Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

What's going on? Dance wondered.

She and O'Neil were back at the Global Adventure entrance, having heard reports that for some reason thousands of park guests were moving in this direction. The agent and the detective were outside the entrance turnstiles and fence.

The patrons clustering on the other side, waiting to exit, appeared fretful. Some exchanged harsh words. A shoving match or two broke out when people cut into the line ahead of others to leave. The crush could have been relieved if the wide gate were functioning but the unsub's steamy Chevy still blocked it.

Dance thought of the Liverpool fans clustering outside Hillsborough Stadium, the disaster her father had told her about.

Twenty-five years ago. I still have nightmares...

O'Neil and Dance walked up to the head of park security and Sergeant Ralston.

Dance asked, "What is all this?"

Both Herb Southern and Ralston were on their phones. Ralston said, "Jesus." Whatever he'd learned was apparently very troubling.

Southern disconnected.

"There's panicking inside. A couple guests beat up on one of my security guards. I don't know why."

Ralston hung up too. "Okay, this is a problem. We're getting calls from everybody: the sheriff's office, media, FBI, Homeland. Reports terrorists're in the park. Machine guns. Suicide vests. Fucking rumors but nine-one-one's flooded, circuits're almost overloaded."

Dance muttered, "He's doing it."

"Your perp?"

She nodded.

O'Neil said, "All it took was him telling a few people the rumor, one news report, a few blog posts, and it's spread like fire."

"It's what he does. He starts panics. And he's real good at it."

O'Neil said, "He's going to try to get out this way, thinking we can't check everybody."

"That's pretty damn close to true," Sergeant Ralston muttered.

Herb Southern walked to the turnstiles, on the other side of which a crowd thirty-or forty-deep jostled to get out. "There's no emergency!" he shouted. "You're safe. You can stay in the park. Don't push. Don't push!"

No one, it seemed, could even hear him over the shouted voices of the mob.

Dance asked, "What's the procedure, if it were a terror attack?"

"Lockdown. Get everybody off the rides and have them wait where security tells them. We have designated places of cover from gunmen and bad weather, fire."

"Evacuation?"

"Not a mass evacuation," Southern said, staring at the growing sea of bodies trying to get the hell out of the place. "Ma'am, today's a slow day but we've still got thirteen thousand souls in the park at this moment. If they all head out together--well, you can imagine."

The crowd was swelling as more people from the inside of the park made their way toward the exits; they jammed into a bottleneck between two gift shops, which jutted into the entrance walkway. Every face seemed terrified.

Dance and O'Neil ran forward and helped people climb the turnstiles, holding young children as their parents clambered to safety, then handing off the kids. They tried to tell people it wasn't a terror attack but not a single one paid them any attention.

At the turnstiles serious fights were starting to break out and there were more and more instances of people shoving others aside and jumping turnstiles, which led to more panic. The crowd was now fifty-or sixty-deep. And growing. One woman screamed as she was jammed against a fence. Her wrist had broken, Dance guessed. Two guards got to her and managed to calm that cluster of patrons. But as soon as they did, another fight broke out, more pushing, more screams. Dance watched two other patrons fall. They were trampled before guards got them to their feet. The park workers' faces were as alarmed as their guests'.

Dance said, "It's on the borderline of manageable. We'll be okay as long as nothing more sets them--"

From the distance came a half-dozen gunshots.

"Hell," she muttered.