No Way Back: Part 2 of 3. Andrew Gross

      “Kids,” Lauritzia said, pulling them to the rear, “let everyone in.”

      “Lauritzia, can we stop at Five Guys?” Jamie asked. His favorite burger place.

      “We’ll see.”

      The doors closed and the elevator went down to the first retail floor, then on to Level 1, where they had left the car. Lauritzia let her mind drift to what she would make them for dinner. The Bachmans said they were going out. She had some chicken she could thaw. And there was leftover macaroni.

      Maybe Five Guys wasn’t the worst idea …

      The doors opened on the ground level. “C’mon, guys.” Lauritzia placed her hands on their shoulders and started to push them forward.

      That was the moment when her life was rocketed back to her own private hell.

      A man stood in the doorway. A man who looked like a thousand men she had seen in her past: dark skin, black hair knotted into a roll, sunglasses; the all-too-familiar tattoo running down his neck.

      She saw him reach inside his jacket.

      Lauritzia knew. Even before she watched him search through the elevator for her eyes, scanning through the other people getting off.

      Before she saw him pull out his weapon.

       She knew.

      And in the horror of what she knew was about to happen, her thoughts ran to the one thing she knew she could not lose.

      “Taylor, Jamie!” As they stepped forward, she lunged for them, pulling them behind her as the first deadly pops rang out.

      People began to scream.

      The chilling sputter of the gun was a sound that had riddled through Lauritzia a thousand times back in her own town, as common as church bells. A sound she knew all too well, and that had cost her everyone she once held dear.

      If this is my time, let it be so, she said to herself. But Jesus, Mary, please, not the kids.

      The familiar sounds of panic rang all around her. The gunman was quick on the trigger and did not wait. Jamie and Taylor screamed, not fully realizing what was happening. Lauritzia forced them to the floor, pressing herself on top of them, praying that whatever evil was being done, it would leave and not take them.

      Just spare the kids, she begged God. Please, do not take these kids!

      She pressed her face against Taylor’s, saying her own prayers, and tried to stifle the girl’s cowering sobs. Someone fell in front of her, and she waited for the bullets to hit, for the end to come.

      But suddenly there was a different sound. Not the ear-splitting sputter of a machine pistol. But two loud pops.

      Then there was only silence where a moment before there had been mayhem. Silence and that awful, smoke-filled smell that always came before the wails.

      She looked up. The tattooed young killer was on his back, dead, his semiautomatic pistol at his side. A young policeman came up with his arms still extended. What happened next was the aftermath she knew all too well: the awful smell of lead rising like smoke. The anguished screams and moans. The hushed murmurs of shock and disbelief.

      The woman with the shopping bags who had smiled at her was dead, her once kindly eyes frozen and wide. One of the black guys was moaning, his T-shirt soaked in blood. The young man who got on with his girlfriend on Level 2 was holding on to her body, moaning in disbelief. “Kelly … Kelly …”

      Beneath her, Jamie and Taylor were sobbing.

      The policeman finally took his gun away from the shooter. “Is everyone all right?” Then, shouting into a radio, “Emergency. Emergency! Shooting at the Westchester Mall. Level One. We need EMS immediately—everything you’ve got. Suspect down.”

      Other people wandered up and began to help the shell-shocked people out of the elevator. Lauritzia lifted herself up, and then the kids, who were whimpering in shock. I have to get them out of here, she knew. Before anyone comes.

       Before they ask her questions that she did not want to answer.

      “Is it over? Is it over, Lauritzia?” Jamie kept muttering.

      “Yes, yes,” Lauritzia reassured him. She hugged them with all her might. “You are safe.” But she knew it wasn’t over.

      Only then did she feel the burning on her face and put her hand there and notice the blood. Her blood.

      “Lauritzia, you’re hurt!” Taylor yelled.

      “We have to go!”

      She pressed their faces close to her as they stepped over the bodies to shield them from the horrible sight.

      “Everyone wait over there,” the policeman instructed them. “EMS is on the way. You too,” he said, guiding Lauritzia.

      But she could not wait.

      “Come!” she told them, lifting them off the ground and carrying them past the swarm of bodies. They were trembling and whimpering—who would not be?—but there was no time to delay. She took a last, quick look at the shooter. She had seen his face a thousand times. The tattoo. Only by the grace of God had they been spared.

      But these others … She glanced back sadly at the heavyset woman’s frozen eyes. Dios toma ellos almas.

      God take their souls.

      But by the time the police came she had to be long gone.

      “Children, quick!” she said, dragging them toward the garage. “We must get out of here now!”

       CHAPTER TEN

      Thirty minutes later, the tears ran freely in the Bachmans’ kitchen. Tears mixed with horror and elation.

      “You saved their lives,” Roxanne said as she dabbed Lauritzia’s cheek with a cloth and hugged her. Held her as warmly and gratefully as if Lauritzia was one of her own. “There’s nothing we can do that can ever thank you enough.”

      Mr. B rushed home. They told Lauritzia over and over that she was a hero. But she knew she wasn’t a hero. She knew she was anything but that.

      Still shaking and in tears, Jamie and Taylor sat in their parents’ arms and told them how Lauritzia had pulled them to the elevator floor before they even realized what was happening, and how she had covered them with her body as the shooting broke out, shielding them from harm, and then got them out of there.

      “It must have been so horrible,” Roxanne said over and over, tears in her own eyes, unable to let them out of her arms.

      “It was. It was,” Taylor said, her face buried in the crook of her mother’s arm. “Mommy, I saw this woman and she was—”

      “Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it, honey.” Roxanne pressed her daughter to her cheek, stroking her hair.

      Jamie, still white as a ghost, could barely speak at all.

      “Maybe we should contact the police,” Mr. Bachman said. He had rushed home from his law office in Stamford as soon as his wife called. “You got a look at him, didn’t you?”

      “Not a good one,” Lauritzia said. “I was on the ground. No, please, no police. That is not a good idea.”

      “Maybe later, Harold,” Roxanne said. “You can see how they’re all still rattled.”

      “Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe later. If they need me.”

      “Anyway, there were witnesses all over,” Roxanne Bachman said. “We don’t have to involve the kids.”