48 Hour Lockdown
Автор
Carla Cassidy
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Prologue
“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 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.
