by Ethan Cross
Almeida killed the connection and placed the phone back on the nightstand. He took a moment to calm his breathing then said, “Don’t worry, Mama. That was my associate, Mr. Lennix, on the phone. His company has a new project that may be able to help you. Unfortunately, I have to kill a few people to make that happen.”
She didn’t acknowledge his words. She just laid there, breathing shallowly, wasting away. Almeida rested his head on her chest and said another prayer for his mother and for himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
Grier had Mel Franklin backed up against a wall on the east side of the yard, and Jonas Black knew how it would go down. Franklin would have nowhere to run, and Grier’s two goons would grab the kid by the arms. Maybe Franklin would fight and prolong things for a few seconds. Either way, Grier would slip in and slice the kid’s throat. Maybe they had some plan to try to slip away and not get caught and maybe they would just lie down and wait for the guards. Grier would never see the outside world again. The most they could do to him was stick him in Ad Seg and tack a few more years onto his sentence that really only mattered on paper.
“Time to give the devil his due, boy,” Grier said as he and his two goons hemmed Franklin in.
Jonas stepped up behind Grier. His first instinct was to attack without saying a word. Announcing your intentions and drawing things out was usually pointless, but he still held some hope that perhaps he could muscle his way in and scare Grier and his boys off without there actually being a fight. But he doubted that would be the case.
“Leave him alone, Grier.”
Grier’s head slowly rotated in Black’s direction. His dirty mop of reddish brown hair flapped in the wind. Dust from the poorly kept prison yard swirled around them in the breeze. Black felt it collecting in the rivulets of sweat running down his neck and arms.
“This is none of your concern,” Grier said. “Me and this boy’s gonna dance, Black. Has nothing to do with you.”
Again his first instinct was to go on the offensive, but he restrained himself and decided to try reason first. “It’s all of our concerns. There’s already been one stabbing this month, and our total number is up from last year. You stick this kid, and the warden is going to lock this place down. He’ll close the prison store, take away our yard time. All to prove a point. If all these gorillas in here can’t buy things from the store, then they can’t pay me for my product. I’m just looking out for my business interests.”
Grier laughed. “Your business interests? You know, I’ve often wondered whose side you’re on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“White or black. You look like a white man, but your skin’s dark enough that you may have some of their filthy mongrel blood mixed in there too. I think you might be a mutt.”
Black stepped forward. “Leave him alone and push on. Now.”
“You know what I did to the last man that tried to tell me what to do?”
“I don’t care.”
Black saw the blow coming from a mile away. Grier had decided to strike, and his body betrayed his intentions. His eyes went wide. His muscles stiffened. His lip curled. His weight shifted to the ball of his right foot. All of it choreographed exactly how and when Grier was going to attack. And Jonas Black was ready.
Grier’s right arm shot up toward Jonas’s throat. The box cutter jutted out from his fist, ready to rip through the jugular. Jonas may have been outnumbered, and Grier may have been the one holding a deadly weapon, but he wasn’t concerned. There were a lot of guys in Holman that Black wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with, but these three weren’t on that list. They were untrained and undisciplined thugs. They may have been scary to a kid like Franklin, but Uncle Sam had invested a lot of money in training Jonas Black to hurt people. And the taxpayers had gotten their money’s worth.
Black’s huge left hand caught Grier’s forearm as it shot forward. His fingers wrapped all the way around the man’s arm as he gripped the appendage like a vise and twisted it. Then he rammed his right forearm upward against Grier’s elbow, using it as a fulcrum, and pulled Grier’s arm down.
He felt the joint give way with a crunch as the elbow snapped.
Grier dropped the cutter and howled in pain. The white supremacist fell to the ground, writhing in agony, as his goons and Franklin scattered away from the fight.
As he rolled in the dirt, Grier screamed, “You’re dead! Never be safe! A dead man!”
Jonas Black sighed, and a part of him wished that he would have just minded his own business and kept walking. It was too late for that now. Guards in dark blue uniforms ran toward him. He put his hands behind his head and chose a nice patch of grass to lie down in so the guards could slap on the cuffs.
CHAPTER SIX
Makayla Munroe rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she walked down the stairs into the kitchen. The sun had risen only a few minutes earlier. Makayla, or Mak to her friends and family, had recently purchased a new alarm clock that possessed the times of every sunrise for the next two years and the ability to wake its owner X number of minutes before or after the event. She supposed that most people used the function to wake themselves up in order to witness the ascension. But the fact that the device worked in both directions told Mak that there were at least a few other people like her in the world. People who only cared about the light, not how it got there.
She wore a faded Soundgarden T-shirt, her musical appetites leaning more toward the Kurt Cobains and Billy Joe Armstrongs of the world rather than the Taylor Swifts and Justin Biebers. But her feet lacked the normal Vans tennis shoes that she normally wore to school. Instead, a pair of brand new Nike running shoes glowed white and orange and seemed to resonate with power in the new light as if they were the winged sandals of Hermes.
Mak had been waking up early every day for a month and going for a three-mile run. Trying to get in shape for basketball tryouts, she planned to keep increasing the speed and distance of her runs over the summer and the first few months of school. She had decided it would be easiest to wake up early rather than run after school and be subjected to the poking and prodding of her younger sister, Chloe. Her sister had always been the athletic one, while Mak had gravitated more toward academics. Now, for the first time since fourth grade, Makayla had decided to step beyond her comfort zone and give sports another try, knowing full well that she would have to deal with the snotty remarks and discouraging words of her little sister. Still, she wanted to hold back the tide of snarkiness at least until tryouts actually began, and she knew that her sister thought six o’clock only came once a day–and signified it was time to eat dinner.
As Makayla reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner into the kitchen, she gasped at the sight of a massive dark figure sitting at the kitchen table. A small yelp escaped her lips, and then no sound would come. She couldn’t breathe for what felt like several seconds and was only able to control her pounding heart when she realized that the person at the table wasn’t an intruder but was her father’s best friend and her honorary uncle, Gerald Dixon.
The big black man’s white smile shone brightly against his dark skin. “I didn’t mean to startle you, kid,” Gerald said in his deep Southern accent.
“No problem,” she said, still catching her breath. “That was better than a cup of coffee.”
“You’re too young for coffee.”
“Whatevs. I suppose it’ll put hair on my chest, too?”
Gerald shrugged and sipped from his own cup of steaming black liquid. “It worked for me. You sure you want to take the chance?”
“I’m a risk-taker.”
“Must have inherited that from your father.”
“Speaking of taking risks and putting yourself out there…” Makayla ended her sentence only with an overblown smile and a batting of her eyelashes.
Gerald shook his head. “Don’t start that again. I told you. I�
�m not signing up for some damn online meat market. If I want to meet a woman, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. In a bar or at church.”
Makayla just shook her head. Luddites. “I guess that’s a problem then, since Chloe and I already signed you up.”
“You what?” Gerald hadn’t been drinking his coffee at that moment, but Makayla guessed that she would have been wearing a coffee-soaked Soundgarden T-shirt if he had.
She didn’t fully understand why Gerald had stopped dating, but she knew it had something to do with her father’s accident. Ever since her dad had lost his sight, Gerald had been close by his side, but the big man still drove home in the evenings. Then, after her mother died, Gerald became like a surrogate to her and Chloe. He and his sister, Annabelle, had always been big parts of their lives, because they were her father’s oldest and closest friends, but now they had both become something more. Makayla couldn’t imagine her life without the Dixon siblings. Gerald had his own bedroom at their house, a closet full of clothes, and a bathroom cabinet lined with all of his shaving and grooming supplies. He still maintained an apartment in the city, but he only stayed there a few times a month.
“Where were you last night, anyway?”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said, wagging a meaty finger in her direction. “You had better be messing around. I need a woman like I need a third armpit.”
She rolled her eyes and held up her hands in surrender. “Fine. No dating sites. I just wish you would be honest with me.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“Technically, you just did. I specifically remember you talking to me about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny coming to visit when I was younger.”
“That’s different.”
“Not really. Besides, not telling me the whole story is basically the same thing. You feel responsible for my father. For the way he is.”
“He’s my oldest friend. He got me this job. Hell, cheating off him is what got me through high school. But don’t tell him I said that.”
“There’s more to it than that, and you know it. If you’re going to tell me otherwise, I’ll need you to take back that previous statement about never lying to me.”
Gerald shook his head and popped his knuckles. “You’re just as hardheaded as your father. Arguing with the two of you is like going five rounds with Mike Tyson.”
She raised her fists playfully into a boxing stance.
He laughed and said, “I surrender.” He pushed out a chair, and she dropped down beside him. He said, “The truth is that I was supposed to be there that day.”
“What do you mean?”
“The suspect your father was questioning when it happened. I was supposed to talk to him as your father reviewed the files with our informant. But I wasn’t there, and your dad went to speak with him instead.”
“Where were you?” she prodded.
He looked away and spread his massive hands across the table’s wooden surface. The table was made up of rustic planks, and her mother had always complained about crumbs falling between the cracks in the boards. Gerald picked at one of the cracks for a moment, and she knew better than to push any harder.
“I wouldn’t quite say that I was an alcoholic, but I definitely drank a lot back then. And that morning, I was hungover. I called in sick. If I hadn’t, I would have been the one who was hurt, not your dad.”
Mak placed a hand over Gerald’s. “We all make mistakes. You can’t blame yourself. You didn’t cause the attack that day.”
“I don’t blame myself, kid. It was a twist of fate. But you still have to take responsibility for your mistakes. I contributed to an event that changed my best friend’s life forever. The least I could do was make sure I always had his back after that.”
She wrapped her arms around Gerald’s trunk-like neck and whispered in his ear, “And you always have.” She pulled away after adding a kiss to his cheek.
He showed her his perfect white smile again and said, “You’re growing up too fast, kid.”
“Not fast enough, I say.”
“Don’t rush it. Life’s short.”
“You didn’t answer my other question. Where were you last night?”
“I had to deliver something to Joey last night. It’s a tech thing from a case we need help on. Deac and I are heading back over there this morning to hear what Joey found.”
“So it had nothing to do with Annabelle?”
“I thought Annabelle was having dinner with the three of you?”
“That’s what I mean. It almost seems like lately you’ve been trying to get my dad and your sister alone together as much as you can.” She crossed her arms and shot him a playful accusatory look.
Gerald raised his bushy black eyebrows. “I suppose Deacon’s not the only detective in the family. Keep it to yourself, and let me handle the matchmaking. The old-fashioned way.” He smiled and gestured toward the backdoor. “You better get going on your run. Basketball season will be here before you know it.”
“How did you know that I was running? Or trying out for basketball?”
He winked and said, “Your father’s back isn’t the only one I watch.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Phillips family had put their impressive art collection on display starting in 1921 in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. The museum contained paintings by artists such as Renoir, Bonnard, O’Keeffe, van Gogh, and Diebenkorn. But prior to losing his sight, Deacon Munroe had always enjoyed the museum’s Rothko room. The Russian-American painter’s work was simplistic—mainly consisting of only colors without a defined form—and could easily be overlooked when comparing it to the more grandiose and intricate paintings hanging within the collection. Rothko had wanted his paintings to be very intimate and human, and Munroe found them to carry a certain spirit. He could remember the power emanating from the subtle shades during his previous viewings. Although he couldn’t gaze upon them now, he could still feel a strange energy from them, as if the artist had placed a piece of his soul in each painting.
Munroe recognized the sound of Gerald’s shoes before his friend announced himself. Gerald had placed padded inserts into his dress shoes, and it added a slight creaking to his steps.
“When we were boys, did you ever think that we’d end up like this?” Munroe said.
He felt Gerald’s weight fall onto the bench beside him. “Well, let’s see. You getting into trouble, and me bailing you out and watching your back. Hell, Deac, nothing’s changed.”
“Everything changes, yet everything stays the same. It doesn’t matter our age or what time period we live in or our individual circumstances, when you break it down, we all just keep making the same mistakes over and over.”
“What’s eating you?”
“I don’t know. Easton’s death, I suppose. He lived through multiple wars and conflicts, and then he dies bloody in his own home. I don’t understand the world anymore. I keep thinking about his kids, his grandkids. Ripples, you know. All the people we effect in our lives. I wonder who will be there crying at my funeral, other than my girls of course. And you and Annabelle.” Annabelle also worked for Munroe handling all of the back-office labor including converting documents into formats that Munroe could consume as well as assisting with investigations. Gerald had followed Munroe into law enforcement when they were still teenagers, and so when Munroe had been given the leeway to form his own team, he had wanted to fill it with people whom he could trust. There was no one in the world who he trusted more than Gerald and his sister.
“I heard Annabelle was over for dinner at your house,” Gerald said.
The sudden shift in the conversation jolted Munroe. “Yes, I had some paper work that I needed her help with. What brought that up?”
“I was just thinking that since you’re in such a deep contemplative mood, maybe you should ask yourself why you�
��ve never asked her out.”
“Excuse me? Our relationship is completely professional.”
Gerald laughed. “You’ve had a crush on her since our junior year.”
“That’s not true. And even if it was, she works for me. It would be completely inappropriate.”
“Life’s short, Deac.” Gerald hesitated. “And Beth would understand. It’s been a long time.”
Munroe didn’t respond. He pressed a button on his watch, and a mechanical voice announced the time. In a whisper, he said, “Let’s see if Joey’s made any progress.”
~~*~~
Joey Helgeson, a master of all things technical, was under a permanent retainer with the DCIS. Although he had been part of Munroe’s team for some time, he refused to officially become an employee of the government and work within an office in the Pentagon or DCIS headquarters, which had forced Munroe to call in favors to obtain and maintain Joey’s security clearance. Instead, the tech guru’s command center, as he called it, was a short walk from the Phillips Collection inside a historic home overlooking DuPont Circle. Munroe remembered the James G. Blaine mansion from before he had lost his sight. It was a beautiful four-story Queen Anne style building with dark red brick, a large porte-cochère, and a rooftop filled with intricate weathervanes. Munroe thought it a bit of a waste that Joey likely had his portion of the elegant and historic space filled with superhero memorabilia. He could always tell a lot about a person by observing the space in which they lived and worked. Even though he had been blind for over ten years now, it still bothered him that he couldn’t gather such information without help.
“Where did you get this thing?” Joey asked, referring to the small flash drive that Gerald had retrieved from the battery compartment of General Easton’s clock.
“Why? What did you find?”
“I couldn’t access it. That’s the problem.” Joey’s voice had a slight North Jersey accent with a nasal quality that Munroe suspected to have come from an improperly healed broken nose. His office smelled of burnt coffee, dirty dishes, and Febreze air freshener with the smallest underlying hint of marijuana residue. “This is the first example I’ve seen of a new system that the National Reconnaissance Office is developing called Widowmaker,” Joey continued. “It’s protected by a sixteen character password with a single-error shredding failsafe. So, if you enter the wrong password even one time, the entire contents of the drive get wiped beyond recovery.”
