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Mr. Allen’s face had gone utterly white.
Even from across the room she could see the sweat dampening his forehead.
The phone was crushed against his ear so that he could listen to what the caller had to say.
He looked up at the terrorist in charge. “Representative Reimes has tried everything he knows to do but the federal authorities will not release Mr. Kaibar. But he would like to offer the four of you a chance at freedom in return for the lives of the children.”
“Tell him,” their captor said, his voice cold, “that we will not bother to wait the final fifteen minutes. His son dies now.”
Mr. Allen repeated the information, his face now going a sickly gray color.
Claire stood, unable to move, and watched this moment play out. Her mind kept recapping the same words over and over.
They were going to kill the children, starting with Peter.
Mr. Allen abruptly gagged, then gasped for air.
“Mr. Allen!” She moved toward him before her mind registered what she was doing.
Weapons took aim at her, but she couldn’t stop.
“Stay with the children,” the man in charge ordered.
She hesitated long enough to glare at him. “He has a bad heart. He could be having a heart attack! I have to help him!”
The leader nodded to his cohort, the one who’d handled the phone.
Before Claire could reach her desk, the man had shoved her chair, Mr. Allen still bound to it, into the corner. He leveled his weapon and fired.
The blast exploded in the room and left an ugly round role in the center of Mr. Allen’s chest. Blood oozed down his shirtfront.
Claire screamed and ran toward him.
One of the goons stopped her.
She fought to get free but he was too strong.
The children cried in the background. She should go to them. She knew she should but she couldn’t take her eyes off poor Mr. Allen.
The leader walked over to her. He grabbed her face in one ruthless hand. “Bring me the Reimes boy,” he snarled to the man restraining her who immediately let her go.
This was it. The moment of no return.
She had to do something…if she could just break free.
Fear and hurt churned desperately inside her. But there was nothing she could do for Mr. Allen now. She had to try and help the children.
“Not the children,” she blurted, the leader’s hard fingers still digging into her skin. “Kill me instead.”
He laughed. “So, you want to be a martyr?”
“Kill me,” she urged, scared to death he wouldn’t agree and at the same time worried that even this wouldn’t stop him from harming the children. Surely the SWAT team was prepared to take action considering a weapon had been fired. As much as she feared the results of that…it was better than nothing. At least some might survive. “Kill me instead of the boy. Please.”
The leader laughed long and loud. “We’ll let our martyr be the one to pull the trigger.”
A new surge of terror made her sick to her stomach, had her knees threatening to buckle beneath her.
The leader leaned his face close to hers. “Have you ever killed anyone, sweet teacher?”
“Stop!” She tried to get free but her attempt proved futile. “I won’t do it.”
“You’ll do whatever I say,” he growled, his voice savage.
As the others watched, the man snatched Peter Reimes from the window and moved back toward the front of the room. The children cried frantically. Claire’s heart shattered at the idea that she couldn’t protect them. There was nothing she could do.
“It’s okay, boys and girls,” she cried, despite the ringleader’s brutal hold on her chin. “I want you to keep watching out the window.”
Her heart squeezed painfully when every last one obeyed. Still, their soft whimpers made her want to kill these four men with her bare hands.
By the time the man dragging Peter shoved him toward the leader, her entire body trembled violently. She couldn’t make it stop.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t let this happen.
As the leader released her, the man who had brought Peter forward manacled her around the waist with his left arm and slammed her hard against his body. He forced her hands onto his rifle.
“Please,” she cried. “No!”
The leader gripped Peter’s shoulder with his left hand and used his right to manipulate and then press the barrel of his comrade’s rifle against the boy’s forehead.
“Wrap her finger around the trigger,” the leader ordered. “Make her do it! Now!”
“No!” The word tore out of her throat on a wave of anguish.
Tears slipped down Peter’s reddened cheeks. “I want my mommy,” he pleaded, then cried out as his captor wrenched his shoulder harder.
There was nothing she could do to stop this.
The man restraining her with his left arm used both hands now to force hers to do as his leader had ordered.
“That’s better,” the one in charge said softly, lethally as her finger was stuffed into place.
Her teeth ground together and she wished more than anything in the world that she could kill this subhuman creature.
“I’m going to count to three, teacher, and then we’re going to do this. I want you to have time to look into the boy’s eyes before you kill him. One…two…”
“Screw you!”
In a move the man restraining her had not anticipated, she pulled back hard on the rifle’s stock, jerking the barrel out of the leader’s hand. Without missing a beat, she twisted left with all her might as her right forefinger coiled against the trigger. The weapon fired, sending a bullet straight through the chest of the man holding Peter. His gaze held hers for one eternal instant before he crumpled to the floor.
“You stupid bitch!”
The man restraining her yanked the rifle free of her reach. Her right hand dived into her pocket and grabbed the metal claw. As he tried to shove her away, she jammed the claw into his thigh with every ounce of force in her body.
He howled with pain.
She threw herself onto Peter, taking him down to the floor.
Glass shattered and some kind of foul-smelling smoke suddenly filled the room.
More shots echoed in the air.
She could hear the children screaming.
Chapter 3
“Step away from the weapon!”
Claire huddled behind her desk, Peter in her arms, as three men dressed in SWAT gear faced off with the only terrorist left standing. As soon as SWAT had stormed the classroom, she and Peter took the closest form of cover.
The children were crying on the other side of the room. God, she needed to get to them. But she had been ordered to stay put. She understood that the one remaining terrorist was still armed.
She peeked around the corner of her desk. The smoke was slowly clearing. Two other guys in SWAT garb were trying to see to the children. But as far as Claire was concerned, the kids needed their teacher.
Moving wasn’t an option. She couldn’t risk getting in the way of the ongoing standoff. Staying put was the hardest thing to do, but reason told her that any distraction could have devastating consequences. So she resisted the desperate urge to go to the children.
The three men suddenly converged on the lone terrorist. When he was cuffed, Claire scrambled to her feet. “I need to go to the children now,” she said to no one in particular. Her heart pounded so hard she could scarcely hear herself think.
“Go ahead, ma’am.”
She waited until they had ushered their prisoner to the door and then she reached for Peter. “Come on, Peter, let’s go see about the others.”
“You are dead!”
A chill rushed over Claire’s skin at the savage sound of the prisoner’s voice. She turned toward the man who had issued the threat. He resisted being ushered out the door. His mask had been removed and he glowered at her with sheer hatred.
“You are dead!” he repeated, his tone imbued with violence.
Claire knew in that instant that, if given the opportunity, this man would kill her where she stood.
SWAT muscled him out of the room.
The children’s cries dragged her attention back to the matter at hand. She shook off the creepy feeling the man’s threat had evoked. He was going to prison just like his friend Kaibar. He wouldn’t be giving anyone else any trouble.
As Claire made her way past the nearest terrorist, lying in a pool of blood on the floor, a SWAT team member, in an effort to check ID, tugged off the dead man’s mask. Claire froze. Her gaze riveted to the face of the man she had killed.
Definitely Middle Eastern and probably no more than twenty or twenty-one years old.
Not much more than a kid himself.
A sick feeling churned in her stomach.
She had killed this man.
Her gaze moved across the room to the other two downed terrorists. It had scarcely been more than an hour since this horror began and four men had lost their lives. She looked back at poor Mr. Allen and she felt her own tears well up all over again.
Such a horrible, horrible way to die.
The sobbing pleas of the children continued to fill the air. They were shaken and afraid, they wanted their parents. She couldn’t let her own distress hold her back from providing the support her students needed.
Claire sucked up her courage and hurried across the room, weaving around chaotic fallout. She had to be strong for the children. She couldn’t think about anything else right now.
During the hour or so that followed, paramedics examined the children. Thankfully they were all fine. A few had received cuts from the flying glass and minor scrapes and bruises from having fallen or jumped off the window stool when the smoke canister blasted through the window above their heads. Some were treated for mild cases of smoke inhalation, but otherwise they were all amazingly unharmed and ready to go home.
“Ma’am, I’ll need to examine you now.”
Claire looked up as the paramedic approached her. “Don’t bother. I’m fine,” she argued.
She might have some bruises come tomorrow, but otherwise she was okay.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he coaxed, “but I have orders. I have to take a look. Make sure you’re uninjured. Sometimes a mild case of shock will veil other problems not readily visible.”
She was too tired to argue and he did have his orders. “Do whatever you have to.”
Claire leaned against her desk and let him do a quick screening. Her blood pressure and heart rate were a little high, but that was to be expected. The paramedic evaluated her from head to toe. He was kind and patient.
“You appear to be fine, ma’am,” he acknowledged. “But I would suggest that you see your private physician if you suffer any residual effects.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, residual effects?” She was tired and maybe even a little grumpy.
“You might require something to help you sleep for the next couple of nights. These things sometimes take a toll not always apparent in a routine physical exam.”
Counseling. He meant trauma counseling and sedatives. She’d been down that road before.
“I understand.” He was right. The children would certainly need professional help. Coming back to school would present a scary experience in and of itself. Perhaps Mr. Allen…
Claire swallowed hard, tried her best not to start crying again.
At some point, an hour or so after the shoot-out, the children were allowed to go home with their emotionally fatigued parents. Claire stood at the entrance door to the fifth-grade wing and watched each shell-shocked parent pick up his or her child. She offered whatever reassurances she could, but there wasn’t a lot she could say that would make anyone feel better just now.
When the last of the children were gone, a man in a suit approached her. He didn’t look familiar, but she’d seen so many faces she very well could have met him already. “Miss Grant, I’m Detective Vince Atwood.” He showed her his official ID. “I need to ask you a few questions now.”
She followed him into the classroom across the hall from her own. As she passed her open door she caught a glimpse of the young man she’d killed being lifted into a body bag. She shuddered.
She’d killed a man today.
She had hoped that she would never have to feel this way again. That fate would not demand such a tragic act from her twice in one lifetime.
Detective Atwood ushered her to the chair behind her colleague’s desk, then he settled one hip on the desk’s edge. As she watched he removed a small notebook from his pocket and flipped it open.
