“Economic revitalization for who?” The question came from a man in his fifties wearing a blue-and-gold flannel shirt and work boots.
Conversation had been building among the townspeople as they discussed the questions and answers among themselves. Now it got louder as some agreed with the man’s question while others argued that some people were just afraid of change and holding the town back.
“Mayor Biscuit!” Rosie was wringing her hands, walking up the aisle between the chairs. “Does anyone see Mayor Biscuit?”
“Maybe you should try leaving your dumb dog home next time,” a woman called out.
Rosie turned toward the voice. “Shut up, Mary! It’s none of your business.”
“It is when we have to look for your dog again,” a blonde woman in her thirties answered back.
“Mayor Biscuit!”
Cleopatra hissed in her stroller, his eyes trained on the ground, and everyone around Lyle looked at their feet, then moved out of the way as a chair skidded on the linoleum floor with a shriek.
Mayor Penbury banged his wooden gavel repeatedly, trying to quiet the rising chaos, and the end of the gavel flew off, soaring into the crowd. It was halfway to the floor when Mayor Biscuit bounded into the air, soaring out of the crowd like a star basketball player about to make a slam dunk.
Everyone gasped as he locked onto the end of the gavel.
There was a split second of stunned silence.
Then he landed on Gabriel, who let out a surprisingly primal shriek.
Gabriel seemed to stand on instinct, the picture of tailored formality as he shoved Mayor Biscuit away in horror, Bastien’s mouth open in surprise next to him.
And then Mayor Biscuit was back on the ground, the gavel still in his mouth as he raced through the crowd like a sprinter who’d just been given the baton.
Cleopatra leapt out of his stroller and chased after the dog.
Everyone stood, trying to get out of the way as the two animals tore through the meeting hall. Except in the crush of bodies, someone stepped into a stack of folding chairs leaning against one wall.
They fell like dominoes, sliding to the floor and causing everyone else to jump out of the way as a deafening crash sounded throughout the meeting room.
Daphne Sinclair, the reporter, stumbled in her heels and knocked into the projector. A stack of thin transparent slides fell to the floor.
I bent to pick them up but I’d only managed to gather a couple when the final folding chair hit the floor. It yanked on the projector’s cord, already pulled taut, and the plug disconnected from the wall.
The lights flickered in the room before everything went dark.
31
DANE
I sawit all happening like a slow-motion replay on a football game: that damned dog and Lyle’s creepy cat, the gavel, the chairs, the projector.
I wasn’t even that surprised when the power went out. The building’s electrical systems hadn’t been upgraded in decades, and the projector looked like something out of the history books. Who used slides anymore?
“I’ll get Avery.” I couldn’t see Beck or Noah but I knew they were there. “You get Lena.”
I waded into the fray like an icebreaker, not exactly mowing people down but not being too careful either. Avery was in there, and these kinds of situations, funny as they might seem, could turn quickly into a dangerous stampede.
I’d seen her crouch to pick up the fallen slides from the projector, knew she’d been close to the ground when the power cut.
I used my phone to light my way, wading through the panicked faces, directing people to the exit behind me as I headed for the center of the room where Avery had been when the lights went out.
I spotted her a few seconds later, standing next to Lena, a look of shock on her pretty face.
I took ahold of her arm to make sure we wouldn’t get separated in the crowd. “Let’s go.”