman climbed down faster. The ivy to which he clung made a crunching noise and began to separate from the bricks and mortar.

Above him, he heard a crash, the door being thrust open. Simultaneously the ivy fully separated from the wall. As Pittman dropped, his stomach soaring, his hands scrabbled against the wall, clawing for a grip on other strands of ivy. The fingers on his bandaged left hand were awkward, but those on his right hand snagged onto vines. At once those strands snapped free from the wall, and he dropped farther, grabbing still other ivy, jolting onto the ground, falling backward, desperately bending his knees, rolling.

“There!” a man yelled from the window above him.

Pittman scrambled to his feet and raced toward the cover of the rear of the next building. Something kicked up grass next to him. He heard the muffled, fist-into-a-pillow report from a sound-suppressed gunshot.

Adrenaline made his stomach seem on fire. Needing to discourage them from shooting again, he spun, raised his.45, and fired. In the silence of the night, the roar of the shot was deafening. His bullet struck the upper part of the window, shattering glass.

“Jesus!”

“Get down!”

“Outside! He can’t go far on foot! Stop him!”

Pittman fired again, not expecting to hit anybody but wanting anxiously to make a commotion. The more confusion, the better. Already lights were going on in dormitory windows.

He raced past bushes, rounded the back corner of the next building, and tried to orient himself in the darkness. How the hell do I get out of here? He left the cover of the building, running toward the murky open meadow. A bullet whizzed past him from behind. He ran harder. Suddenly a shadow darted to his left, someone running parallel to him. He fired. In response, another bullet whizzed past, from his left. A car engine roared. Headlights gleamed, speeding toward the meadow ahead of him.

With no other direction available, Pittman veered sharply to his right. He zigzagged and veered again as a third bullet parted air near his head. In the darkness, he’d become disoriented. Dismayed, he found that he was running back toward the school. The rear of the buildings was still in shadow, but the commotion was causing more lights to come on all the time. Feeling boxed in, he took the only course available, charged up to the back door of the nearest building, prayed that its lock hadn’t been engaged, yanked at the door, and felt a surge of hope as it opened. He darted in, shut and locked the door, felt the impact of a bullet against it, and turned to sprint along a hallway.

But he’d bought only a few moments of protection. When he showed himself outside the front of the building…

Can’t hide in here. They’ll search until they…

What am I going to do?

This building was evidently a dormitory. He heard students on the upper floors, their voices distressed.

Witnesses. Need more witnesses. Need more commotion.

He swung toward a fire-alarm switch behind a glass plate and hammered the butt of his.45 against the glass. The plate shattered with surprising ease. Trembling, he reached in past shards and pulled the switch.

The alarm was shrill, reverberating off walls, causing picture frames to tremble. Despite its intensity, Pittman sensed the greater commotion on the floors above him, urgent footsteps, frightened voices, a lot of them. A welter of shadows in the stairway became students in pajamas scurrying