The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  73

  Six months later…

  * * *

  Dr. Murasawa’s voice carried across the gathered crowd. Digitized through the loud speakers, it lost only a little of its usual comfort and softness. The sunny day helped deliver the happy news.

  She’d taken over for Radnor, a radically different leader than the loud and booming man. But Cage and Joule both liked working for her.

  “As many of you already know,” she told the crowd gathered in the field, “the ribbon cutting here is mostly symbolic. A good number of you have already been involved in the process of helping the solar array put power onto the grid. Thank you.”

  She graciously waved a hand toward her left, where a handful of locals had chosen to stand by and be part of their little ceremony. Only it wasn’t little anymore. A large number of people from nearby Horton, Arab, and New Hope had turned up, packing the small, cleared space at the edge of the array field.

  Cage was aware that Dr. Murasawa had been adamant that people would not be pressured to stand up at the ceremony. She wasn’t pushing any locals into it.

  He saw Joule suppress a grin and knew that she felt she’d won. Jerry was standing to the far left, his hands clasped in front of him. It hadn't happened immediately. It had taken all of them learning a good spate of local diplomacy. Though Joule had tried to explain a lot of Jerry’s protests that she’d learned during the whole tornado run last fall, it had still been far more complicated than even she’d learned. Understanding what had bothered Jerry and the other locals so much about the incoming solar array had led to a great deal of compromise.

  There were now programs in place in conjunction with the community center—a place the locals already trusted, unlike Helio Systems Tech. Dr. Murasawa had carefully carved inroads and taken the employees along with her.

  It wasn’t easy. As Sarah had pointed out, it had taken Jerry a while to accept that the change was coming and that there was nothing he could do about it. He could fight the ocean or ride the waves. He could join in things like putting in a solar array, and maybe even cleaning up his own carbon footprint, or deal with the results of not doing it—which included the devastating tornadoes that had come through in a forty-eight-hour period last fall.

  Newscasters nationwide had called the “flash weather event” shocking and bizarre. Fifteen different funnels, ranging from F1 to F5 had come through in two days. Joule had survived. So had Cage.

  Others had not.

  Helio Systems Tech had shut down for a while, and the local protesters had cheered as though they’d run the bad guys out of town. Cage had been pleased that at least Jerry hadn’t joined them and he credited Joule for that win. But the team hadn’t left. They'd gone back and re-crunched the data.

  They calculated the odds that that this particular section of Alabama—which had previously been a low-level tornado zone—had suddenly become a hotspot. There was no predicting it, only planning for the probablities.

  They’d decided that the strange, funnel-producing weather system had, in fact, been a freak event.

  Cage didn't know if they'd be back next year to repair the array or not. They'd redesigned and redesigned and redesigned. Because, as had been pointed out early on by Jerry and the protesters, there was a need to protect the Alabama environment from the chemicals and pollutants inside the panels in case another twister passed through.

  But thanks to Dr. Murasawa’s ingenuity and the local consultants she’d hired, the system was officially opening today to cheers. Most of the Helio Systems Tech people stood to one side, wearing their khaki pants and bright pink polo shirts. They all looked like Radnor, Cage thought, and maybe that was a fitting tribute.

  He stood quietly while Dr. Murasawa invited the local mayors of the three nearby towns to join hands and cut the wide ribbon together.

  The Helio Systems employees were on hand as a show, but they’d also been asked if they were comfortable giving tours of the new array in case any locals asked. The roommates had speculated that they’d get few takers, and the rest of them would stand around trying to look like they were busy. Instead, they were shocked when people piled up, dividing up the employees and asking rushed questions.

  Cage had to hand it Dr. Murasawa. She’d done an amazing job integrating Helio Systems into the nearby towns by hiring key people in each community who could be strategically vocal social organizers. She educated them and then let them educate and advocate within their communities. She’d hired them early and paid them well.

  Three hours after the ribbon cutting, Cage had given three different local families a quick walking tour, answering questions about how the array worked and how the panels would track the sun. He’d explained that it would provide cheap power and listened to his sister help another family calculate their savings. Dr. Murasawa had made them all memorize the new numbers they expected local households to be paying. But she believed in under-promising and over-delivering.

  Joule had happily spouted, “By our low-end estimate, it should cut your power bill by 40 percent.”

  “That’s not that much,” the man said.

  “That’s four hundred and eighty dollars a year, sir. On the low end. What could you do with that? Or more?”

  It was the wife who had nodded along; she seemed to be making plans for the savings. But Joule also told them, “A Helio Systems Team will be staying behind for at least the first year.”

  She explained how they would phase all the daily operations and repairs into the community.

  Joule and Cage were not part of that the team, though. They'd been hired as frontline workers, and this hand-off to the community marked the end of their part of the contract.

  After they returned home today, they’d have a few weeks of break before they moved to start the next job. They had a few more weeks rent covered at the new apartment building where they now lived with Dev and Sarah and Toto. The insurance had been slow to fix the missing chunk out of the Desperado’s Hideaway dining room.

  But Cage had other plans now.

  He'd made it through the surgery, so Dr. Patel had never told Joule about the tickets.

  As the last stragglers left, he walked up behind his sister and tapped her on her hand to get her attention. “Hey, Joule, I have a surprise.”

  Thank you for reading The Tempest.

  * * *

  Next up in the Black Carbon Series:

  The Swarm

  It was supposed to be a vacation. Warm weather, sun, the kind of water the twins could enjoy--A clear aquifer with manatees.

  But the mosquitoes would be the death of them...

  Look for the The Swarm coming soon…

  * * *

  Want to know about all the new releases and get all the giveaways? Keep up with AJ and the Black Carbon series at readajs.com/join-now

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Cage and Joule’s story, you’ll love The Vendetta Trifecta. The FBI doesn’t know their most wanted killer…is a girl.

  One Click VENGEANCE now

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  The thick smell of blood wasn’t a shock. He was used to it. What startled Lee was the woman.

  She was sitting at the dining room table, seemingly oblivious to the carnage mounted on the wall behind her. She was working over something, like she was writing, and was deep in her efforts where she didn’t acknowledge him.

  A large red bow, the kind you would put on a three-foot Christmas present, stole his attention sitting there on the table beside her. She wrote with precision, her head bent low, her rich chestnut hair worked into braids and wound round her head in a style that called to mind The Sound of Music.

  Lee suppressed the boiling anger in him down to something in the range of a solid simmer and took a step toward her, wondering if she was in shock. Her right hand came up sharply, one leather gloved finger telling him to wait a minute, but the rigid control he saw in her told him she intended for him to wait as l
ong as she wanted.

  In that moment he saw what he had previously missed. She wore leather, in several shades of shadow, from her fingertips to her toes. The braids weren’t cute, they were cop hair‒the kind you couldn’t get a hold on and use to yank a person around.

  “There.” Surprisingly, given the growing stench of death emanating from what Lee was now pretty certain was her handiwork, her voice was musical and held a low note of pride. She stood and turned to face him, holding the bow and what was apparently a large gift tag. And she smiled at him.

  As the smile reached her large chocolate eyes, Lee felt the blood drain out the soles of his feet. She was insane. Clinically insane. There was no other reason a person would be truly happy here. Add in that she was armed to the teeth‒a short dagger was sheathed at her waist, a pair of matched sais were slid into long, thin pockets down each thigh, strange wood and metal sickles slipped gracefully through lined up loops so they didn’t jangle when she walked‒and the sweetness he had initially perceived fled like dandelion tufts.

  She looked at him like she would a small puppy sitting at the edge of her living room, like he was cute and non-threatening. Lee’s hand inched under his jacket to his hip, fondling the warm butt of the 9mm there. Given everything else, he wouldn’t put it past her to be fast.

  But she didn’t say anything, just went about fastening the bow to the body and plumping it a little, like she was Martha Stewart off to a birthday party. The body was held to the wall behind it by serviceable, unadorned throwing knives. At least he was pretty certain they were unadorned, only the last inch of the handle was visible on each of the six blades that had crucified the man to the wall.

  Lee thought he had seen lethal in his time, but this looked like the body had been alive when it had been pinned there, and the buried knives were sunk into wall studs. It was the only way that the heft of the large, muscular man wouldn’t have come forward, bringing drywall down with him. That took planning.

  The face of the man on the wall sagged, eyes and mouth open, blood running in thin rivulets from the edges of each. He had suffered a thousand punctures and surface slices in his final moments, and the woman carried exactly the implements to do it. Although she must have cleaned them thoroughly before sliding them into their leather homes along her lean legs.

  Stepping back she admired the tag. And Lee, for the first time, read it.

  In payment for murder, rape, and the destruction of families.

  One by one, she used claw-like throwing stars to pin obituaries, newspaper articles, and pieces of police reports to dead flesh. After a moment Lee no longer cared what she was tacking to the corpse, he just wondered where in hell the stars were coming from. She would simply produce another and another, like a sick magician.

  She turned to smile at him again, and his breath hitched. A wailing started deep at the back of his head.

  He’d been wrong. She was just a girl.

  The whine grew stronger, and he recognized it for what it was‒sirens, more than one. If the girl knew what was coming, she gave no indication, just tipped her head and walked out the back. She moved with a precision that made her look inhuman; he wouldn’t have batted an eyelash had she simply climbed the walls or even passed through them. And, though he watched her use the door, Lee heard none of the usual sounds of human movement.

  She went down the back steps and flitted away into the woods, an evil sprite or a minion of a vengeful god. Lee wasn’t sure.

  Beyond the walls, tires squealed and car doors slammed. They didn’t call out, but he could hear them out there, gathering steam and numbers. The cops had an idea that something had gone down here. But he was certain they hadn’t been expecting this.

  His irritation was flaring again, and that was a bad sign. There was no room for emotion in this job. So with a sigh, he pushed the back door open with his elbow, and headed straight for the woods. As much as he would have liked to follow her, his priority was getting out of here.

  He walked through foliage he knew too well‒deeper and deeper, following the path he had worn over the past week, his focus on the walk, on removing himself from the situation‒until he finally emerged. No matter what evidence they found, the boys in blue would know it wasn’t his work.

  He unlocked the old sedan that was nearly mangled on the outside, but purred like a hot kitten. Climbing in, he slammed his fists against the leather wrapped steering wheel.

  Damnit, the bitch had stolen his kill.

  Owen Dunham had everything, and every goddamned little bit of it was sitting at the dinner table with him. His wife looked at him funny, her Russian, tilted eyes knew from the look on his face, even as she passed the buttered corn. Somehow she always knew. Charlotte was painfully oblivious, and he would have to either break her heart or leave it to Annika to foot that bill.

  He reminded himself that he loved his job, and that he did good work, and that he could sleep well at night. Other people slept well at night because of him, too. So he reached down into his pocket to fetch the vibrating phone.

  Charlotte saw the movement, her bright eyes clouding as the story of having her work held up as an example of some of the best third grade writing the teacher had ever seen faded on her lips. For a moment Owen wondered if Charlotte’s ‘fiction’ had included this.

  He offered a repressed I’m-so-sorry-baby-but-I-have-to-get-this smile to his daughter. There was nothing to give to his wife. So he stood and flipped the phone open as he went into his office in his own little version of the separation of church and state. “Dunham.”

  “Phoenix.” It was a voice he knew all too well, even though he’d only once shook hands with the man and saw a face to put to the sound. Randolph just did dispatch. Just spent his time interrupting Owen’s family dinners and school plays. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  Owen rubbed the back of his neck and wondered what the hell had gone wrong this time, because that’s all that this could mean. “My kid got an award at school today, she was just telling me about it. This had better be good.”

  There was a smile in Randolph’s voice. “Oh, this is real fucked-up good. Your grudge ninja’s back.”

  “Shit.” The ninja had laid low for almost six months. Nothing they could pin on the guy. Sure there were a few things that might have been his work. “Are they sure? Before I leave my family-”

  “I’ve seen some preliminary photos. Open your e-file. If this isn’t your ninja I’ll eat your socks at the end of the trip.”

  That was a serious bet, Owen knew. He tucked the cell phone handily against his shoulder, knowing it gave away his age. The move never should have been attempted with a phone this small, certainly not while hacking into his encrypted computer files. The stance was a throwback to a day when the phones had been large enough to cradle in the crook of your neck, back to when he’d first become familiar with the gadgets and had still thought they were pretty cool. Before he’d grown to hate the things.

  The photo opened on his screen. As usual, he did a quick once over around the office to be sure that no small eyes had snuck in behind him, that Annika wasn’t there looking over his shoulder. His desk faced the door and was back against a solid wall for exactly this reason, but he’d never forgive himself if Charlotte ever saw what he did.

  “Oh.” His stomach rolled a little at first, just like always. But, God, if that wasn’t signature work all over that body. “When’s my flight?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  Knowing and not caring that the dispatcher couldn’t see it, Owen nodded at Randolph’s standard line. The plane was waiting. He didn’t need to pack, because he packed a new bag at the end of each trip, but he did need a few minutes to tell Annika and Charlotte goodbye. It wasn’t like the body was going anywhere. “Bye, ‘Dolph.”

  The line disconnected as Owen tried to figure out how the man had been so neatly thumb-tacked to the wall. He should have fallen over and taken the plaster with him. At least the trip would be interesti
ng.

  Owen reminded himself of that fifteen hours later.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face as his logical brain got away from him. He tried not to calculate how long he’d been awake. But his alarm had gone off at five-thirty the previous morning, putting him at roughly twenty-nine hours up.

  He tried to forget the number instantly, and slugged back another cup of coffee. It was too thin. The coffee he was given everywhere was always different, but always equally bad‒it was just part of the badge. Cops everywhere hated him, thinking that he tread on their turf, when really it was they who had tread all over his murder scene, so they gave him bad cop coffee. And since good cop coffee was an oxy moron . . . Owen tossed back another shot of it, thinking that if it went straight to the back of his throat it might not linger on his tongue like the socks Randolph wasn’t going to have to eat.

  Reminding himself that he was nowhere near his record for hours awake, he decided to check out the lab work on their body and their ninja.

  In the middle of the night, while still on the scene, he had sent close-up photos of the tag to the handwriting analyst who had opened the file and declared the writing identical to the other tags without even waking up.

  The body bore marks of piercings with a long slender awl. Slash marks were cut no more than an inch deep in a handful of non-vital places. Owen had studied the ninja’s work before and decided that the knives that held the body had been thrown, the piercings were from sais, and the slashes were the work of kamas. Kamas weren’t pretty or flashy. Curved metal knives, mounted sickle-style at the end of wooden, hammer-sized handles, they were all but unheard of beyond the martial arts world. They hadn’t hit the movie circuit yet. Given the expert weaponry and use thereof, Owen was certain they had a pro on their hands. He had sighed at this body the same way he had at all the others. The ninja definitely got the job done.