Whether Jennifer wanted to or not.
Reaching her classroom, she walked inside and closed the door behind her. In between the last bell and the scheduled meeting, she had exactly five minutes to gulp the diet cola she’d retrieved from the teachers’ lounge, but she hadn’t even taken her first sip when the door opened. She closed her eyes for just a second, then turned to see who was standing in the doorway.
Ten-year-old Juan Canales smiled shyly at her.
“Juan!” Putting aside her plans to snatch a moment of peace, Jennifer grinned and held up the icy drink. “Come on in. I just went and got a Coke. If you don’t tell anyone, I’ll share it with you!”
He replaced his indecisive look with one of contained excitement. His family was very poor, and she doubted he and his siblings got enough to eat. Sodas would have been out of the question. The Canales family represented the flip side of Destin, the beautiful resort town Westside Elementary served. Juan’s mother cleaned rooms for one of the elegant beach hotels and his father clipped the bushes surrounding its luxurious pool. When Jennifer handed the little boy the filled paper cup, he gripped it with two hands and sipped slowly.
Jennifer studied Juan surreptitiously as he drank. He was one of her very best students, and even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to have favorites, Jennifer had to admit, he was one. Smart, clever and as sweet as he could be, Juan Canales made Jennifer ache to have children of her own. He was a perfect example of why she’d become a teacher, too. He seemed as starved for information as he was for everything else.
He finished his drink with noisy gusto and she poured the last of the Coke into his cup with a smile.
“I wasn’t all that thirsty,” she confided. “I’m glad you’re here to help me.”
His eyes rounded with pleasure. “Muchas gracias…uh…thank you very much, Miss Barclay. It really tastes good.”
Within a few minutes, a dozen other ten-year-olds had arrived, and Jennifer started passing out permission slips. She walked up and down the aisle between the desks and spoke. “I have to have these back by next week, signed, sealed and delivered. You can’t participate in the beach cleanup if I don’t have this on record, okay?” Returning to the front of the room, she stopped beside her desk and rested one hip on the corner. “We’re cleaning up at Blue Mountain. Does everyone know where that is?”
The question prompted chatter and Jennifer grinned, letting it wash over her. God, she loved her job! The students, their enthusiasm, their joy—they represented everything good in her life. Actually, they represented everything in her life. Even her free hours were devoted to the school and if she wasn’t visiting her mother, she was here.
Again, sometimes she took ribbing over this. “There’s more to living than just work,” her best friend Wanda would say. The black woman, who was Nadine’s nurse, constantly gave Jennifer a hard time. She was right, of course, but Jennifer had her life organized just as she liked it.
She held up her hands for silence, but before she could speak, she heard a noise in the hallway. Jennifer glanced curiously at the door and the small window in the upper half.
Howard French stood before the glass. The strained expression on the young man’s face brought Jennifer to her feet, bells of warning sounding inside her head. He’d been fired from the maintenance staff just last week. What on earth was he doing here now?
Starting toward the door, she thought of how she’d tried to help him. She’d complained after he’d been let go, but it’d been pointless, and she’d known that before she stepped inside Betty Whitmire’s office. The school’s local board member, Betty hated the simple man. More than once, Jennifer had cringed, hearing Betty’s stinging voice down the hall. “If you can’t do better than that, French, we’ll find someone who can. Mopping the floor isn’t brain surgery, you know!”
Jennifer was halfway to the door when Howard burst inside. He stumbled once, then straightened, giving his arm a short jerk. A screaming woman lurched in behind him, her hands on her head in a useless attempt to ease the grip Howard had on her hair. He turned and locked the door behind him, pulling the shade down with his other hand. For a moment, the scene made no sense, no sense at all, then the woman shrieked again, and things became distressingly clear. Disheveled and obviously distraught, Betty Whitmire had an ugly bruise on the side of her face and a rip in the sleeve of her dress. Jennifer’s heart stopped, then leapt inside her chest and began to pound, disbelief leaving her mouth dry.
She spoke without thinking. “Howard? My God—what’s going on? Wh-what are you doing with Mrs. Whitmire?”
He didn’t answer, and Betty’s labored breathing was raw and guttural in the shocked hush of the room. Behind Jennifer, one of the children started to sniffle. The sound seemed to bring Howard out of his apparent trance.
“You got to help me, Miss Jennifer,” he cried. “I’m in trouble.”
Not knowing what else to do, Jennifer took two steps toward the crazed man and his hostage.
“Don’t come no further!” he screamed. “Don’t do it!”
She wanted to argue, but nothing came out. She was paralyzed, and all she could do was stare as he swung up the barrel of a rifle and pointed it directly at her.
THE DUFFEL BAG was already strained at the seams when Beck Winters threw in one more book, then yanked the zipper closed. He was taking his first vacation in eight years and he wasn’t really sure what people did on vacation. He wanted to have plenty to read in case he got bored. He just couldn’t stand having time on his hands and nothing to do. His brain would sense the emptiness and before he could stop it, his thoughts would take him places he didn’t want to go.
Looking around one more time, he walked out of the bedroom. He was almost to the front door when the telephone rang. As if getting a reprieve, he dropped the bag and raced into the kitchen. “Beck Winters,” he answered eagerly.
“We’ve got a call.” Lena McKinney’s throaty voice filled the line. The SWAT team’s lieutenant, Lena kept the two cells of the group organized and motivated as they covered the Emerald Coast of Florida from just past Pensacola all the way down to Panama City Beach. The fifteen members were close as a family, albeit a dysfunctional one at times.
“I know you’re about to leave but Bradley’s got the flu and he’s whining like a baby. But he couldn’t work this one even if he felt okay. We’re at Westside Elementary. Get here as fast as you can. We’ve got a man gone barricade. There are hostages, too.”
Beck didn’t bother to ask any questions because Lena hung up before he could voice them, just as he’d known she would. If she was there and had called him, the team was already on-site with the perimeter secured and a sniper in place. Now they needed someone to talk. A negotiator. Kicking the duffel aside, Beck ran out the front door without wasting another minute. It’d been planned for a long time, but obviously his vacation would just have to wait.
Thank God…
He hadn’t a clue what to do with himself anyway. “HOWARD…” Jennifer made her voice as soft and nonthreatening as she could. “What’s going on? Why do you have a gun? Why are you hurting Mrs. Whitmire like that?”
He looked at the woman whose hair he still held. He almost seemed surprised to see her. Jerking his head up, he met Jennifer’s gaze, his eyes wide and confused, his hand trembling on the weapon. “She was ugly to me,” he said simply.
“That doesn’t mean you have to be the same way to her.” Jennifer held out her hands. “Put the rifle down, please, Howard. It’s scaring the children.”
The gun stayed level as he glanced behind her. Jennifer tried not to look down the barrel but she couldn’t help herself. She felt her eyes go inexorably to the bore, and for just a second,