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  I slid in through the doors and crouched low against a sidewall to scope out the scene. I fished my phone out from my pocket and flicked on airplane mode. I was going after a shooter unarmed. I didn’t want an incoming call ruining the element of surprise.

  At first, I couldn’t see anyone in the dimly lit room. Further up, towards the stage, I could make out rows and rows of empty seats. Past them was a dance floor area just in front of the stage. As I panned to the right, I saw him. A man standing dead still. I had no idea if he was the shooter, whether he was solo or whether there were others at large. But there was an eerie silence and no shouting, so I figured no one else was being hunted down.

  I stayed low and crept up the aisle toward the stage. As I did, I noticed people hiding behind the seats. I didn’t know whether they felt too petrified to move or thought it was a good place to hide, but they all noticed me. Some looked up from lit phone screens. Probably texting their parents. This triggered the realization that word of the shooting would be spreading like electricity down a wire. In a distant corner of the room, I heard a phone. It rang twice before the owner snuffed it out.

  I paused next to a young man, about sixteen, who was breathing hard. Relief came over his face at the sight of me. I was a grown up, so I must be the cavalry.

  “Did you see the shooter?” I whispered.

  “I think so. Up there. The black guy in the blue hoodie.”

  I nodded. That fit the description of the figure I’d seen standing to the right of the stage. At least the blue hoodie part.

  A few seconds later, I was at the front row. I stuck my head out for a peek. It had been about ninety seconds since the shots were fired. I couldn’t see his left hand, but there was no weapon in his right. I didn’t know why he was standing there, but I couldn’t waste any more time. I had to act. I shuffled to get around the end seat, put my hands to the ground like a sprinter and prepared to launch. It was about twenty yards between me and the shooter. If I was quiet and quick enough, I could tackle him before he heard me and swung his weapon round. I’d drop my shoulder and hit him hard in the ribs, then pin his arms to his sides as we crashed to the floor.

  Just as I was about to spring, two figures rushed the shooter, doing exactly what I’d planned to do. But after tackling him to the ground, they struggled to contain him. He broke free, rolled away and got to his feet. Now it was my turn. The guy swiveled around and saw me. He was a young black man in his late teens. I launched at him. Seeing me come at him, he turned and ran. I was barely two few yards into the pursuit when a voice boomed down from the stage.

  “Freeze asshole, or you’re full of holes!”

  I knew better than to assume he’d know I wasn’t the bad guy, so I stopped in my tracks, raised my arms, and looked up at the stage. A security guard had his arms straight out and his weapon pointed at the shooter.

  “Don’t you move an eyelid, you son of a bitch!”

  This was another voice, coming from behind me. I turned slowly around to see another guard walking forward steadily, his weapon firmly trained on the shooter, ready to unload if the target so much as scratched an itch.

  “We’ve got this, sir. Thank you.” The second guard said, tapping my shoulder as he walked by.

  I watched as they closed in on the shooter, ordered him to the ground and cuffed him.

  It was only then that I looked at the body on the ground, just two yards from my feet. It was none other than Luke Jameson, the YouTube star I’d seen in the interview on the big screen. And lying two feet from his body was a Glock 17 pistol. For a brief moment, I wondered what on earth had cost this young man his life. Then I turned and ran out of the theater to fetch Bella.

  “Bella!” I called as I rounded the stall where I’d left her and began pulling away the storage containers.

  “Bella, darling. It’s me. Daddy. I’m back, sweetheart. Everything’s okay.”

  But my words fell away as I removed the last box. My blood went cold with a dreaded revelation.

  Bella was gone.

  2

  Now I was the one running through the Anaheim Convention Center in a state of panic. An internal monologue helped me keep a lid on my worry, saying Bella wouldn’t have moved unless it had made absolute sense for her to do so. She wouldn’t have just disobeyed me and fled. But no one would have just taken her ... surely.

  I shouted out her name as I ran, stopping to check a few obvious hiding places where I thought she may have taken new refuge. I swept back through the vast, now empty expo halls, through the ticketing area and then out to the large foyer. Everywhere was empty. I called and called but got no response.

  Outside hundreds of people stood huddled together in groups. Many looked at me, having emerged late, as though I’d have some answers for them. But all I had were desperate questions.

  “I’m looking for a young girl. My daughter. She’s seven, long light-brown hair. Have you seen her?”

  Their blank but sympathetic faces made it clear how idiotic my quest was. As if, while running for their lives, they’d have noticed a young girl by herself and thought it odd enough to recall.

  “Sorry mister, but I haven’t seen her,” one teenage boy said. “But a lot of people went that way.”

  He pointed down Convention Way, a broad promenade leading away from the venue.

  I thanked him and ran on. Around the fountains and statues, hundreds of people milled, many embracing one another. Others were on their phones, calling loved ones to let them know they were okay.

  My phone!

  I’d wondered why Bella had not called me. Then, I remembered I’d switched it to airplane mode. As soon as I reconnected, the phone began ringing.

  With a flash of alarm, I saw it was Claire. Unable to say where Bella was, I didn’t want to answer, but I had to.

  “Hello.”

  “Brad!” Claire was breathless. “Where have you been? I heard there’s been a shooting. Are you okay? Is Bella okay?”

  “Yes, we’re safe. It’s over. They’ve got the guy.”

  “Oh, thank God. How’s Bella? Can you put her on, please?”

  “I can’t right now. I’ve got to do something.”

  “What do you mean? I just want to speak to her quickly.”

  I wasn’t about to tell Claire that wasn’t possible.

  “I’ll call you back,” I said and hung up.

  I resumed searching for Bella but there were so many people it was impossible.

  I was pulling out my phone again to show people a photo of Bella when it rang again. It was Claire.

  Somewhat defeated, I answered.

  “Claire, I’m just ...”

  “I cannot believe you. You left her?!”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I just got a call from a lady who’s with Bella. She says you left her by herself and ran off.”

  “Claire, that’s not what happened. I hid her. She was safe.”

  “What do you mean she was safe?”

  “I had to do something Claire. I wasn’t going stand by and let a bunch of kids get shot while I ran to save my own life.”

  “Your job was to keep our daughter safe.”

  There was nowhere else for this conversation to go.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “How crazy it is that you have to ask me where your daughter is. My God. She’s in Starbucks, waiting for you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring her home straight away.”

  I walked to the coffee shop feeling yet again like I’d let my daughter down. Now, my idea of playing the hero seemed like just an egotistical glory dash, an extravagance performed for dubious reasons.

  Within a few seconds, I had Bella in my sight. Our eyes met, and she ran towards me as I walked through the doorway. I lifted her up and held her tight, never so relieved and thankful to have her in my arms. The dread of not knowing where she was or whether she was safe had spun me into a place I never wanted to be again.

 
Her own relief came in a flood of tears. Amid her sobs, I felt her rest her head on my shoulder.

  “Daddy. Why did you leave me?” she said.

  I realized it was going to be a huge job to convince Bella that leaving her side at a time of mortal danger had somehow been the right thing to do. She wasn’t versed in America’s history of mass shootings. Both Claire and I had done a good job of shielding her from the worst of the news.

  “Darling, I didn’t want to leave you. But I made sure you were safe, and then I had to do something to make other people safe too.”

  “What did you do?”

  Suddenly I was stumped. What had I actually done?

  “I tried to make sure no one else was hurt, honey. I wanted to make sure everyone else would get back to their families again. I thought ...”

  A steely female voice interrupted me.

  “I thought it best to get her properly out of harm’s way.”

  I turned to see the stern woman we’d met in the Cicily Pines queue. Her expression remained at once pleasant and disapproving. I extended my hand.

  “Thank you,” I said, searching for something to add in place of a name. Neither “miss” nor “ma’am” seemed appropriate, because I took an immediate dislike to her. Maybe it was self-defense: after all, she clearly didn’t wish to hide her judgment of me.

  “I’m Francine. Francine Holmes.”

  We shook hands quickly and coldly.

  “I’m ex-services,” I tried to explain. “I had to see if I could help neutralize the threat.”

  Francine smiled and looked down at Bella, patting her on the head.

  “Quite the hero, your daddy.”

  “Thank you for helping Bella,” I said. “I’m sure you meant well.”

  She sensed, rightly, that I was having a hard time conceding that I didn’t have everything, my daughter’s safety included, under control.

  “Well, I think it turned out for the best. What a delightful young woman she is.”

  Bella piped up with some news.

  “Francine says she can arrange for me to meet Cicily Pines,” she said.

  “Really?” I said. “Wouldn’t that be something? How would you manage to do that?”

  Francine’s bearing softened, as though she was prepared to entertain the possibility that I wasn’t a deadbeat dad entirely.

  “I’m part of the Halo Group,” she said. “We’ve run UpliftInc, a promotions company for YouTubers. We put on the event for Cicily today.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re her manager?”

  “Not quite. We’re her primary patron. We love what she does and want to help her flourish, that’s all. Her and others like her.”

  “So you’re like the Motown Records of YouTube?”

  Francine practically shuddered.

  “No, we support a select number of young people who we think are the flowers among the weeds.”

  I figured Halo must be behind the Christian stable of stars I’d read about. But there was something about the name that rang a bell in a dim corner of my brain.

  “The Halo Group. That sounds familiar to me.”

  “We have been around for ten years. We used to be the Halo Council, a non-profit group founded by Victor Lund. We ran security and development projects in war-torn countries. But these days, we are purely US-focused. Everyone in our YouTube stable is American as apple pie.”

  My mind was ticking. I was sure I’d heard the name Victor Lund before, and the Halo Council too. Then suddenly, the grim realization clicked. It was the name of a place I wanted to keep well behind me: Bati Kot, a dusty village in Nangarhar province, east Afghanistan. My unit had gotten into a firefight there, one that resulted in several civilian casualties, including the death of a foreign aid worker. In response, Lund had launched a vociferous public slur campaign against my men in the media. A few years later, as I recalled, the Halo Council had been expelled from Afghanistan by President Karzai, apparently under intense pressure from the US ambassador in Kabul.

  “The Halo Council. You were in Afghanistan, for a while,” I said flatly.

  Francine’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yes, we were.”

  “So was I. Am I right in thinking Halo was kicked out for some reason?”

  “It would take too much time to answer that question. I will leave you two alone. When things calm down, we will organize another event.” She rested a hand on Bella’s shoulder. “And when we do, young lady, you will be the first to know. You will be welcome as our VIP guest. By then, this dreadful experience should be well behind us.”

  “That would be wonderful. It’s very kind of you,” I said. “Here, I’ll give you my card.”

  I fetched one from my wallet and handed it to her.

  “So you’re a lawyer?” Francine said as she read the print. “A man of many talents.” It seemed like she wanted to tack “except for fatherhood” onto the end of that statement. “Well then, Bella, I will certainly be in touch, and we will arrange for you to come and meet Cicily another day. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds great. Thank you,” Bella said, all smiles.

  I put my arm around my daughter’s shoulders.

  “I’d best be getting her home.”

  “Yes,” said Francine. “What a dreadful ordeal. She will want a big mommy hug, I imagine.”

  As we walked to the car, my phone buzzed. I took it out to see five desperate text messages from Bella. All the frantic calls around the convention center must have jammed the networks.

  “Your texts just arrived,” I said.

  “Well, they’re no use now, are they? That’s just not good enough, is it Dad?” She’d applied a remonstrative tone to her voice. I knew she wasn’t directing the comment at me. I did that myself. A bit like your daddy, I thought regretfully.

  “No, it’s not, sweetheart.”

  Bella and I barely spoke as we drove back to Claire’s house at Venice Beach. I asked her a few times how she was feeling, and it was clear she was still in shock and struggling to process things.

  But I had to ask why she moved from where I’d left her.

  “Francine found me and told me it would be safer outside.”

  “She found you?”

  “She said she saw us go behind the booth.”

  “What else did she say?”

  There was a long pause before Bella answered.

  “She said she couldn’t believe you’d run off and leave me like that.”

  I was not liking this woman at all. I just kept my mouth shut.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she said before everything went quiet again. Eventually she resumed talking. There was a train of thought she wanted to share. “You know, it was weird. I was so scared. And there was all that screaming. And I knew you were there. But...”

  “But what?”

  “Well, you were there. Just not for me.”

  That winded me. She said it like it was a lesson learned, something for her to store away as a coping mechanism for future disappointment.

  “Bella, I’m always going to be there for you. That’s a promise.”

  I said the words knowing she believed them to be, on current evidence, hollow. From my end, I meant every word—I never wanted her to feel like this ever again.

  But that’s just the sort of thing a father says. Right?

  3

  We’re proceeding in single file along a raised dirt bank between poppy fields. The crops are in bloom, just a few weeks from harvest. Beyond to our right flows a fast, shallow river. The carpet of crimson and white flowers, the lush greenery bordering the river: this is an oasis lodged in a dusty expanse of desert. Ahead lies a village, an accretion of mud-walled housing compounds. Men and women in robes and turbans walk the dirt streets. It’s a vision straight out of an illustrated children’s bible, a way of life that has barely changed for centuries.

  As we approach, we file onto the inroad. Kids in dusty, flowing garments run out to greet us, shouting out
hello, wanting to shake hands, and asking for money. Their parents look on from a distance, wary about their offspring fraternizing with foreign fighters but hopeful they will return with a few dollars.

  We walk through the town unthreatened. Men and women appear relaxed as we pass by. We get a nodded greeting here, a lifted hand there. They look as though they are glad to see us, but there’s no telling what they really think.

  We round a corner into another dirt street flanked by mud walls. It’s empty. There are no kids to be seen, and the only visible adult faces poke out warily from windows and corners up ahead. The hypervigilance kicks even higher. There’s no telling whether those faces belong to cautious civilians or insurgents. You only know for sure when an AK-47’s pointing at you.

  Four of my men are up ahead—Hunter, Blanchard, Shaw and Jeffreys. All slowly pivot their torsos from one side to the other as they walk; rifles held to chests, index fingers resting on trigger guards.

  Everything is quiet, the dominant sound our own breath. Our focus is cranked up by the constant expectation that all hell could break lose any second. In this state of supreme acuity, you are so attuned to your environment you actually think you can see a fraction into the future. It’s this wired condition that makes readjusting to the safe, cozy bed, the comfortable silence and the lawnmowing mundanity of life back home so hard. This is an elevated, superhuman sense of being alive. Feel it enough and you come to like it, the same way a skier stands above a cliff-scarred double black run, the same way a BASE jumper steps onto the edge of a skyscraper in the dead of night. In these spells of lucid intensity, nothing else matters but the now—not the past, not the present. Nobody, no one matters but you and your men and the determination that you will all get each other out alive.

  We look for tell-tale wires, freshly padded dirt—any sign of an IED in waiting.

  We see none.

  Suddenly there’s a huge blast ahead. I see Hunter literally torn to pieces even as I’m lifted off my feet and thrown back by the shockwave.

  In a cloud of choking dust and smoke, I crawl forward. I get to Jeffreys. He’s shaken but otherwise okay. I crawl further forward on my elbows, making my way toward Shaw as fast as I can. He’s bleeding from the abdomen and shoulder—probably shrapnel from a pressure cooker filled with explosives, nails, bolts and nuts.