Free The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) by Jeremy Laszlo

would end up with me handing this case over to White and Landsmen, turning in my badge and gun, then taking a nice long drive to Florida with early retirement. I shake my head. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can hear kids crying, wailing down the hallways.
    “Who the hell are you?” someone demands. I turn and look at a bald man with a fat mustache on his upper lip, trying his hardest to look like a hard ass. Maybe he is, to children. But to me, this guy is just a jackass who is interrupting my thinking process. I look at him and wonder how many tons of shit he’s going to drop when I flash my badge and tell him that he’s got a killer on the loose in the school. I reach for my badge. The rent-a-cop security guards coming up behind me see the handcuffs behind my back and my holstered pistol. They quickly know who I am. These jokers are all sentenced here because they couldn’t make it as a beat cop. The uniform was too much for them, so now they’re all exiled here.
    “Detective Steven King,” I tell him.
    “Like the author?” He furrows his brow.
    “Like the fucking author,” I growl back at him.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” the man demands, approaching me still, bold and unwilling to step back. “This is a public school building. You cannot just come in here and chase one of my students, antagonizing her into doing something like this.”
    “I didn’t antagonize her,” I tell him with as much authority and force as I can muster. “She was under suicide watch and was a threat to herself. I attempted to apprehend her before she could bring harm to herself or those around her. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to go through the proper channels, her life was in danger. When she saw me enter, she was compelled to take action into her own hands, thus making a public spectacle of her death.”
    “I’ve known Alice since she was a freshman,” the man argues. “That girl has never missed a day, never gotten anything less than a B on a test, and sure as hell wasn’t under suicide watch. So I’m going to give you one more time to explain to me what the hell you’re doing here before the police show up.”
    “I’m going to need you to back the fuck up,” I tell him. My eyes dart from him, glancing up at the security camera that’s pointed down the hallway. I look at it and suddenly realize that there are dozens of cameras inside this building, probably two pointed up and down this hallway. They have to monitor everything that’s going on inside of these places. “I need access to your camera feeds. I need to see everyone she touched before committing suicide.”
    “Over my dead body,” the man who I’m assuming now is the principal looks at me with fire in his eyes. “This is a public school. What do you not get about that? You go get yourself a warrant and we’ll talk about handing over that footage to you. In fact, gentlemen, please make sure that our guest here doesn’t make any sudden movements before the actual police show up to legitimize his claims.”
    I can feel all of the wannabes around me lowering their hands to their tasers, ready to pull them if I make any sudden movements. I feel sick to my stomach. I know that there’s another life in danger right now and this asshole is going to make it harder for me to do anything about it. I look around me at the academy dropouts, wishing that backup would get here and one of them might be connected to Owens in some way. If I could get one of his conspirators behind me, then I’d be smooth sailing. I hold my hands up slightly at my sides, showing them that I’m not planning on doing anything stupid, the only one doing that would be the principal. He looks me over and then glances down at Alice.
    “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, putting his hand over his mouth and shaking his head. “We’re not even a month into the first semester.”
    I look at him, resisting the urge to punch him right in the middle of his round,