He was getting back into the rhythm of the words, moving into the third act as the silent spirit showed Scrooge the future that awaited him, when Pablo stood up and kicked over his desk.
Selena stood, too. “Pablo, you need to leave. Now.”
“Fuck you,” he said, walking over to give Ruben’s desk a shove that almost tipped it over. Then he tore into his one-time friend, letting out a long string of curse words in Spanish, calling his old friend a coward, a loser, and a wimp. Those were Selena’s translations, of course. The actual words were much worse.
Pablo spun around to take in the rest of the class, his face red with anger. “And the rest of you are no better. You’re a bunch of weaklings, sitting here reading whatever this bitch teacher puts in front of you. Stupid stories by people who’ve been dead a thousand years. You’re all cowards, doing as you’re told so the teachers will pet you on your head and call you a good doggy.”
“That’s enough!” Selena snapped.
It was times like this she wished the school board had funded those panic buttons the principal had wanted to put into each room. She could grab her cell phone and call the front office or one of the other teachers, but that would take too long. She needed Pablo out of there now.
She crossed the room toward Pablo, intending to physically push him out of the classroom if she had to. But then she caught the rage in his eyes, saw the way the veins in his temples were actually pulsing as he ignored her and went back to berating Ruben for wanting to read a stupid book when he could have been out with the Locos making more money than he knew what to do with. This was going to get uglier than it already was.
Ruben must have finally had enough, because he rose to his feet and got in Pablo’s face. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You’re a chickenshit who gave up and fell in with the Locos, and now you want me to fuck up my life, too. Well, screw you!”
The rest of the class was out of their seats now. Most of the students had backed into the walls, but some had added their voices to the cacophony of angry shouts. So much for having to worry about getting a call out on her cell phone. With all this shouting, the teachers on either side of the classroom would be calling for help soon enough. If they hadn’t already.
She was moving in to separate everyone when she caught sight of a movement that nearly stopped her heart. Pablo had dropped his right hand behind his back, resting it on a bulge under his T-shirt, right there at the waistband of his jeans.
Crap.
He was carrying a gun.
“Pablo, please don’t do this,” she said, not mentioning the fact that she knew he had a gun but still slipping between him and Ruben anyway. “There’s no way this ends well unless you do the right thing and get the hell out of here.”
She’d said the words as calmly as she could, but he spun on her with a vicious expression. A split second later, he brought his hand out from behind his back, pointing a big automatic pistol first at her, then fanning out toward everyone else in the class. There were gasps and screams as every one of her students freaked.
Pablo turned and pointed the gun straight at Selena’s head for a long moment before moving to the side a little so he could aim it at Ruben. The weapon was so big, it barely fit in his hand. She couldn’t begin to guess how many bullets the thing held.
“I’ll get the hell out of here the second my homeboy walks out with me,” Pablo sneered.
Ruben looked her way, his expression questioning, like he was wondering if he should simply defuse the situation and go with Pablo. That definitely wasn’t a good idea. Now that Pablo had flashed a gun, the cops would get involved. They’d go after Pablo, and if Ruben was with the newest member of the Locos when the cops found him, there was no telling what might happen. Selena wouldn’t let Ruben put himself in the middle of that kind of trouble.
“Pablo,” she said, moving to put herself firmly between him and Ruben again. “I’m not going to let Ruben go anywhere with you. I can’t.”
Pablo pointed the weapon at her again, then stepped forward until the barrel was pressed up against her forehead. Selena thought for a moment that her heart actually did stop. He smiled slowly at her, but there was absolutely no humor in that expression. It fact, there wasn’t much of anything as far as normal human emotions. It was like she was staring into the eyes of a dead man. Selena had faced a lot of bad situations in her life, but this was the first time she ever remembered thinking she was about to die.
She’d spent her whole life trying to fight the gangs. Now the gangs were going to kill her for that. And after Pablo killed her, he was probably going to get Ruben killed and maybe other students. While she was terrified at the thought, she was also mad as hell.
“You know, I never liked you,” Pablo said, pressing the big weapon harder against her forehead. “You always act like you’re the shit, bossing us around, telling us to study hard, do our homework, stay away from the gangs. Like anything you have to say matters. But you’re not my teacher anymore. You’re not anything to me. So I’m going to take Ruben with me when I leave. Right after I shoot you in the head.”
Her students screamed, some begging Pablo not to shoot her, others pleading with him to leave, but everything around Selena faded into the background. All she could hear was the beating of her heart…and the metallic click as Pablo pulled back the hammer on the weapon.
Chapter 2
Terrace Grove High School was in chaos by the time Brooks and his teammates drove up. Local cops and teachers were doing their best to get the students out of the building, but the kids seemed more interested in snapping pictures on their cell phones than getting somewhere safe. Add in media with cameras and concerned parents running around desperate to find their kids, and it seemed like the whole situation was seconds away from total meltdown.
Spotting the SWAT operations truck parked near the front of the school, Brooks headed that way, jumping the curb with his SUV and parking on the lawn by the flagpole. Trey and Diego pulled up right behind him.
“Think we should help out with crowd control?” Connor asked as he and Brooks jumped out.
Brooks hesitated. School lockdown situations were tough to get a read on, but when they went bad, they went really bad. On the way over, dispatch had reported shots fired, which meant there was a good chance his team would have to go in soon. If so, he didn’t want to waste time getting them together. But if a kid got shot because the cops weren’t able to get the school property cleared, that was bad, too.
“Do what you can to help with the students,” he told his teammates. “But stick close, and be ready to go in.”
His guys nodded and took off while he turned and ran for the operations truck to get a situation report, althoughtruckwas kind of a misnomer. It was an RV that had been converted into a mobile command post, so instead of couches and beds, there were whiteboards, computers, and television monitors. Gage was inside, along with Zane, one of the team’s hostage negotiators as well as Brooks’s friend. There were a man and a woman there, too. Probably some kind of school officials. Brooks gave them a nod as he closed the door behind him. They were both so focused on the television monitors that they barely glanced at him.
Zane sat in front of one of the monitors, calmly talking to someone on a cell phone in his soft British accent. No doubt whoever was holding the kids hostage. That assumption was confirmed a moment later when Zane urged the person on the other end to put down the weapon and come out of the school on his own. Zane was one of the best hostage negotiators in the entire police department. If anyone could talk the person into giving himself up, it would be him.
