Free Cold Springs by Rick Riordan Page B

kindergarten stick figure.
    He felt like that quilt—something useful stuck in a display case, gathering dust. What was a little blood if it meant breaking the glass once and for all?
    “For starters,” Pérez said. “Who the fuck is Chadwick?”

4
    “Where are you going?” Olsen asked. “The airport was that way.”
    She leaned forward from the back seat, her fingers gripping the top of the headrest like she wanted to rip a chunk out of it.
    Chadwick took the Ninth Street exit, drove west into downtown. “I need to talk to her mom.”
    “Our flight.”
    “We have time.”
    “This is against policy, isn't it? You told me that, didn't you?”
    Chadwick zigzagged across the intersection at Market. The streets glowed with fog and neon, the crosswalks swarming with Friday night crowds—commuters and prostitutes, transients and tourists, like schools of hungry fish mixing together.
    “Hey!” Mallory shouted, pounding on the window, kicking the back of Chadwick's seat with her bound feet. “Hey,
hey!
”
    Chadwick couldn't see what she was doing—probably showing off her handcuffs to somebody on the street. Someone she recognized. Or a policeman. There were few escape tactics Chadwick hadn't seen in his years as an escort.
    Olsen was right. He shouldn't be doing this. They had all the papers signed. The plane left in two hours. There was no reason to torture himself, or Mallory, by visiting the school, seeing Ann in person. The whole idea of escorting was to remove the child from her environment as quickly and cleanly as possible. No detours. No stops on Memory Lane.
    But Race Montrose's face stayed with him—that rust-colored hair, the lightning bolt jaw, the amber eyes. The more he envisioned that face, the more he wanted to punch it again.
    He took Divisadero north, then California west, into the quieter streets of Pacific Heights. The night closed around them, making a deep purple aurora along the tops of the eucalyptus trees. Chadwick turned on Walnut and pulled in front of Laurel Heights School.
    He had expected the place to look different, thanks to Ann's construction plans, but the outside was unchanged—redwood walls covered in ivy, peeling green trim, mossy stone chimney. From the roof of the school hung a long yellow banner— OUR CHILDREN ' S DREAMS —— MAKE THEM HAPPEN! A thermometer showed $30 million as the top temperature, the mercury painted red up to $27 million. Apparently, fund-raising had gone a little slower than expected.
    Chadwick cut the engine. He turned to Mallory. “Tell me about Race.”
    “Screw yourself,” Mallory said, but her heart wasn't in it. She had worn herself out screaming and kicking all the way across the Bay Bridge.
    “He was your classmate,” Chadwick told her. “Your mother allowed him to go here.”
    “You sound like my fucking father. Race made better grades than I did, Chadwick. Get over it.”
    “You understand why I'm asking?”
    Braids of her black-dyed hair had fallen in her face, so she seemed to glare at him through a cage of licorice. “Stop messing with me, okay? I know why you're here. This is some kind of chickenshit revenge for Katherine.”
    “I'm here to help you.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Chadwick felt Olsen's eyes on him.
    He stared up at the schoolhouse, butcher paper paintings hung along the fence to dry—a chain of smiling people in every skin color, including purple and green. “Mallory, why'd you run away?”
    “My mom's a bitch. She found a gun in Race's locker.”
    “Same gun he pointed at me today?”
    “Fuck, no. They confiscated the one in his locker. Today was a different gun.”
    “I see,” Chadwick said. “Another from his collection.”
    Mallory shrugged, like that should be obvious. “My mom expelled him. Told me I couldn't see him anymore.”
    “And you thought that was what—too harsh?”
    “She had no right to look in his locker in the first place, or punish him, or anything. Race needs a gun.”
    “Why?”
    She