by Ramsay, Lex
Amani spoke into the link that must have been outfitted into her helmet and connected to the speaker in Patrick’s helmet. “Kandake, I’ve got Watcher, he’s safe.”
“Good work, Isis, take him to the safe house on Upshur Street.” Kandake replied in a voice Patrick had known his entire life.
In a moment of clarity that would have accompanied a smack to his forehead were he not wearing a helmet, Patrick realized that Amani was speaking to his mother, Regina Duquesne Edgerton.
Although Patrick knew that one person in each generation of his family going back to the times of Lelia Manning in 1830 had pledged loyalty to the Underground Railroad, and later to its successor, the Railway Association, it had never occurred to him that his own mother had been the legatee of her generation.
But after all, Lelia Manning herself took the pledge at the tender age of 18, and although the legacy followed his father’s line, there was ample precedent for those who married into the family taking up the cause.
His mother had married his father Jerome straight out of college at 21, and over the years had become a highly successful trial attorney whose ruthlessness in the courtroom was only matched by her compassion for those she loved.
Regina Duquesne Edgerton had ruled the family like a benevolent despot, managing her four children, and her husband, and her law practice with the aplomb of a symphony conductor. And all the while she had apparently been an operative for the Railway Association, running missions and ferrying escaping slaves to destination freedom.
She had taken the name of that ancient line of warrior queens or “Kandakes” of the City of Meroe, in what is now Sudan but what was then Kush, as her R.A. code name.
Amani and Patrick sped through the streets of D.C., from the crowded downtown avenues in the northwest quarter of the city, into the tree-lined residential enclaves with their nearly identical brownstones lined up like soldiers in the battle of urban life.
Arriving at a row of two story brownstones, Amani angled into a parking spot between two cars and turned off the ignition, gesturing to the one closest to them as their destination.
Walking up the front porch and into the narrow home, Patrick was amazed at how its exterior failed to provide a clue to the interior reality—much like life and exactly like himself. Where the outside was a matched set to its sisters on either side, the inside looked like a command center, complete with computer banks in what should have been the front parlor, and a weapons’ arsenal in the space previously reserved for the dining room. Fortunately the kitchen remained untouched.
“Okay, Patrick, where do you want me to begin?” Amani tossed the words back over her shoulder as she flung her helmet onto the kitchen counter.
“Well, I’ve finally worked out for myself that my mother is knee-deep in whatever mission you’ve been assigned. And let me start by thanking you for saving my life. I truly believed I was going to die out there.” Patrick reached out to touch her hand, lending sincerity to his words.
“I’d been tracking you for the last several days, first remotely by the tagger on your link, and then I shadowed you once Kandake told me the kill had been ordered.” Amani spoke as if she had been briefing generals in the field for most of her adult life.
“But what about Ithaca, was … I mean, what was that about?” Patrick wasn’t sure if it was his wounded pride at being played so effectively, or his lost hope of a relationship that was never going to be, that threaded his words with regret.
“Your mother wanted me to get close to you and enlisted your sister Clarissa to introduce me as one of her friends. I figured you’d run for the hills, as I understand is your habit; but hoped that at least if you saw me in battle you’d recognize me as a friend and not an enemy.
“I’m former Navy SEAL, if that answers your other questions about how I was able to eliminate the shooter.”
It was clear to Patrick that to Amani, he was just another mission.