“This week Sensei is talking about how men need to step up and volunteer in their communities. Little League baseball is one of the examples. Then he talked about safe gun storage. Two weeks ago, he talked about the importance of teaching women to shoot, and that it was something the whole family could enjoy.”
“Rand?” she said, her voice going dangerously soft. “What aren’t you tell me?”
He laughed. “Stan Warren and Carlos Rodriguez, a guy named Joe Dunbar from SPD and I went out drinking last night. They are all as perplexed as you are. And pissy about it. But I’m the one with the subscription, and I’m reading it. Reading the inner circle stuff too.”
“And?” she prompted. The last thing the world needed was another Sensei taking the man’s place.
“I think it’s Mac.”
“Mac Davis, the reporter? He’s the new Sensei? Preaching white supremacy?”
“No white supremacy. No divorce/child support bullshit. Just helpful gun lore, community involvement, stuff like that. And the posts and newsletters are getting farther apart. He’s not admitting to anything, but Mac took the hard drive from Peabody’s computer when we arrested him. Not that he’s admitting that either. I think he was worried about unstable men losing their guru, and he decided to ease them back into society. Rodriguez is grumpy, but it appears to be working. I think Dunbar has guessed, because he was heckling Rodriguez a bit. Warren didn’t say anything. So, I’d guess he knows too. Things were a bit rough those first two weeks after Mac blew up half the North Cascades, you know. There were a lot of shell-shocked men who struggled with reality. Mac talked about it when we were working our way out of there. That you couldn’t just abandon people.”
There was silence. He hadn’t told anyone about his theory. But Rebecca had been his lifeline during his undercover work. She’d kept him balanced. He owed her. And he didn’t think Mac would mind. He was just beginning to worry that he’d misjudged her ability to deal with this, when she started to laugh.
“Have you ever read Mac’s military file?” she asked, and then she laughed some more.
“Of course not,” he said. “Why?”
“Stan’s got a copy, you should read it,” she told him, still chuckling. “Mac Davis fits the profile we drew up for Sensei better than Peabody.”
“Minus the white supremacy crap,” Rand said, thinking about what Mac had said to Peabody.
“Minus that,” she agreed. “The fact that he can care about all those men and let them down easy? It’s....” Rebecca trailed off, searching for words.
“Charming?” Rand suggested. He’d never known Rebecca to be at loss for words.
“Something,” she agreed. “You know Stan’s analogy that he’s a wolf who’s decided he likes being part of the sheep herd because it’s warm, and he gets three meals a day?”
Rand smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Angie Wilson? She says he’s a protector not a predator.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Rebecca said. “He’s pure predator. But... she’s not wrong either.”
She laughed some more.
“OK,” she said. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Will do,” Rand said. He hesitated. “Rebecca? Mac thinks the country is in trouble — that we may not survive this resurgence of white supremacy coupled with militia and 2nd Amendment nuts. That it’s just going to take one crisis to send this country up in flames. Is he right?”
Dr. Rebecca Nesbitt, FBI specialist in religious terrorism, was silent. “He’s not wrong,” she said at last. “And it scares the hell out of me.”
Epilogue
Friday, July 11, 2014, Seattle, Washington
It had been awhile since Mac had checked his Facebook account. Weeks. He probably should be better about it, but he didn’t like social media in spite of all of the obvious research potential it had for a journalist. But it was late at night, really late, even the evening reporters were gone. He was in the newsroom waiting for Angie to finish some photo editing. They were going to the Bohemian when she was done — if she managed to get done before the bar closed, Mac thought. From the muttered curses he heard coming from the photo department office, the editing wasn’t going well.
And there it was in his feed. Naomi Fairchild wishes to announce the engagement of her daughter Kate Fairchild to Anthony Washington. Washington was an assistant professor in mathematics at Seattle Pacific University. The wedding was set for Dec. 23, 2014, at the Christian Life Church where both were members.
He looked at the announcement for a while. There were a lot of comments wishing the couple well. Lots of those stupid little blue thumbs and red hearts.
He didn’t hear Angie come out of her office until she leaned against his shoulder to see what he was staring at. She read it. “Well that didn’t take long,” she observed.
Mac didn’t respond. He didn’t really know what he felt.
Angie tugged on his arm. “Come on, Marine,” she said. “We’ve got a table calling our name if we get there in the next 20 minutes. Of course, if we don’t get there? My apartment has a table too.”
“And roommates,” he said. “Your apartment has roommates.”
“And your house has an aunt,” she responded. “So?”
“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go. And you don’t know how good it feels to be able to say fuck again.”
Angie laughed. Shit, he loved her laugh.
Mac smiled down at Angie as he followed her out the back door. “Even better is fucking again,” he said. “Roommates, aunts and all.”
He might need to do something about that, he thought. Time for a place of his own?
He couldn’t help but look back one last time at the computer announcing the end of a dream. Fuck it, he thought. His reality was just fine. Better than a dream world where he couldn’t be himself.
Still. Well, just fuck.
He turned out the newsroom lights and lengthened his stride to catch up with the woman who liked him as he was. And after that weekend in the mountains? There should be no doubt in her mind exactly what kind of person he was. And she liked him anyway. Maybe even because he was the person he was.
Which was good. Because he liked her too.
A lot.
Postscript
Hi, I'm the author of this book, and I hope you liked it. As a former journalist, I wanted a reporter protagonist who could solve problems. Mac came into being, based on my reporting experiences as well as others, coupled with the military experiences of a former student turned journalist. This is the third book in the series. You can find the first two, Trust No One and In God’s Name at your usual e-publishing site.
In 2016, I, like a lot of people, was stunned by Donald Trump taking the presidency. The fact he was opposed by most American voters was no comfort. Some 63 million voters had voted for him. In spite of his incompetency, in spite of his racism and misogyny. Or maybe because of it. They were sending a clear message, I thought bitterly: any white man, no matter how incompetent and mediocre, was preferable to a Black man or to a woman.
I’d worked in diversity activism for a long time. I’d been a reporter in some pretty racist parts of the country. And I would have guessed that 15-25 percent of the country were like that. Many of them were people I grew up with. My liberal friends thought I was exaggerating the threat.
Turned out, it’s closer to 35 percent of Americans who feel like that. (Feel free to argue with me. I can be found on Twitter at @ljbreedlove, and I’m happy to discuss politics there!)
You know who weren’t surprised? Black people. Native Americans. Latinos. LGBTQ people. Immigrants. They knew. They all knew. Americans are like that.
Hell, even Lyndon B. Johnson knew: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." (1960)
And so, I set out to find out what did we know back in say, 2014? Could we have seen this coming
?
I checked in with some scholars who study the rise of white supremacy, militia’s and anti-government rhetoric. I asked, could we have known in 2014?
Their answer? We did know in 2014. We’ve known since 2008. The FBI knew. Homeland Security knew. Nobody wanted to listen to the experts. No one wanted to listen to people of color, to all the people marginalized because they weren’t straight, white Christian men and the women they’re married to.
I finished the first draft of this not long after armed white supremacists took a Confederate flag into the U.S. Capitol because they thought Trump wanted them to overthrow Congress to “Stop the Steal.”
You may read this book as an answer for my own lack of realization of how large the problem is, or you may choose to see it as another Mac Davis thriller and read it for that. I hope you liked it either way.
If you did like the book, please write a review at your favorite e-book retailer. Or put in a good word for the book on your Facebook page or other social media site. E-publishing works because people sing out when they find books they like. Reviews don't have to be lengthy. Two lines about what you thought will be much appreciated.
I have more books! Look for them at your favorite e-book retailer, or sign up for my newsletter, Telling Stories, and you will get the first announcement of future books, and a few other things. Claim your free short story as a signing bonus.
You can visit my website, ljbreedlove.com where I blog about my books, but also about the books I like to read and the writing process. I hope you'll join me there. You can also find me at @ljbreedlove on Twitter, where I focus mostly on politics, and on Facebook at LJBreedlove.
Thanks again for reading.
L.J. Breedlove
P.S. CLICK THE IMAGE above to subscribe to Telling Stories newsletter. Get a Mac short story as a signing bonus. See you there.
Did you love Serve & Protect? Then you should read Trust No One by L.J. Breedlove!
Howard Parker wants to be Secretary of Homeland Security. And he isn't going to let a bunch of Marines who were in the wrong place at the wrong time stand in his way — even if one of them is now a reporter in Seattle, his home town. What are the odds?
Mac Davis likes being a cop reporter. He gets a regular paycheck, and no one is shooting at him. What's not to like? So yeah, he has to hang out around cops, but every job has its downsides.
Then someone tries to kill him. Roughs up his aunt. Kidnaps an old Marine buddy. And Mac is going to find out why. And then? He'll put a stop to it. One way or another.
Also by L.J. Breedlove
A Mac Davis Thriller
Trust No One
In God's Name
Serve & Protect (Coming Soon)
Accessory After the Fact
Christmas 101
A Newspaper in Texas
Pledge Allegiance
A Virtuous Woman
Deep Cover (Coming Soon)
Sins of Omission
Salt Mine
Newsroom PDX
Choose
Don't Go
Hold Me
Rage (Coming Soon)
When Ryan Met Ruby
Talkeetna
Everybody Lies
Somebody's Secrets
Nobody Cares (Coming Soon)
Dead Tourist
Talkeetna
About the Author
L.J. Breedlove is a former journalist writing mysteries and thrillers about what she knows: complicated people, small towns, big cities, cops, reporters, politicians, assorted bad guys.
"I write about religion and politics. About race and gender. I believe in the journalism axiom: Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. To which the labor organizer Mother Jones was supposed to have added: And in general raise hell. That works for me."
L.J. grew up on a cattle ranch and then went to college to be an oceanographer. She decided getting seasick was not a good trait for an oceanographer to have, and discovered journalism instead — a field that liked people who asked questions!
As a reporter and editor, she worked in Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, Texas, Washington, D. C. Then she got homesick for the Pacific Northwest and came home to work with college newspapers and teach journalism.
She is an over-educated, bleeding heart liberal with a penchant for heroes such as Jack Reacher. She isn't particularly bothered by the inconsistency.
You can follow her on Twitter @ljbreedlove for her political stuff, or on Facebook ljbreedlove for her writing life. Best place to find her -- besides a local coffee shop -- is at ljbreedlove.com. You can sign up for her email newsletter there. Or read her blog, snark included, and check out all her books.
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