What did he want? Why was he here? Just then a tall, thin man came into the room. “I thought you told us nobody else would be here except these four,” he said, and gestured toward Annalise and the girls.
“That was the information I had,” the burly man replied.
“Well, now there’s a dead security guard in the lobby, and two dead women in the main office.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Let’s go. This has all gone sideways. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Dear God. Annalise’s heart beat so fast her stomach churned with nausea and an icy chill filled her veins. Bert was dead? The security guard with the great smile who loved to tell silly knock-knock jokes was gone? And which two women had been killed? Who had been in the office at the time of this...this attack?
What were these killers doing here? What did they want?
The sound of distant sirens pierced the air. The big man cursed loudly.
“We were supposed to get in and out of here before the cops showed up,” the tall, thin man said with barely suppressed desperation in his voice.
“Too late for that now,” the big man replied. He turned and pointed his gun at Annalise. She stiffened. Was he going to kill her, as well? Was he going to shoot her right now? Kill the girls? She put her arms around her students and tried to pull them all behind her.
More sirens whirred and whooped, coming closer and closer.
“Don’t move,” he snarled at them. He took the butt of his gun and busted out one of the windows. The sound of the shattering glass followed by a rapid burst of gunfire out the window made her realize just how dangerous this situation was.
The police were outside. She and her students were inside with murderous gunmen, and she couldn’t imagine how this all was going to end.
Chapter One
Evan Duran sat at his kitchen table, dividing his attention between his television and his phone while he sipped his second cup of coffee. It was just a few minutes before ten on a Wednesday, his day off, and he’d slept later than usual.
Normally he would be already finished with his daily five-mile run, and in the office rather than waiting this late in the morning to even get started on his run.
He paused with his mug halfway between his mouth and the table when a news alert broke into the talk show that had been on.
HOSTAGE SITUATION IN NORTH CAROLINA. The bold words scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Evan grabbed his remote and turned up the sound as the female newscaster began the story.
“Breaking news out of the small town of Pearson, North Carolina, this morning. Last night at approximately five o’clock armed men burst into the Sandhurst School. According to the latest reports, there has already been confirmed fatalities and the hostages include teachers and students. The names of the children are being withheld, but the staff inside include Annalise Taylor and Belinda Baker...”
Evan stared at the television as he slowly put down his mug. Annalise? A hostage in a school in Pearson, North Carolina? Last he knew, she was working at an elite private college in Missouri.
It wasn’t necessarily his personal history with Annalise that pulled him up from his chair and set him in motion. If there was an ongoing hostage situation, Evan needed to get there to help.
He went into his master bedroom, quickly changing out of his running clothes and into a white button-down shirt and a pair of black pants. He grabbed his jacket with TCD—Tactical Crime Division—stenciled on the back and headed for the front door.
Annalise. A vision of her exploded in his head. For two years they’d been a couple. He’d just assumed eventually they’d marry. Instead, almost three years ago she had left him. She’d broken it off with him in a text message.
He couldn’t think about all the emotions thoughts of her threatened to evoke. Right now there was a hostage situation.
When it came to hostage negotiation, nobody was better than him. A fact. Not conceit.
Adrenaline rocked through Evan minutes later as he drove toward Knoxville, Tennessee, to Old City, where the TCD offices were located. While the FBI’s headquarters were in DC, there were field offices all over the country.
The Tactical Crime Division was a specialized tech and tactical unit combining skilled professionals from several active divisions. Because they were smaller units they were more nimble for rapid deployment and could quickly proffer assistance to address various situations—especially in more rural areas without a large police force.
As he drove he made a few phone calls, and he finally pulled up in front of the nondescript brick building where TCD’s offices were located. He parked, got out of his car and hurried inside. As he strode down the hallway toward the main meeting room, he could hear Director Jill Pembrook apparently still conducting the morning meeting.
The main conference room was the heart of the office. It was where assignments were handed out and situations were brainstormed. The agents sat at a long, highly glossed wooden table. On one wall was an oversize FBI logo, and opposite that was the TCD emblem. A large, digital flat screen was mounted on the far side of the room, and a tablet lay at the head of the table.
Evan burst through the door. Director Jill Pembrook looked at him in surprise. “Agent Duran, how nice of you to join us on your day off.”
The director was an attractive, stylish woman of substance with cropped steel gray hair and a penchant for dark, custom-tailored suits.
She’d been with the FBI for over forty years, and she was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Her blue eyes could be warm and friendly or they could frost a puddle
