The moans worried her. She was sure it had to be Belinda, and she had to be hurt to be moaning so much. Was anything being done to help her? Who else was in that classroom with her?
Jacob turned to look at her once again. “Is there any food in this place?”
“The only thing is a snack closet in the hallway. Would you please see to it that these girls get something to eat? I’m sure they’re all hungry.”
The snack closet was supplied with relatively healthy food like fruit chews and prepackaged apple slices and baked goods. Granola bars were usually replenished daily. There were also some juice packs, bags of chips and candy bars.
In this situation if the girls had pretzels for breakfast, she didn’t care, as long as they got something to eat.
“I thought this was all a really bad dream,” Tanya whispered.
“Me, too,” Emily replied.
“We’re all okay. Mr. Jacob has said he’ll give you something to eat in just a little while,” Annalise said softly. “What about you, Sadie? Are you hungry?”
Sadie grabbed the ends of her long blond hair and began to twirl them, a gesture Annalise recognized as an old, self-soothing action. Her blue eyes stared at Annalise as she shook her head negatively.
“Jacob, won’t you please let the girls go?”
“They aren’t going anywhere. What do you think is keeping the cops from storming this building right now? These girls are our golden ticket out of here.”
Gretchen came back into the room. “People are complaining about being hungry.”
Jacob told her about the food closet. “See to it that you throw something to these girls, too.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jacob,” Sadie said, surprising Annalise. Apparently Sadie was paying far more attention to what was going on around her than Annalise had initially believed.
Jacob grunted. Minutes later Gretchen returned with three packages of minimuffins. She tossed one to each of the girls. “What about Miss Annalise?” Sadie asked.
“She’ll be fine,” Gretchen said, her blue eyes cold as she gazed at Annalise.
Sadie frowned and looked at Annalise. “I’ll share with you, Miss Annalise.”
“It’s okay, honey. You go ahead and eat it. I’m not hungry right now.” Annalise only wanted these sweet, wonderful girls out of here. She’d do anything to get them to safety.
The morning hours crept by slowly. What did these people, these Brotherhood of Jacob members, want and how did they believe they would ever be able to somehow walk away from all this? According to what she’d heard, there were already three dead people. All she could hope for was that the girls who depended on her would get out of this safely.
The tall, thin man, named Thomas, came into the room. He’d been in and out several times throughout the night. “Jacob, some of our people are still complaining about that ringing phone,” he said.
Jacob released a breath that was clearly exasperation. “Sounds like I’ve got a lot of whiners and complainers with me. Next thing you know you’ll all be screaming like a bunch of pathetic women, and you know how much I hate pathetic women.”
“Jacob, we all agreed to your original plan, but none of us signed up to get trapped inside this building for an endless amount of time,” Thomas replied.
“Do you doubt our mission?” Jacob’s voice thundered, and his eyes filled with a fiery glint. “Do you doubt that we are the chosen ones to follow through on this mission? Do you all doubt me?”
“Of course not.” Thomas took a couple of steps backward, as if moved there by the sheer force of Jacob’s voice and fierceness. “We all believe in this...we believe in you, but how long before you start negotiating our way out of this mess?”
Jacob rose from his chair, his features twisted with anger. “I’ll negotiate when I think the time is right.” He turned around and shot off his gun through the window. The three short blasts caused Annalise to jump and the girls to scream.
He turned and faced them. “Shut up! Stop that screaming.”
Annalise pulled the girls closer to her and tried to shush them. Fear torched through her. The man was obviously volatile and unpredictable. Thankfully no return fire came from the outside.
“Stop calling that phone,” Jacob yelled out the window. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to start throwing out the bodies of dead little girls.”
An icy chill filled Annalise. Would he really follow through on the threat? It was obvious the phone had been ringing because somebody on the outside was trying to make contact. The ringing stopped.
“How are you going to get out of here if you don’t talk to anyone from the outside?” Annalise asked in frustration. “And why are you here? What do you want?”
“Nobody is talking to you, so you need to shut up and mind your own business,” Jacob growled at her. “Besides, the longer they get nervous out there, the more apt they are to bargain with me.”
“You know no money is kept here and most of the students come from impoverished families.” There was no way the students could be exchanged for a large sum of money.
“Don’t you worry about what I know,” Jacob retorted.
“I’m speaking to the people in the school building. I’m Special Agent Evan Duran with the Tactical Crimes Division of the FBI,” a deep voice said from a bullhorn outside.
Annalise’s heart seemed to stop beating for a wild moment. Evan...? Evan was here? Suddenly her head was filled with sweeping memories...memories of passion and laughter, of love and of loss.
There had been a time when he’d been the love of her life—her endgame, she thought. He now held her life in his hands. She just hoped he took better care of it than she had with his heart.
Chapter Two
The gunfire coming out of the school window definitely had everyone on the outside scrambling for cover, but the good news was somebody had yelled out the window and hopefully that meant the people inside were ready to engage.
The other
