Louis to Lexington, Kentucky, where he bought an airplane ticket under the name “Matt Nolan,” bound for Reagan International. There, he would pick up a CSS drop car in the long-term parking lot and drive himself home. Things weren’t as bad as he’d feared in Edwardsville. The explosion had demolished the gym, but ironically the fact that Bartlett’s team had blown holes in the walls during their assault had dispersed the power of the bomb and saved the rest of the school. The bad news was there was one child still missing—Emma, the daughter of Hope Gardner, the woman who had so bravely and foolishly penetrated the school, the sister of the boy he had pulled to safety into the Dumpster when Milverton’s little going-away present blew. There was no way to tell whether she was alive or dead at this point, but the longer they went without finding her body, the better the chances of finding her were. Unless, of course, she had been blown to bits. The other bad news was that the hero, the guy he’d seen breaking through the police lines and had gotten himself killed for no reason—that man had been identified as Hope’s husband, Jack.
