Chapter 6: The School Lot

I got to the school at 2:58, and Santo was already out of the Lincoln.

The gray van sat behind the buses with its engine running.

Two men leaned on its side door, in dark overcoats, with a clipboard between them.

Children were pouring out of the building by then, shouting and shoving, in a flood of backpacks and blazers.

I put my bag on my shoulder with my hand inside it.

"Don't run," Santo said in my ear. "Walk like you're late."

I walked like a mother who was late.

The taller man saw me coming and straightened.

"Mrs. Marzano," he said, pleasant as a salesman. "We're from the county. Is the boy with you?"

"He's coming out any minute."

"Wonderful. Then we can do this nicely."

He reached into his coat for his paper.

I pressed the muzzle of the .38 into his ribs through my bag, and he stopped.

"Nicely," I agreed. "Put your hands on the van."

He did.

The second man turned and found Santo's good arm around his neck.

It took four seconds, and it was quiet.

Santo pressed a thumb behind the man's ear, and the man folded.

Nobody in the lot looked twice.

A school lot is a loud place, and every adult in it was watching their own child.

Santo found zip ties in the glove box of the van, because men like these always carry them.

He had both of them tied on the floor of the van before the last bus pulled out.

"Whose are they?" I asked.

"Carmine's lawyer's cousins, I think. I've seen the tall one at a christening."

I pulled the county paper from the tall man's coat and read it.

A signature at the bottom, a seal, and a long word I couldn't read about guardianship.

"It's a good forgery," I said.

"Is it?"

"No. But it's the kind of paper that only has to fool a school secretary."

Santo smiled, a real one, quick and crooked, and it changed his whole face.

Then I looked up and saw Nico standing at the school gate with his backpack on both shoulders.

He was watching me.

He had seen the gun, and he had seen Santo, and he had seen the two men on the van floor.

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