Her gaze met Mr. Allen’s and she saw the extreme fear that mirrored her own.
“Bring him into this room,” the man holding her ordered.
The two thugs jerked Mr. Allen away from the wall and started toward Claire.
…this room.
They meant her room.
“No. We can’t go in there. My students—”
Fingers twisted in her hair and yanked her head back. “Shut up!” he hissed in her ear.
Her captor opened the classroom door and shoved her inside.
“Lay your heads down!” Claire ordered, barely catching herself from the momentum of his brutal push. She didn’t want her kids to see this. The terror she felt was nothing compared with what their impressionable minds would experience. “Lay your heads down!” she repeated. The longer she could put off their panic the better.
Heads went down onto folded arms. She let go a ragged breath and thanked God that they had obeyed quickly enough that they wouldn’t witness the horrible scene unfolding around them. The three masked men entered the room with Mr. Allen in tow. Claire kept a close eye on her students, hoping their curiosity wouldn’t have them peeking.
She should have known better than to hope.
“Down on the floor,” the goon in charge growled to Mr. Allen.
A single gasp ignited a rush of wide, curious eyes peeking above little arms.
That was when the screaming began.
Chapter 2
Claire moved from student to student attempting to calm them down.
The man who appeared to be in charge pointed at her. “You. Come here.”
He leveled his weapon on her as she approached. It was difficult for her to draw in a breath, much less put one foot in front of the other.
When she stopped about four feet away she looked him straight in the eye. “Yes?” Somehow her anger had overtaken her fear. Or maybe she’d gone numb or stupid with the business end of that automatic rifle pointed at her heart. Whatever it was, she hated this man for scaring the children like this.
What kind of animal terrorized children?
“Move everyone to the back of the room.”
He gestured to the area behind the children’s desks, where a long window that filled most of the wall looked out over the inner quad. Claire blinked in disbelief. She hadn’t noticed until then that the police were already on the campus. Beyond the inner quad, just past the drop-off point, at least a dozen official vehicles had gathered in the front courtyard of Whitesburg Middle School.
She turned back to the man doling out the instructions and nodded her understanding. He was taller than the other three, but slight, not nearly as heavily built. His voice, though mean and uncaring, sounded young.
“Line up as many of the children as possible on the window stool with their backs to the room. Do what you must to keep them quiet.”
Her heart thumped hard at the oddness of his request. “Why?”
Cold black eyes glared at her. “Do it or die.”
Somehow the order to move made it from her brain to her legs and she took the necessary steps to follow his order. As she moved back across the room she glanced at Mr. Allen. One of the masked men had secured him to the chair behind Claire’s desk with what looked like yellow nylon rope. The bindings were clearly too tight. Her heart went out to him.
What did these men want? Why were they doing this? Why her school?
She scolded herself for letting the questions splinter her attention. She had to keep her head about her.
One by one she ushered the children to the back of the room. “Help me move the projects and plants, okay?” She had lined the window stool with plants that the children helped water and projects that had been completed recently.
“What’s happening, Miss Grant?” Kira Hall stared up at her, her hazel eyes round with worry. “Why are those men wearing masks and holding guns?”
“I’m not sure, Kira. Let’s just do what they tell us to do and be very quiet. I think everything will be okay if we do that.”
Claire prayed she wasn’t lying to the child.
Please, God, don’t let this turn out badly.
Once the window stool was cleared, she assisted one child after the other onto the wide marble ledge. “Face out the window,” she told them quietly. They would be better off not seeing whatever was about to happen in this room.
By the time she’d reached the other end of the window, her entire class stood on that ledge staring out at the cluster of law enforcement vehicles.
Claire chewed her lip. Maybe this was worse than sitting in their desks staring at those men. She just didn’t know. Seeing those police cars out there would only alarm the children all the more.
“You!”
She pivoted to look at the man, the one she presumed to be in charge.
“Come here.”
“Stay very still and quiet, boys and girls,” she said once more, her voice as soothing as she could make it. Then, with a deep breath for courage, she walked back to her desk where the three men waited.
“Go through each backpack and purse, including your own, and remove any cellular phones. Bring them here to me.”
Few of her students had cell phones but she knew she would find one or two. She nodded. “All right.” Her gaze met the principal’s briefly as she turned to do her captor’s bidding. The image of the children lined up in that window, their backs turned to the hateful intruders, had her stomach dropping to her feet.
It was at that exact moment that she realized the purpose of putting the children in the window.
The realization made her heart follow the path her stomach had already taken.
The window stool was about forty inches off the floor and the window towered another five feet above that. There were no drapes or blinds to draw.
He was using the children to block the view into the room. And, probably, as a reminder of what was at stake. No way could a sniper attempt to take out any of the bad guys with the children lining the window. It was too risky.
These evil men had considered every contingency.
But why?
As she checked the backpacks hanging on a line of hooks mounted on the wall that divided her room from the hall, she wondered again why this school had been chosen. Why her classroom? Was it simply because she’d stepped into the hall at the wrong time? Or was there some other reason she just didn’t comprehend yet.
Peter Reimes. A new jolt of fear shook her. His father was a state representative who took an aggressive stance on fighting terrorism. His name and face would be known to men like these. His family would be an easy target.
She couldn’t be sure…but it was the only theory that made sense so far.
The men spoke perfect English. Were these men terrorists in the most-prevailing sense of the word or were they just thugs?
By the time she’d reached the final backpack she’d discovered five cell phones. Her first instinct was to keep one. Somehow attempt to hide it in the pocket of her slacks. But if she was discovered, it could cost her more than she wanted to pay. The way things looked, it wasn’t like she would get the opportunity to use it. The chances of all three men stepping out of the room at once was about nil and if she turned on the phone and entered 9-1-1, the operator’s voice would give her away. And that wasn’t even counting the one man