Hostage At Crystal Manor

by Heather Graham

  This one, he knew he would love all his life. Therefore, he had figured, he would get it right.

  He plucked the champagne from the refrigerator and prepared the ice bucket.

  The plate of chocolate-covered strawberries was ready, as well.

  Along with the long-stemmed roses. And a tiny box.

  He swept up the bucket, the plate balanced atop it, the roses in his mouth. And he walked back into the bedroom.

  Kody cried out with delight, clapping her hands.

  “Oh, but you are perfect! Perfect! Roses, chocolate-covered strawberries, champagne—and a naked FBI guy! What more could one want?”

  They both burst into laughter.

  And he joined her in the bed.

  They popped the cork on the champagne, laughed as it spilled over. They shared the strawberries and Kody smelled the roses and looked at him seriously.

  “I love you so much,” she whispered. “Is it…is it all right to say that? I tend to speak quickly, rashly, sometimes. I mean…well, you know. I probably could have gotten myself or someone else killed back in Florida if you weren’t you. If you hadn’t been undercover. If—”

  He pulled her into his arms. “I wouldn’t have you any other way at all. I love that you said what you did. I love you. And…”

  He realized he was terribly nervous. He might be a well-trained agent, but his fingers were trembling as he reached for the little box.

  Kody took the box, her eyes on his. She opened it and stared in silence.

  His heart sank. “It’s too soon, too much,” he murmured. “I—”

  She threw her arms around him, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes!” She laughed. “Not even I am that good an actress!”

  He took the ring and slipped it on her finger. “Since we’re living in sin…?”

  “This kind of love could never be a sin,” she assured him.

  “You’re really so beautiful…in every way,” he told her.

  She smiled—a mischievous smile. “With the pick-up line you gave me in Florida, who would have thought that we would wind up here!”

  “Go figure,” he agreed.

  He kissed her and lay her back on the bed.

  “Go figure,” he repeated.

  And he started kissing her again and again…

  It was, after all, opening night. For the show.

  And for the rest of their lives.

  * * * * *

  The Tactical Crime Division—TCD—is a specialized unit of the FBI. They handle the toughest cases in remote locations.

  A school invasion turned lockdown becomes personal for hostage negotiator agent Evan Duran in 48 Hour Lockdown by New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy.

  PROLOGUE

  Sandhurst School for the Gifted and Talented, Pearson, North Carolina.

  “I’ve written a short essay on the board. Why don’t you all rewrite it using our secret code?” Annalise Taylor said, and watched as the three girls seated before her focused on the computers in front of them.

  Tanya Walton was thirteen years old, Emily Clariton was ten and Sadie Brubaker was nine. All of them wore blue trousers and white blouses with the Sandhurst School emblem embroidered in blue and green on the breast pocket.

  The girls came from different areas of the United States, but they all shared a background of abject poverty, some abuse and a lack of opportunities. Until their bright minds brought them to this unusual private school built specifically for children like them, this place where their intelligence was both celebrated and nurtured.

  As the girls continued to work, Annalise walked over to the window next to her desk and gazed outside. The school was located on fifteen acres on the outskirts of the charming town of Pearson, North Carolina.

  From this vantage point, the view was absolutely breathtaking. The Blue Ridge Mountains surrounded the city. With more than a million acres of protected wilderness, there were plenty of hiking trails, secluded back roads and streams and waterfalls to explore. Right now the leaves on the trees were beginning to display the reds and oranges of autumn.

  Annalise turned away from the vista and sat at her desk. She released a deep, weary sigh. It had been a long day. This class was not officially part of the curriculum, rather it was a sort of after-school club to feed the passions of these particular girls, who always looked forward to a little extra time to work and play on their computers.

  A loud boom jolted her out of her mental haze, followed by another and another one. Annalise straightened. Was that…was that gunfire? What was going on? Gunfire! For a moment her brain froze in horror as the three girls screamed.

  Lock the door! Push desks against it! The orders sounded in her head. That’s what she was supposed to do. That’s what she’d been trained to do in a situation like this.

  Heart pounding, she jumped up from her seat and ran toward her classroom door. But before she could reach it, the door exploded inward and a large, burly man with a long gun stood on the threshold.

  “Get down, get down,” he screamed, and pointed to a wall with his automatic weapon. “All of you, sit down with your backs against the wall. Now.”

  “What’s going on? What do you want?” Annalise asked the questions as she gathered her students close to her.

  “Shut up and sit down,” he demanded.

  Terror ripped through Annalise as she moved the girls to the wall where they all slid down to sit on the floor. The girls were crying and she tried to comfort them…to shush them. The last thing she wanted was for their cries to irritate the man with the gun.

  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 what 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 betwe
en 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 of water into a sheet of ice.

  “I just saw the news out of Pearson,” he stated. “I need to get there… It’s Annalise.”

  There was a collective groan from some of the other agents. Evan ignored it. “I’ll need you to arrange a plane to be ready for takeoff. Also, I’ll need Hendrick’s help on this. And I’m taking Agents Brennan and Lathrop with me.”

  “Call off the SEAL team, Duran is on the case, everyone,” “Agent at Large” Kane Bradshaw murmured as the three men headed for the door.

  Evan ignored him. While he liked Kane okay, there were times in the past they had butted heads when Kane could sometimes be a bit of an arrogant jerk. Director Pembrook though tolerated his glib attitude. And while Kane had no official rank as an agent with the bureau—he had an extensive background with deep black ops.

  Hendrick Maynard, the tech guru nodded. “You got it,” he answered without hesitation. “Heading to my desk now. I’ll send you any relevant info ASAP.”

  The director narrowed her eyes, and Evan felt the frost radiating from her. “Agent Duran, you are way out of line.” She paused and continued to hold his gaze. “Ten minutes ago North Carolina state officials called for federal help…” She paused and he was wondering if he should offer to submit his resignation. “You will also take Special Agent Rogers along with the others. This is an all hands on deck situation. Rowan as usual will accompany you and provide team support.”

  Rowan Cooper, an attractive woman with long dark hair who worked as a liaison between the local police departments and the TCD team members, also rose and followed the men out the door. She accompanied any crew that deployed to a different location. Her specialty was smoothing over any personality difference or turf wars among different law enforcement units on scene. But her main responsibility was arranging overnight accommodations and making sure the agents had what they needed in order to remain focused on the task at hand.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied to the director. He knew he’d overstepped boundaries by barging in, but he’d felt the need to act immediately when he’d heard about the situation… About Annalise…

  “Plane leaves in twenty minutes. Now go,” Director Pembrook said. To him she added, “Duran…don’t pull this kind of stunt again.”

  Evan would have offered to quit after the assignment if he met any resistance from the director to him heading up the detail due to his personal connection to Annalise. Nothing was going to keep him from negotiating this hostage situation.

  “Never,” Evan replied before turning to leave.

  The team headed for the locker rooms where the agents had go bags of clothing and personal items since they often headed out on a moment’s notice. Rowan was equally prepared for the mission. Usually she would precede the agents to any given location when assignments were handed out, but in this case there was no time.

  He knew he was working with the best team and that they would resolve the hostage situation no matter what. Special Agent Davis Rogers was a former army ranger and had been with TCD for only three years, but he was a good fit. He excelled at tricky reconnaissance, among other things.

  Agents Nick Brennan and Daniel Lathrop were both not only easy to get along with, but they also possessed specific skills that would make them assets.

  The four of them, along with the local law enforcement officials, had to work together to end the standoff with nobody else getting hurt—or worse.

  By the time he and the other agents boarded the plane, Hendrick had already sent them all an email with information about the school, along with blueprints of the building.

  The school had been established five years earlier by Regina Sandhurst, the CEO of a large tech company who had grown up in the area and wanted to give back. She believed the youth of the nation was a resource to nurture and foster.

  She also believed children from disadvantaged communities needed to be fostered, and therefore the year-round school offered full scholarships to underprivileged girls who made up the student body.

  The twenty-six students lived on the stately campus, and most were between the ages of nine and fourteen. Dr. Olivia Wright was the principal, and six teachers provided the daily curriculum. There was also a cleaning and cooking staff and six women who were live-in residents and looked after the students.

  Evan read carefully over the information. High risk negotiation was what he did, but the stakes were always higher when children were involved. And Annalise…

  Her name whispered through his head, but he shoved any thoughts of her away. He had a job to do, and it didn’t matter who was being held in the school; he intended to get everyone out alive and well. />
  “According to Hendrick, nobody has learned what the hostage takers want.” Evan broke the silence that had overtaken everyone in the plane.

  “What would these people want to achieve by invading a school?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Evan replied. “According to Hendrick’s notes, the school doesn’t hold large amounts of cash on-site.”

  “Maybe they are planning to ransom off the kids,” Daniel said.

  “To who?” Evan countered as he continued to read the brief. “It seems most of these kids come from impoverished households.” He looked up. “Let’s hope by the time we touch down the local authorities will have more information for us. This situation has already gone on for a full night.”

  They all fell silent once again. With each minute that ticked by, the tension in the plane increased. He knew all the agents were feeling the pressure of getting this right, but ultimately as the negotiator, the weight of this situation was on his shoulders.

  While there were a lot of tried and true ways to deal with a hostage taker, much of his strategy would ultimately come down to instinct as each situation was different. There was no way to prepare for what was ahead of him. He just had to be ready for anything and rely on his extensive training.

  By the time the plane landed, he was pumped and ready to get to the scene as quickly as possible. They loaded into a waiting van and took off for the scene of the crime.

  “Hendrick sent me some information about the Pearson chief of police,” Rowan said from the front seat.

  She was young for an agent, only in her early twenties. Rowan was skilled in dealing with all levels of police personnel. She was a real asset when it came to coordinating the team with local law enforcement and also skilled at clearing red tape for the agents.

  “Walter Cummings has been chief of police here for the past seven years. According to the locals, he’s a bit of a blowhard and showman but runs his department with an iron fist,” Rowan said.

  “I’m sure you’ll manage him just fine,” Evan said. “We’re going to need the support of all the local police.”