Kings of Ruin

by Sam Cameron

  Synopsis

  Danny Kelly cares only for rock 'n' roll and fast cars. Too bad he's stuck in the capital of country music and he's banned from driving until he turns twenty-one. Plus he likes other boys, a secret that he's vowed to keep until he graduates high school. When his stepdad's new truck roars off on its own, Danny discovers a secret that is endangering cars and drivers across America. It almost kills Danny, too, until he's saved by seventeen-year-old Kevin Clark. Kevin's gay, handsome, and confident, but working with his dad's secret government organization has left him lonely. It's going to take a weekend of car chases, fiery explosions, and country-western singing to save the citizens of Nashville from certain death—but can Danny protect his heart and secrets as well?

  Kings of Ruin:

  Adventure in Music City

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  Kings of Ruin: Adventure in Music City

  © 2013 By Sam Cameron. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-903-9

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: March 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Greg Herren and Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri (GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)

  By the Author

  Kings of Ruin: Adventure in Music City

  The Fisher Key Adventures:

  Mystery of the Tempest

  The Secret of Othello

  Prologue

  This is how Danny Kelly’s father and brother died: a rainy afternoon in San Francisco, a busy intersection, a green Pontiac Firebird that raced past a red light and T-boned into a gray Toyota Corolla. Danny was home and safe at the time, just eight years old. Much later, he read that broadside collisions were statistically more likely to kill people than any other kind of accident. His mother assured him plenty of times that his father hadn’t been at fault. Danny believed her. He did wonder if things might have been different if Dad had been just a little better behind the wheel. Faster. Smarter.

  By age twelve, he had learned how to drive from a cute older boy in his neighborhood. A year later, he was joyriding in stolen cars and trying to kiss that same boy, who dressed in leather jackets and drove with wild eyes.

  A year after that, everything came crashing to a halt. Literally. Red lights, ambulance sirens, safety glass scattered on the asphalt and splattered with blood. Mom had to hire a lawyer and Danny had to go to court. He told everyone he’d learned his lesson.

  The real lesson, though?

  Don’t get caught.

  *

  And this is how Kevin’s mother died, way back when, on a lonely stretch of highway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He wasn’t there, of course. He couldn’t know it. But this is true: His parents, John and Maddie Clark, were on their way back to California in a vintage Ford Mustang coupe. Music by the Rolling Stones pounded out of the speakers and past the open windows. The sun was bright and the road endless. They were just a few years out of high school, both of them, young and happy under the desert sun.

  “Don’t you want to slow down a little?” Maddie shouted over the music.

  John glanced down at the speedometer and eased off the pedal. He reached over to squeeze Maddie’s knee. “Sorry.”

  Maddie slid closer to him and gave him a kiss. “I hope Kevin was good for your mom.”

  The Mustang’s steering wheel tugged a little bit under his hands. John frowned. He was a mechanic by trade, and the car was on loan from a friend. He heard another sound, almost like a growl.

  Maddie asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” John said just as the pedal dropped out from under his foot and pressed down on its own. They’d been cruising at seventy mph, but now the needle swung to eighty, and then ninety, and made a fast sweep toward one hundred—

  “Slow down!” Maddie yelled.

  “I’m trying!” John yelled back.

  The steering wheel jerked. The Mustang flipped.

  The roof smashed against the asphalt. The windshield and every other window shattered. Momentum lifted the car, flipped her again, and dashed her down like a discarded toy. The tires blew out and the frame tore itself apart.

  Quiet settled over the mangled mess of metal and blood. Oil trickled out of the cracked-open engine, and broken glass twinkled in the bright sunlight. Maddie was already dead. John survived, just barely, with shattered bones and a broken heart.

  These days, Kevin barely remembered his mom at all—just fragments of the songs she used to sing and the perfume she used to wear. But he knew his dad had never forgotten. His dad, who gave up everything—his job as a mechanic, their home in the suburbs, a normal life—to drag Kevin around the country on a long, hard quest.

  Meanwhile, the thing that had caused the Mustang’s accident happily hopped into John’s ambulance to hitchhike back to Las Vegas. It liked Vegas. Lots of cars there; lots of steel to smash.

  Lots of things to Ruin.

  Briefing Report

  Department of Transportation: TOP SECRET

  King #1—Signature Code 1832D: Location unknown

  King #2—Signature Code 2072F: Team on site Miami FL

  King #3—Signature Code 3854D: Last seen Oakland CA

  King #4—Signature Code 4211O: Location unknown

  King #6—Signature Code 6198D: Terminated

  King #7—Signature Code 7892F: Last seen Boston MA

  King #8—Signature Code 8078A: Location unknown

  King #5: Signature Code 5699D:

  Escaped Dallas TX

  POSSIBLE DETECTION

  Nashville, TN.

  Chapter One

  “All I need is two tickets to Country Harvest,” said the tall kid standing between Danny and his lunch. “I hear you can get some.”

  Danny’s stomach ached with hunger, and the tie around his neck was trying to strangle him. He really hated private school uniforms. “You heard wrong.”

  Ryan Woods reached for his wallet. “I know it’s been sold out for months, but it’s really important. It’s for my mom.”

  Danny understood what it was like to be desperate for a birthday gift for your own mother. He’d had a few close calls himself over the years. But Ryan was asking for the impossible, and Danny’s pizza was getting cold on his blue plastic tray.

  “Sorry,” he said and tried to go around.

  Ryan grabbed his arm. “I can pay whatever you want!”

  Danny was short but strong and he knew how to fight, if he had to. “Let me go,” he growled.

  Ryan’s grip released. “Come on. Just two tickets?”

  Danny stepped past him and into the large, sunny cafeteria of Piedmont Prep, where a hundred students in identical blue blazers were talking and laughing in their little cliques. Even after two months in this new school outside Nashville, Danny still
felt like a stranger. His friend Eric had already grabbed a table and was motioning him over.

  “You’re late,” Eric said, his mouth full of French fries. “Did Ryan Woods find you?”

  Danny dropped to the bench. “I can’t help him.”

  “Why not? Your stepdad’s in charge of the whole weekend.” Eric dipped more fries into ketchup. “Twenty thousand screaming country-western fans eating barbeque, drinking beer, and standing in line for ten hours to get a single autograph. I know it offends your city boy, rock ’n’ roll image and all, but you might like it.”

  Danny lifted his hamburger. “I’d rather ram screwdrivers through my eyeballs.”

  “You say that now, but you’ll get used to it.”

  No, he wouldn’t. There were a lot of things he wasn’t going to get used to about life in Tennessee. The twang in people’s accents, for starters. Grown men and women wearing cowboy hats. The stupid school uniforms and his stupid tie. He loosened the knot.

  Eric warned him, “That’s a demerit if you get caught.”

  Danny shrugged. “Wouldn’t be my first.”

  “How was your progress report?”

  Danny winced. He didn’t know how he was going to explain a C in English to his mother or stepdad. He’d had to spend the first half of his lunch period listening to his teacher tell him that he could do better if he tried harder. Same stuff he’d heard back in school in San Francisco.

  “That good, huh?” Eric asked. “You going to get grounded for your birthday?”

  A small hand fell on Danny’s shoulder before he could answer. He turned to see Laura Lewis standing behind him. Laura was tiny and pretty, with a heart-shaped face and wispy blond hair always done up in a ponytail. Twice a week, she took dance class at the studio next to Zinc’s Sandwiches and came in afterward to see him. She was only a freshman, but that was okay.

  “Hey, Danny,” she said. “I brought you something.”

  In her hands she held a chocolate cupcake decorated with the number “16” in blue frosting.

  “I know your birthday’s not until Sunday, but here you go,” she said.

  Danny knew he should kiss her. That’s what you did when girlfriends brought you things. No one at Piedmont Prep knew that Danny liked boys. They never would. All he had to do was keep lying to Laura and Eric and everyone else. He pushed down his guilty conscience.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Are you coming over tonight?”

  She sighed. “My sister wants me to babysit. I told her that I couldn’t, but she did this guilt thing and now I’m stuck with the twins all night. She won’t let me have company. Are you working tomorrow?”

  “Supposed to.”

  Laura smiled. “I guess that means you’ll have to come see me at Country Harvest on Sunday. My dad’s playing on stage, and everyone will be there, and it’s a really good time even if you don’t love country music.”

  “It’s not that I don’t love it,” Danny said. “It’s just, you know…not my thing.”

  “Tell her about the screwdrivers,” Eric said.

  The bell rang, ending the lunch period. Laura put the cupcake in Danny’s hand and said, “Call me later.”

  As she turned away, he touched her arm and did the kissing thing, but only on the cheek. “Thanks again for the cupcake.”

  “Mr. Kelly!” That was the stern voice of Mr. Woodbury. “I saw that.”

  Laura grinned and ducked away in the crowd of students heading for the door. Eric stood up with his lunch tray and said, “See you later, birthday boy.”

  Mr. Woodbury took a long time writing the demerit up in his little black book. Danny had to race to his locker and grab his physics book. He was too busy to glance out the windows, but if he had, he would have seen the October sun shining down on a hundred sleek, gleaming vehicles.

  In the middle of the lot, amid the steel and plastic and leather, a brand-new yellow Porsche 911 with the license plate JRMOON1 rolled forward a few feet. No one was there to see it. The headlights blinked on and blinked off. The windshield wipers flicked once as a growl came from beneath the hood.

  The car rolled back into place.

  There was no driver behind the wheel.

  Chapter Two

  Mr. Mendoza, Danny’s physics teacher, had not come in that Friday. The class had a substitute teacher who stood in front of the classroom like an army general addressing the troops. This particular general just happened to be wearing a crisp white business suit and black high heels. Her hair was as dark as her shoes and hung around her face like a shoulder-length silk scarf.

  She was easily the most beautiful woman Danny had ever seen. If it weren’t for the whole gay thing, he might have fallen a little bit in love with her right then and there.

  “—which is why, ladies and gentlemen, physics is the means, not the end, to understand engineering.” The teacher had a clipped accent he didn’t recognize. Not quite British, but not Australian. South African? She stopped her lecture to focus on him in the doorway and didn’t even consult the seating chart in her hand. “Mr. Kelly. Please join us.”

  In the first row, Rachel Anderson gave Danny a smirk. Petite and perfect, she was always happy when he got into trouble. He’d never had a stepsister before, but surely, they weren’t all as aggravating as she was.

  He slunk toward his assigned chair in the third row. As he sat he banged his knee against the underside and stifled a curse. The girls around him snickered. Most of the time they ignored him just as he ignored physics. It was more fun to doodle lyrics in the margins of his notebook, songs for his band, The Dirty Hands.

  Danny didn’t think he was going to get any doodling done today, though.

  The substitute teacher rapped on Mr. Mendoza’s desk with the edge of her pen and gave everyone a stern look. Behind her, the name MRS. MORRIS had been written across the whiteboard in large black letters.

  “You will fail every important task in your life if you don’t understand engineering,” Mrs. Morris announced. “You will fail in your occupations, fail in your relationships, and fail in your personal fortunes. Engineering is not about dull science and even duller scientists. The most important thing you’ll ever learn is how to build and maintain machines, corporations, rules, systems, and relationships. Mr. Conway, who said that an object at rest tends to stay at rest?”

  Mitchell Conway Junior, son of the famous country singer Mitchell “Moon” Conway, squirmed in his seat. He was a football player, very handsome, and totally Danny’s type if Danny liked them big and dumb.

  Which he didn’t.

  “Newton,” someone whispered from behind Junior.

  “Newton?” Junior repeated hopefully.

  Mrs. Morris was merciless. “And what did he mean by that?”

  Junior squirmed some more. Everyone knew that he never did his own homework, never wrote his own papers, and planned on being as big and famous as his father. He wasn’t much of a singer, but in Nashville who you knew was more important than how many notes you could sing.

  “Something about an object at rest,” Junior said, with all eyes in the class focused on him. He brightened. “Does that mean it’s naptime?”

  The class laughed. Mrs. Morris stalked straight toward Junior’s desk. She leaned so close to his face that she could probably smell his breath. Danny bet that it smelled like onions.

  “If you don’t understand the law of motion, you will fail,” Mrs. Morris repeated. “If you don’t understand Newton, you will fail. There is no exception. There is no reprieve. Only failure.”

  Junior leaned back, blanching.

  Danny was listening to her words but was paying more attention to the color of her lips, the way her hair swung just over her shoulders, and the shape of her under her suit. She really knew how to dress for success. Was it too gay for him to even think that way? He didn’t know. She had the boys in the room transfixed, while the girls looked resentful.

  Rachel spoke up in a cold voice. “Isaac Newton believed that yo
u could turn lead into gold. He kept crazy notebooks in code and never even had a girlfriend. Why listen to him?”

  Mrs. Morris straightened up and turned toward Rachel. “You must focus on the knowledge itself, not the bearer of it. I’ve seen men crippled because they didn’t understand the relationship between acceleration and mass. I’ve seen men die because they didn’t understand that entropy is an irreversible, inexorable process.”

  Rachel shrugged and deliberately looked away.

  Mrs. Morris swiveled her gaze across several desks and fixed it on Danny.

  “Do you understand entropy, Mr. Kelly?”

  He hated being called out. So humiliating, even when he knew the answer. His heart pounded uncomfortably hard against his ribs.

  “Every closed system decays,” he finally managed to say. “Energy moves from organized to unorganized states. Systems fall apart.”

  “Exactly.” Mrs. Morris gave him a small, secret smile. “Maybe you won’t be one of the failures, then. In fact, I suspect you have a bright and promising future ahead of you.”

  He wondered if she had a handsome gay brother somewhere.

  Chapter Three

  Soon everyone at Piedmont Prep was talking about Mrs. Morris. In gym class, Danny heard that she was some kind of spy sent by the Tennessee Bureau of Education. In the hallway, he heard that she was really not a teacher after all, but instead an actress undercover for some role in a big Hollywood film. By the time the two thirty dismissal bell rang, he’d heard all sorts of rumors. None of them seemed more likely than the other.

  Danny grabbed his books for the weekend and met Eric in the parking lot.