the male nurse. Everything and everyone would be checked.
“The gunmen killed someone,” Sabrina added.
That caused Shaw to glance at her again, and this time those green eyes were filled with tears. “Who?”
“A lab tech. I don’t know his name. They shot him. Right in front of me.”
This time Shaw added a groan to the profanity. Sabrina had witnessed a murder, and in addition to the emotional trauma that created, it could mean that she was now a target. If those gunmen thought for one minute that she could identify them, they wouldn’t want her around, so that’s why it was critical for this to end now.
“Did the men shoot at you, too?” Shaw asked.
She didn’t answer right away. “Yes. But not when they killed the tech. It was later. I could tell they were getting ready to leave, and I had a gut feeling they’d take me with them. So, I tried to sneak away.”
Unfortunately, he could picture that scene all too well.
“The gunman didn’t shoot at me, not really,” she added. “The bullet went in the ceiling.”
Which confirmed the gunmen wanted her alive. After all, the gunmen had already killed others, so that meant they had a reason for allowing Sabrina to live.
Was he that reason?
“I’m sorry, Shaw. I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said. But heknew she wasn’t talking about this situation alone. She was dredging up the past.
Something he wouldn’t discuss with her.
“Don’t,” he warned.
He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He glanced at the caller ID and saw it was from the SWAT team commander, Lieutenant José Rivera. “Tolbert,” Shaw answered.
“Captain, we need you to stay put for a couple more minutes. We’re trying to secure the building now, but we don’t want Ms. Carr or you out in the open just yet.”
“Yeah. Make it as fast as you can,” Shaw insisted. Because he didn’t want to stay there with Sabrina any longer than necessary, and he was anxious to get back to the primary crime scene.
Shaw ended the call and waited with the sounds of the search going on in the building behind them. He didn’t stop watching the place. Definitely didn’t lower his gun. Because he didn’t want those men, those killers, coming back outside to grab Sabrina.
“Think hard,” Shaw said. If he had to wait there with her, he might as well start the interrogation that had to happen for the reports and the cleanup. “What did these men want?”
“I don’t know.”
Sabrina was crying. He could hear the tears in her voice. Part of him wanted to comfort her, but Shaw resisted. He couldn’t open up his heart to that kind of intimacy with her. The only way he had survived Fay’s death was to shut himself off, and he would continue to do just that.
Shaw tried again with the questions. He wanted tokeep this conversation on the business at hand. “Other than you and the lab tech they killed, did it seem as if the gunmen were after anyone specific?”
“They kept calling out for someone named Bailey. I don’t think they found her though because they kept shouting her name. And then they had a group of us sit in the hall. One of them held us at gunpoint while the other gunman took this one pregnant woman. I don’t know where they took her, but she was gone for several hours. Then, she tried to escape, but she fell and hit her head. She was bleeding.”
Each new thing he learned disgusted him even more, and it was just starting. All kinds of details would no doubt be brought out when the other hostages were questioned. He’d definitely need to speak to this woman whom the gunmen had yelled at.
If she was still alive, that is.
“What else did the gunmen do?” he asked. “Did they appear to be searching for anything specific?”
“Other than the person named Bailey, I don’t think so.” She paused, shook her head. “Wait. One of them went into the lab and the records room. The lab door wouldn’t open so he shot the lock, and he stayed in there a long time. He also