Staying Alive. Debra Webb

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СКАЧАТЬ A typical man in the making, he assumed he could get through the low without asking for help.

      With less than an hour to go, her students, who had all changed from their damp clothes into their gym attire, had settled back into their work. Instead of reading aloud this afternoon, she’d decided to have quiet, individual reading time. She could catch up on the lesson planning she’d missed during the unintended fire drill.

      Like her, most of the teachers kept a change of clothes at school. Working with kids this age had taught her long ago to expect most anything.

      Her hair, much to her dismay, had coiled into its natural abundance of unruly curls. The ponytail barely restrained the wild mass. She spent at least a half hour every morning smoothing the kind of mane others paid stylists top dollar to create.

      Not Claire. She had always hated her naturally curly hair. Almost as much as she loathed her full figure. It wasn’t that she was fat, exactly. Darlene called her curvaceous.

      Claire worked out. She really did. And she ate right…except for the chocolate. It was her one major downfall. There were far worse bad habits, she reminded herself on a regular basis. And, the fact of the matter was, all the women in the Grant family were healthy-sized…so to speak.

      You couldn’t fight genetics.

      Scuffling in the hall snapped her back to the present and jerked her head up. She was on her feet and moving toward the door before the possible sources of the sounds fully penetrated. Once in a while some of the boys came to blows, but not that often. She was shocked that anyone had been allowed in the hall long enough to get into trouble after the watery fire drill.

      She turned the knob and pulled the door open far enough to ease out of the room. She’d just gotten her students settled. Whoever was making all the ruckus was going to get a glimpse of her less-than-pleasant side. “What’s going on—?”

      The rest of the words evaporated in her throat as her brain analyzed what her eyes saw.

      Two men wearing black ski masks had Mr. Allen trapped against the wall, a gun to his head.

      Fear throttled through Claire. Before her brain even gave the order she had already pushed the door closed behind her in hopes of somehow protecting her students.

      An arm came around her throat and jerked her backward against a hard body.

      “Don’t make a sound.”

      The threat was whispered against her ear.

      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.

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