The Negotiation

by Tyler Anne Snell

  She’s fighting for her life.

  He’ll risk everything to keep her safe.

  When Rachel Roberts is nearly abducted, she makes a panicked call to the one man she can trust. Lawman Dane Jones will do anything to protect his best friend’s widow. Plagued by the guilt he bears over the man’s tragic death and his undeclared love for Rachel, Dane must confront his past in order to stop a madman. Their lives—and their futures—depend on it.

  The Protectors of Riker County

  “Dane! There are men at the school trying to take us!”

  All at once Dane’s body and mind synced up. No sighing. No thoughts of vacations. No molasses on the gears.

  That wasn’t just any woman.

  It was the woman he blamed himself for making a widow.

  “Rachel?”

  “There are three of them! One in a van, and two—two are chasing us!”

  A shout sounded in the background. Dane tightened his hold on the steering wheel, knuckles going white. The rustling noise wasn’t a bad connection. It was movement. It was running.

  “Rachel, where are you?”

  There was more rustling and the sound of something slamming shut before she answered.

  “We’re at—we’re at Darby Middle,” she said, out of breath. “Only four of us here when they—when they showed up.”

  Dane cut the wheel hard, turning to the opposite direction. Another shout sounded in the background.

  THE NEGOTIATION

  Tyler Anne Snell

  Tyler Anne Snell genuinely loves all genres of the written word. However, she’s realized that she loves books filled with sexual tension and mysteries a little more than the rest. Her stories have a good dose of both. Tyler lives in Alabama with her same-named husband and their mini “lions.” When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s playing video games and working on her blog, Almost There. To follow her shenanigans, visit tylerannesnell.com.

  Books by Tyler Anne Snell

  Harlequin Intrigue

  The Protectors of Riker County

  Small-Town Face-Off

  The Deputy’s Witness

  Forgotten Pieces

  Loving Baby

  The Deputy’s Baby

  The Negotiation

  Orion Security

  Private Bodyguard

  Full Force Fatherhood

  Be on the Lookout: Bodyguard

  Suspicious Activities

  Manhunt

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

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  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dane Jones—This captain of the Riker County Sheriff’s Department knows a thing or two about being unable to escape the pain of a mistake. Still, he’s dedicated his career and life to making sure the bad guys don’t win again. Even when that means sacrificing his personal life in the process. However, when the same woman he’s tried to keep out of his thoughts for years calls, screaming for help, he can’t turn his back on her again.

  Rachel Roberts—This middle school art teacher has finally found some peace with what happened to her husband years ago. Or so she thinks. When she and one of her students are targeted, she finds herself calling on the only man other than her late husband who ever made her feel safe. With each new threat, they’re forced to confront a past that nearly killed them both.

  David Roberts—Rachel’s late husband and Dane’s best friend. His death from a hostage negotiation gone wrong shocked the sheriff’s department.

  Chance Montgomery—This Alabama cowboy comes into town following a clue that leads from a series of thefts in Birmingham right back to a case that’s close to Dane.

  Lonnie Hughes—One of Rachel’s students, this twelve-year-old finds himself at the center of everyone’s attention, the good guys and the bad.

  Sheriff Billy Reed—Close friend and colleague to Dane, this sheriff will do everything in his power to make sure everyone within his department and county remains safe.

  Saviors of the South—This group of men and women believed that the sheriff’s department was corrupt and made a violent statement to prove their stance.

  This book is for Dianne. Not only are you the best mama-in-law I could ask for, you’re also insane. In the best way possible. Thank you for all of your help with this series. And for creating my favorite human. May all your days be blessed with pineapples.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Hard Rustler by B.J. Daniels

  Prologue

  Dane heard the call the same time Rachel did.

  Both were sitting in the belly of the sheriff’s department. They were two of several who heard what the men had to say.

  “These men are sinners,” the man shouted, voice slightly distorted over the speakerphone. “Plain and true! Just like this town. Just like this county. Just like this state. Sinners, all sinners!”

  Dane’s fists had already been balled. Now his fingers were eating into his palms. It wasn’t until Rachel silently covered one hand with her own that he loosened the tension. Her wedding band was cold against his skin.

  “Then why take them? They were on their way to the prison,” Sheriff Rockwell said. “You’re the one who kept them from facing justice.”

  The man on the other end of the phone call was fast to answer, like he’d rehearsed the whole thing beforehand.

  “They represent corruption. A corruption that has taken over,” he said, voice still high and filled with unmistakable self-reverence. “And we, the Saviors of the South, represent the consequence to that corruption! The answer! We will show this town that this corruption will no longer be tolerated. These sinners will be the first of many demonstrations on how we will cleanse this place!”

  Rachel’s hand tightened over Dane’s while he shared a look with the sheriff. Rockwell was a solid man who Dane had felt privileged to work alongside as his chief deputy for the past few years. He was fair, to the point and levelheaded. He was also a mean shot, and that didn’t count for nothing.

  “But you didn’t just take prisoners,” the sheriff pointed out, “you also took two guards. Two good men through and through. What’s your plan with them?”

  Dane held his breath. He knew Rachel was doing the same. One of those men was David Roberts. And he was one of the best of them.

  That’s why Rachel had married him.

  That’s why Dane was his best friend.

  That’s why both were willing to do whatever it took to get him back.

  “The men who protect sinners are no better than the sinners themselves,” the man answered.

  Anger swelled in Dane’s chest but he kept his mouth closed. Popping off at an o
bviously unstable man wasn’t going to save David or the other guard. It wasn’t going to save the inmates they had been transporting, either. Good or bad, they’d undergone trials and received a sentence by their peers. Neither Dane, the sheriff nor the Saviors of the South had any room to change those sentences. Certainly not to make the decision of whether they should live or die.

  And that’s really what the man on the phone was saying without saying it.

  They aimed to kill the seven men they’d kidnapped that morning.

  Dane knew it. The sheriff knew it. Even Rachel knew it.

  She’d rushed to the department the moment she’d heard the transport van had been hit, ready to help in any way she could.

  “I have money,” she’d told him. “Not a lot, but maybe we can exchange it.”

  That had been before the call had come in. Before they’d realized the men didn’t want money at all. They wanted to be heard. They wanted attention. They wanted fame.

  “I can’t just let you do what you want with them, no matter who they are,” Sheriff Rockwell said, stern. “So let’s find us a way to work this out where no one gets hurt.”

  The man, who would later be known as Marcus the Martyr by his followers who found themselves in prison, laughed. Without realizing it, Dane locked that sound in his memory for life. It was cold and callous. It didn’t care about corruption, no matter how falsely perceived, and it didn’t care about justice. It, like the man, only cared about being louder than everyone else.

  Marcus wanted violence.

  Dane knew it the moment he heard the man laugh and then hang up the phone.

  He’d later realize it was in that moment that he knew his best friend might not make it to see the next day, but at the time all he could feel was the deep need to do something.

  So when the sheriff was done cursing at the dial tone, Dane straightened and felt his world settle on his shoulders.

  “I have a plan.”

  Chapter One

  Seven years later Rachel Roberts surveyed the blacktop ahead of her with a pang of annoyance. It was an early Saturday morning and the Darby Middle School building was absolutely teasing her in the background. Between her and it stood the two reasons why she was sweating in her jeans instead of lounging in her pajamas, catching up on the backlog of television shows burning a hole in her DVR.

  “Now, I know none of us want to be here, but we are and that’s that,” she started, making sure she split her narrowed stare between both boys equally. “I guess the two of you are at that age where you don’t know how ridiculous it is to call each other names in the school hallways or during class presentations, so instead of making you write long essays about compassion and being polite...”

  Rachel motioned to the two buckets of chalk she’d found in the closet filled with art supplies in her classroom and the rectangle outlined in painter’s tape in the middle of the blacktop. The one she’d made right before spilling her coffee onto the grass next to it. The one she’d said a few harsh words over in the silence of the school’s empty front lawn.

  Lonnie Hughes was the first to voice his concern. His scowl had only deepened since he’d hopped off his bike.

  Lonnie was a thin twelve-year-old with tightly coiled black hair, dark, always-questioning eyes and a mouth more than ready to voice one of his many opinions. The latter was one of several reasons he was at the bottom of the school’s popularity totem pole. He talked too much, listened too little and had almost no filter. This, plus an ingrained aversion to authority figures, had earned him dismissive attitudes from most of the teachers. Rachel wasn’t one of them, though most of the staff had assured her that if she had more than one art class with the boy she’d think differently.

  The boy standing next to him, however, was completely opposite in that respect. Teachers and students alike seemed to love Jude Carrington. Even for a seventh-grader, he had charm and was clever enough to know when to speak, what to say and how to hide all the devious things most kids that age did. His hair was a shock of red, his skin was covered in freckles, and he wore thick-framed glasses. Yet, according to Mrs. Fletcher, who had him in her homeroom, he seemed to be the leader of the seventh-grade class. Instead of being the stereotypical outcast from an ’80s movie, he was Mr. Popular. With a side of bully when it came to Lonnie.

  Which was why Rachel wasn’t shocked to see the two of them there, though she was surprised their guardians had opted for Saturday detention instead of after school. Darby Middle rarely implemented what she called the Breakfast Club punishment. Yet here they all were.

  “You want us to draw for detention?”

  What I want to do is to find out what’s going on with Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, she wanted to say. Instead she decided to go with a more stern response.

  “Unless you really do want to write a five-page essay about why you’re so sorry about what you did, I suggest you show a little enthusiasm. It wasn’t exactly easy to convince Principal Martin that doing art projects was punishments for you two.”

  “It is when it’s on a Saturday,” Jude interjected.

  Rachel nodded and grabbed one of the buckets.

  “That’s what I told him.” She took out a thick piece of white chalk and sat in the middle of the empty rectangle. The blacktop was warm but nowhere near as hot as it would be by midday. If they didn’t get it going now, the heat would force them inside and she’d be the one coming back in the morning to finish it alone. Rachel loved her job, but she wanted at least one day off before having to go back to it.

  “This is our fall-themed mural, but I was thinking we could make it more Halloween-y. Do a bigger collage of doodles like we did in class last week to help make this slab look a bit more fun. Then, after we’re done here, we’re going to go inside and cut out a few hundred leaves, pumpkins and maybe some bats from construction paper. Then we’re going to go hang them.”

  Despite his constant need to charm the adults, Jude actually groaned. Lonnie kept scowling. Rachel adopted a look caught between the two.

  “Unless you want me to go inside and tell Principal Martin that you actually want to write an essay explaining why you two said what you did and how you two are going to work together in the future?” She shrugged. “I could always do this later.”

  For a second Rachel was afraid they would decide to go for the essays. It was fall, but in South Alabama that didn’t mean much. They’d all be sweating after a few minutes. The air-conditioning inside might be enough of a draw to sway the boys from the manual labor of arts and crafts to tackling papers. Though she hoped that wasn’t the case. Gaven, the principal, had mostly agreed to her suggested punishment activities because they were projects she had volunteered to do out of the goodness of her heart.

  No sooner had she thought that than Rachel acknowledged it was a lie.

  It hadn’t just been something she’d felt she needed to do to better the school or to help raise the spirits of those who attended it. No. She had needed a distraction.

  One that would keep her mind away from the one place it had been traveling recently. A place she didn’t like to visit often.

  “Whatever,” Lonnie finally said. Rachel breathed an internal sigh of relief as he took a seat on the bottom line of the taped-off empty mural. Jude followed suit but as far away from Lonnie as was possible while staying near the chalk.

  Rachel tried to clear her head as it started to fill with sorrow. She smirked. “Glad to see we’re on the same page.”

  Despite Rachel’s not wanting to be at school on a Saturday, the next half hour that went by did so with little fuss. The boys drew white, orange and red bats and spiders and skeletons with surprising skill. Rachel had seen both of their drawings before in class, but there was more precision and focus in their actions today. After Lonnie made a jab at Jude and then Jude returned that jab before Rachel could step in, she realized their
new passion to do a good job on the mural was probably because they were trying to outdo each other. Meanwhile she filled the center of the blacktop with a giant spider web. It was oddly soothing.

  “Why don’t we see what Principal Martin thinks about it before we start on the inside work?” Rachel said, stretching out her long limbs when they were done.

  Lonnie rolled his eyes.

  Jude perked up. “Can I go get him?” He was already turning in the direction of the school’s front doors. “Is he in his office?”

  Rachel nodded but held up her index finger.

  “Go straight there,” she warned. Jude gave her a wide smile and was off. Lonnie looked after him, scowl back in full force.

  Now it was time to try to distract someone other than herself. “I think the mural looks really good, don’t you?” She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to take a picture. Maybe I can post it on the school’s website the week of Halloween.”

  “Whatever,” Lonnie muttered. He turned on his heel. Goodness forbid he act interested. Rachel pulled up the camera app and was readying to take the picture when he spoke up again. His tone had changed. It was like night and day. Immediately she knew something was wrong.

  “Who are they?”

  Rachel heard the car doors shut before she turned to see a van at the front of the parking lot a few hundred yards from them. A tall, broad-shouldered man met her stare with a smile. Sandy hair, cut short, and broad, broad shoulders. She didn’t recognize him. Nor the man who had gotten out of the vehicle behind him. He wore a full set of overalls. He didn’t meet her eyes.

  A cold feeling of worry began to swish around in Rachel’s stomach. It should have been the warning that sent her inside. However she held her spot, only instinctively taking a step forward so Lonnie was just behind her elbow. Whoever was driving the van didn’t get out or cut its engine. She couldn’t see the driver’s face through the tint from this distance.

  “Hi there,” she called out to the man in front when it was clear he only had eyes for them. “Can I help you?”