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EMMA SPINS AROUND and sprints back toward the woods. She hasn’t done anything anyone at Ridgemont has told her to do for months. She sure as hell isn’t going to start now.

The gas canister in her JanSport crashes repeatedly against her kidneys as she runs. Wozniak, still shouting, is a hundred yards behind.

“Emma, wait, I just want to talk to you!”

The campus cop is in shape, and Emma gave up on sports a long time ago. She’s fifty feet from the woods, then twenty, ten, five. When she slams through the underbrush, the branches of Beecher Forest close behind her, but Wozniak crashes right through them.

“Beecher,” she hears Wozniak say into her walkie. “Northeast quadrant.”

“Roger,” says Jones.

There’s no way she can outrun both of them, not with a backpack and the weight of the gasoline canister …

which gives Emma an idea. She comes to a screeching halt, leaves sliding out from under her feet.

She turns around, drags the JanSport off her back, and yanks the gas can out.

Wozniak is just coming around the bend in the path as Emma upends it all over herself.

Wozniak stops dead, hands out, eyes wide.

Jones’s staticky voice comes through the walkie. “Woz? You got a visual?”

“Yes,” Wozniak says slowly. “She just dumped a gallon of gasoline on herself. And she’s holding a lighter.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” comes Jones’s voice. “I’m coming!”

Emma manages a smile as she flicks open the Zippo, but she doesn’t draw the flame. She’s dripping gasoline, her clothes are stuck to her, the fumes in the air surrounding her are strong. If she strikes the Zippo, she’ll go up—and she can’t do that with an audience of one.

“Emma!” Wozniak shouts. “Please, listen to me…” She holds her hands out farther, like decreasing the distance between them will make a difference. “Just please, listen.”

“Words,” Emma gasps, the gas choking her throat. “None of them matter.”