Airel: The Awakening (Airel Saga Book One)

Chapter XII

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

PEOPLE WERE RUSHING OUT through the concession lobby toward the ticketing area when Kim and I exited the ladies’ room. We stopped and held on to each other and stared as worried faces hurried by, ignoring us. One crowd of girls knocked over a cardboard promo display as they ran. They didn’t look back. I heard a woman’s scream burst out from somewhere, perhaps down one of the corridors, and then there were cops everywhere, one hand on their holstered guns, telling people to be calm and orderly. Through the glass of the lobby windows, I could see the blue-and-red strobes of several police cruisers. They had pulled right up onto the sidewalk. One of the cops carried what looked to me like a military gun, something huge and scary that belonged in the hands of a soldier, not with a patrol man.

Michael found us in the lobby and asked if I was okay. “What happened?” He acted like he was more excited than scared. “Did you see anything?”

“I saw everything. He did it right in front of God and everyone.” 

“What did you see, Airel?” Michael asked, hunting for gory details I wouldn’t give. I pressed my fingers into my temples, trying to force my Technicolor mental snapshots of the event to flee from me. It didn’t help. All it did was conjure a bloody knife in my mind’s eye. My trauma was as invasive as the sound a man’s footsteps had made on the tile floor of the ladies’ room.

The police held everyone in the ticketing lobby, having locked down the theater so they could question everyone, including some people who had been watching other movies. They were calling certain people out of the crowd—exclusively tall, white males—and pulling them aside to a place I couldn’t see. Somebody identified the killer. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse; I couldn’t say it had all been a horrific nightmare now.

They interviewed me too. I told them everything that had happened, even the part where he had followed me into the bathroom. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. It felt like the world was running on its own time and I had been ejected from reality, caught in my own slow and haunting version of it. 

The cops told me to wait for a few minutes—the officer in charge wanted to have a word with me. Great. James and Kim and Michael milled around with me as nearly everyone else was released and gradually allowed to clear out. The police had done the best they could. Even though they’d locked down the building in an attempt to trap the killer, I knew he was long gone.

I could feel it.

I was unsafe.

“You are one lucky girl,” the officer said, walking up to me. This must be Mr. In Charge. He was big, bordering on heavy, and deep-set dark eyes looked at me from under a heavy unibrow. He flipped his notebook shut, mumbling something to another uniformed cop.

Lucky? I thought how unlucky I was to have been subjected to all of it, but then again, I was alive. And that was something.

“We need you to come down to the station to meet with a sketch artist. You can ...”

“I’ll take her,” Michael said. I didn’t argue. I thought it was a good idea, me not driving. 

“Sorry, miss,” the officer said. “You’ll be riding with us, please. It’s for your protection. We still haven’t apprehended the suspect. Detective Lopez would be more comfortable with you in custody.”

I made a face. In custody? This is getting real. But what could I do? I just nodded to him. Increasingly now, things were happening to me, and without my active consent. I started to hand my car keys to Kim, but Michael intercepted them. “We’ll follow you,” he said, “and wait till you’re done.”