Chapter 8 - THE ROSARY
I stood up so fast my chair tipped backward, clattering against the gymnasium floor.
Several heads turned, but most of the crowd was glued to Marcus Vance’s explosive speech on stage.
“Mom?” Emily tugged my sleeve. “What’s wrong?”
“Stay with Rachel,” I said, my voice tight. “Do not leave this room.”
I looked at Rachel. “Keep her here.”
Rachel nodded, sensing my panic.
I pushed my way through the aisle and broke into a run the moment I hit the lobby.
I burst out the glass doors of the community center into the cool night air.
I jumped into my car, jammed the key into the ignition, and tore out of the parking lot.
West Dayton Elementary was only five minutes away.
I made it in three.
The school parking lot was empty, bathed in the orange glow of sodium streetlights.
Except for one car.
A silver sedan parked near the back of the building, near the dumpsters.
Mrs. Dalton’s car.
She hadn't fled the city.
She had come back to destroy the last piece of evidence.
I parked near the front entrance and ran to the main doors.
Locked.
I pulled on the heavy handles. Nothing.
I ran around the side of the brick building, heading toward the playground.
There was a side door near the kindergarten classrooms that the teachers sometimes propped open during recess.
It was shut, but not latched completely.
I yanked it open and stepped into the pitch-black hallway.
The silence of an empty school at night is suffocating.
No children laughing. No bells ringing. Just the hum of the vending machines down the corridor.
I moved quietly, my flat shoes making no sound on the linoleum.
I walked toward Room 214.
Mrs. Dalton’s classroom.
The door was closed, but a sliver of light leaked from underneath it.
I crept closer.
I pressed my ear against the wood.
I could hear the sound of paper being ripped.
Frantic, tearing sounds.
I turned the knob slowly.
It wasn't locked.
I pushed the door open.
Mrs. Dalton was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by shredded paper.
She had the original school distribution ledger—the one Harris had claimed was stolen by Vance’s people.
Harris had lied. Or Mrs. Dalton had stolen it from his office herself before she "left."
She was frantically feeding the pages into a small, motorized paper shredder she used for classroom crafts.
She froze when the door creaked.
She looked up, her eyes wide, her hair disheveled.
She looked nothing like the composed, cruel woman who had stood over my daughter yesterday.
She looked terrified.
“Stop,” I said, stepping into the room.
She scrambled backward, clutching a handful of ledger pages to her chest.
“Get out!” she screamed. “You don’t belong here!”
“The police are already looking for your husband, Mrs. Dalton. Marcus Vance just exposed the whole Apex scheme on live television.”
She let out a choked sob.
“No. No, David promised me it was safe.”
“He lied. He lost the cartel's money, and he used you to forge the distribution forms to cover his tracks.”
I stepped closer.
“Give me the ledger.”
“I can’t!” she cried. “My signature is on it! If the police see it, I go to jail!”
“You’re going to jail anyway,” I said coldly. “But if you destroy that ledger, you destroy the proof that the foundation money was stolen. You destroy the chance for this school to get those funds back.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face.
“I didn't want to do it. David made me. We were so in debt. They were going to take our house.”
I felt a brief flicker of pity.
But then I looked at the floor.
Right where Emily had been kneeling yesterday, picking up her pencils while this woman degraded her.
The pity vanished.
“You didn't just forge papers,” I said. “You punished children. You humiliated my daughter because she was trying to help kids you were stealing from.”
Mrs. Dalton looked away, shame flushing her cheeks.
Her hand dropped, exposing something tangled in her fingers along with the paper.
It was a rosary.
Cheap wooden beads on a string.
She was clutching it like a lifeline.
“My husband,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He told me to wait here. He said he was going to get the money and come back for me.”
My blood ran cold.
“When did he tell you that?”
“Ten minutes ago. On the phone.”
I realized my mistake.
Dalton hadn't run from the community center to escape the police.
He had run to get his wife, get the ledger, and flee.
And he was on his way here right now.
Heavy tires crunched on the gravel outside the classroom window.
Headlights swept across the blinds, casting long, moving shadows across the shredded paper.
A vehicle had just pulled right up to the curb outside the side door.
Mrs. Dalton gasped.
“David.”
She stood up, grabbing the remaining pages.
“Don’t go out there,” I warned. “He’s not taking you with him. He’s running from the cartel.”
She didn't listen.
She ran past me, out into the hallway.
I chased after her.
She pushed open the side door and burst into the chilly night air.
The white panel van from the gym closet was idling on the curb.
David Dalton jumped out of the driver’s seat.
He looked frantic.
“Do you have it?” he yelled at his wife.
“I shredded half of it!” she cried, holding out the remaining pages.
He snatched them from her hand.
“Get in the back.”
She hurried to the passenger door, but he grabbed her arm and shoved her roughly toward the sliding rear door.
“I said the back!”
I stepped out of the shadows of the doorway.
“The police are three minutes away, Dalton.”
He spun around, pulling something heavy and metallic from his jacket.
A tire iron.
“You,” he snarled. “You ruined everything.”
He started walking toward me.
Mrs. Dalton screamed. “David, no!”
He ignored her.
He raised the tire iron.
I didn't have a weapon. I had nowhere to run.
But before he could swing, police sirens shattered the quiet night.
Red and blue lights flooded the street, turning the brick walls of the school bright crimson.
Three squad cars swerved onto the grass, blocking the van.
Doors flew open.
“Drop the weapon! Hands in the air!”
Principal Harris stepped out of the passenger side of the lead cruiser.
He hadn't been a coward after all.
He had gone to the police.
Dalton dropped the tire iron. It clattered loudly on the pavement.
He raised his hands, dropping the remaining ledger pages.
They scattered in the wind, blowing across the wet grass.
Mrs. Dalton sank to her knees, still clutching her rosary, weeping uncontrollably.
May you like
I leaned against the brick wall of the school, my knees shaking.
It was over.
