Primary Valor, Jack Mars [black female authors .txt] 📗

miles, theywould reach the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Ed stared out at the passing woods.

Traffic wasn’t bad. It was a sunnyday in early spring.

Ed nodded. “Me too.”

“I think there’s an importantpoint to realize here,” Luke said.

Ed shrugged his big shoulders. Heseemed noncommittal.

“Do tell.”

“You can’t control what people do,”Luke said. “You can’t control if a kid is going to get mixed up in drug dealingat an early age. You can’t control if a kid is going to pick up a gun. Butgiven your skills, to a large degree you CAN control whether that kid gets achance to shoot you or not.”

“That kid should have been inschool,” Ed said. “In a just world, he would have been.”

Luke shrugged. “In a perfectworld, anyway.”

“It doesn’t take a perfect worldto put sixteen-year-old kids in school,” Ed said.

“I joined the Army at seventeen,”Luke said.

Ed shook his head. “In any case,whether the kid is in school or is in a drug house with a gun, I don’t want tobe the man who pulls that trigger. I do not envy that DEA guy. He’s got yearsof thinking ahead of him.”

The kid in question was ShavodMichael Holmes. He went by the street nickname Ice Cold. He had turned sixteentwo months ago. He had grown up in foster care, had a list of prior arrests aslong as his own arm, including crimes that would be felonies if he were anadult, and he had been in and out of juvenile detention facilities since theage of thirteen. He had died at the scene.

The house had about $151,000 incash inside of it, cocaine with a street value of nearly $2 million, and adozen guns of various calibers. All of this was left in the custody of threeindividuals, the eldest of whom turned out to be twenty, not quite old enoughto legally buy himself a beer.

Ed had gotten lucky. He was goingto be sore for several days. Probably have a funny lump on his chest tomorrow.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “He probablyhas a lot of thinking to do.”

You could tell yourself anythingyou wanted. The kid had a gun. I had to kill him. But at night, lying in bedwith his eyes open and staring at the ceiling, that guy was liable to play thescene over in his head ten thousand times. And he was liable to weigheverything that happened against the fact that it was a kid.

A kid has his whole life ahead ofhim. A kid is not set in stone. A kid can change, no matter what has comebefore. A kid, even a kid in a drug house with a gun in his hands, to someextent is innocent.

Ed hadn’t wanted to kill that kid,but the kid was fine with killing Ed. Now Ed was lucky to be alive. And the kidwas dead.

Luke drove onto the massivebridge. It rose ahead of them, seemingly straight up, high into the air abovethe Delaware River. Ed stared out his window, seemingly fascinated by the oilstorage tanks along the river banks.

“What are you thinking about?”Luke said.

“Cassandra’s pregnant,” Ed said.

Luke smiled. “Yes. I’m well awareof that.”

Cassandra was now LARGE withchild. That baby was going to come bounding out of there any time now. Ed andCassandra didn’t know what sex it was. They had chosen to go old school, getthe ultrasounds to ensure the baby’s health, but decline to know whether it wasa boy or a girl. They were going to find out on the day the baby was born.

Given the sheer size of Cassandra’sbelly, and the sheer force of Ed’s vitality, Luke was willing to bet that itwas a boy coming, a very large boy.

“So I’m thinking about my child,”Ed said. “And I’m thinking about this world my child is coming into.”

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

Time Unknown

Place Unknown

 

 

Charlotte was tired. Very, verytired.

She could barely open her eyes. Atfirst, she didn’t know why she was even awake. After a moment, she understood. Asound was waking her up. And the sound was still happening.

CLAP! CLAP!

She looked up. A woman wasstanding several feet across the room from her. The woman was pretty, with darkhair. She was older, maybe what they called middle-aged. She wore a greenturtleneck sweater and green pants. The clothes were nice, and fit the womanvery well. You would say the clothes looked expensive, as if they were designermade. The woman was staring down at Charlotte and clapping her hands.

CLAP! CLAP!

“Wake up, girl. Are you awake?”

Charlotte nodded. She didn’t seeany point in pretending otherwise. She and the woman had already made eyecontact.

“Then sit up, if you’re awake.”

Slowly, Charlotte pushed herselfinto a cross-legged sitting position. It took a lot of effort, and she almostlost her balance. She could barely keep her chin up. She looked at the spotwhere she had just been curled up. There were a couple of pillows there. Shelooked down at herself, and where she was sitting.

She was on a large, soft cushion,like something a dog would sleep on, only bigger. She was wearing a light bluesweater and dark blue jeans. The sweater said something on it, but she couldn’tseem to make out the words. She stared and stared. The word was upside downfrom her. It was a long word. She remembered it from another time. It had somemeaning.

Nantucket.

This was not her sweater. Nantucketwas a place, and she had never been there.

She was also wearing soft pinksocks. They were very nice, comfortable and warm. Someone had put clothes onher. The last thing she remembered, she had been wearing a bikini on the beach.It was cold out. She had been on the beach with…

“Rob?” she said out loud.

 The woman shook her head and camecloser.

“Don’t worry about that. That’sall over now.”

The woman stood over her, and forthe first time, Charlotte realized there were bars between them. The bars werenot thick. They were thin, like the bars of a cage that you would put a largedog in. She looked around again.

She was inside exactly that kindof cage. The top of the cage was just above her head. She couldn’t stand up,even if she wasn’t so dizzy. She reached out and touched one of the bars withher