“I don’t know this pack of guys, so how do I know if they understand where to go to eat? Plus,” Tabitha continued, she enjoyed these talks with Ted, “you New Yorkers do everything different here in the big city. It’s a miracle anything normal is done at all.”
Ted stepped over some trash as they walked. “Perhaps we might bend the law of normalcy upon occasion. But five guys in a dumpster, all beat up, is a little rare. Especially since a hobo saw a woman matching your description run into the alley, yelling at them. Then, he claims he hears a bunch of fighting and the woman comes walking back out a minute later and heads in this direction.”
“Ted, you’re making this up,” Tabitha said.
“Why do you say that?” Ted asked as he dodged a guy in a trench coat who was paying more attention to his texting than who might be in his way on the sidewalk.
“Because you are, and you’re a pitiful liar,” she said.
“Well, imagine my surprise when I find out you’re in town,” Ted said, “near the altercation with the five punks, one of which is saying they got their asses kicked by a woman. A Hispanic woman.”
“Wow, you New Yorkers grow them up tough,” Tabitha said.
“Uh huh,” Ted replied.
“Why are you on this, Ted? I thought detectives worked murders and money cleaning.”
“If you mean counterfeiting, that’s the Feds. If you mean money laundering, then maybe. But stop trying to sidestep the question. Was it you beating up the guys this evening, Tabitha?”
She stopped and looked at him. “Why do you ask questions you know I’m not going to answer?”
Ted looked up the street at lights and cars and hearing the honking horns. “Because Tabitha, I tracked you far enough to know you work for TQB. You work in their law enforcement, right?”
Tabitha pursed her lips, then gave him a slight nod.
He looked down the other way and sighed. “Here, come have coffee with me. I know a diner around the corner.”
“You’re asking me out on a date, Ted?” Tabitha asked, smiling at him.
He shook his head. “Hell no. This is cop to… cop.” he said. “And if my girlfriend sees me with you, you had better back my ass up on that.” Ted started walking towards the next intersection, leaving Tabitha alone for a second watching him walk away, her mouth open.
“What girlfriend?” she called after him, jogging to catch up to the detective.
Schwabenland, Antarctica
“Maria,” Barnabas rubbed his eyes. “I’m not an envoy for Bethany Anne. I’m the head of her Rangers.” When he looked back at her, she was still sitting there as determined as ever to give him a headache.
“Yes, you have told me this before Barnabas, and I have looked up the background. You are a self-reliant law unto yourselves, within reason, to track down and apply the Queen’s justice,” she said.
“Exactly. So why are you asking me to get involved in a discussion like this?” he asked. When it came to Maria, for a reason he still didn’t quite understand, he refused to read her mind. It did make life more interesting working with her, but the frustration level was considerably higher.
“Because as a man of justice, you are one of the few I trust implicitly to do this for me,” she leaned back in her chair.
Barnabas looked at the woman, considering her request. “I don’t have a reason to be involved, Maria.”
“No, not one that is part of your Ranger group, that is true,” she said. “However, would you do it as a friend, for me, Barnabas?” she asked, her eyes wide enough to draw Barnabas into reading her topmost thoughts.
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Yes, I will make the request,” he opened his eyes again. “But the decision is Bethany Anne’s.” His eyes pierced her soul. The absolute and granite assurance that she couldn’t press him another inch was resolute.
Why, she wondered to herself, weren’t you in Germany a hundred years ago?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
New York City, NY, USA
The waitress brought two cups of coffee and set them down. “Sugar or Splenda?”
“Black, thank you,” Ted replied.
“I’ll take them both,” Tabitha said, and the lady opened her hand, dropping five packages of each on the table.
The waitress looked over and nodded to a couple sitting down two booths away, “Be right there, sweetie.”
Once the waitress left, Ted asked, “Are you in town for personal or business reasons?”
“What, exactly, are you going to do with this knowledge, Ted?” Tabitha asked him. She grabbed the five sugars and cleanly ripped the tops off and dumped them into her coffee.
Normally, Ted would have expected Tabitha to make some cute comment like, “my coffee is sweet like me” or something. This Tabitha across from him was someone different.
This one was all business.
Ted looked around and then back to Tabitha, who was still staring him directly in the eyes. “Uh, why so serious?”
“Because you’re asking to be involved in stuff that is above your pay grade, Ted,” she answered. “Before, when it was Ted and... maybe, maybe not vigilante Tabitha, it was one thing. If you’re looking into my background and you really want to find out? Well, that trust comes with a price.”
“Expensive?” Ted asked.
“Deadly,” she answered.
Ted’s eyes opened wider and he leaned towards her. “What the hell, Tabitha?”
Tabitha put up a finger and looked around, there were no telltale signs of anyone listening. She unzipped her coat a few inches, reached in, pulled out a small tablet and set her thumb on the bottom button. She hit a couple of areas on her screen, and Ted’s eyes opened in surprise when all of the diner’s noise diminished and what he could hear was garbled.
“What the…”
“Technology, Ted,” she told him. “Look, I can be daffy if I want to be, and perhaps I’m overreacting a little here, knowing you’re a man with a job and a girlfriend… and a life. But, trust me when I say that you would have never put me behind bars.”
“No? Why is that?” Ted asked.
“Because my Queen never forsakes her own. EVER. I would have been released either by the system, or I would have been retrieved without the government’s permission. It wouldn’t have mattered which one. Perhaps my boss would have come to get me, perhaps I would have told them I’d just get out myself.” Tabitha said. “I’m a Queen’s Ranger, and as such, my responsibility is to find injustice. I take cases and solve them. Punishment, if there is no obvious other way, is my responsibility. Those five toughs? Yeah. That was me.”
Ted’s eyes opened wider. Not only because she finally admitted to an altercation, but his head was swimming. Those cases he had from a couple of years ago with the vigilante support and now this evening.
“Not all of them are me, obviously,” she said.
“Can you read minds?” he asked.
“Have you been studying us, detective?” Tabitha smiled.
He nodded. “A little. Stuff I can find out without raising too many suspicions,” he said.
“Then, you need to realize that there are things that go bump in the night. The Queen’s Rangers bump back.”
“What if they’re too big to bump?” Ted asked.
Tabitha started laughing and put up a hand. “Sorry,” she covered her mouth and got herself under control. “Ted, if one Ranger can’t take care of the problem, then that Ranger will suffer a lot of shit, mostly harassment. I have my own team, and we are a hell of a plan A, trust me. But, there’s always a plan B.”
“And what’s B?” Ted asked.
Tabitha put up her closed hand, then opened one finger for each name she called out. “John, Eric, Darryl, Scott, Akio,” she said. “B is for Bitches and trust me, you wouldn’t want to piss them off.”
“Why is that, are they super tough?” Ted asked, his testosterone fueling a desire to prove himself capable to Tabitha.
Tabitha shook her h
ead. “Ted, don’t go there. A Queen’s Ranger,” she pointed to herself. “Me, Barnabas and whoever else is with us has a constraint, and that is law. We are bound by it, by Bethany Anne. It’s part of our creed. The Bitches have a different creed they live by.”
“What’s that?”
“Results,” she told him. “I try to keep the pain down.” Ted snorted in disbelief as she continued, “Look asshat, I did keep it down for those five twerps. They were just something to take my annoyance out on, and they accosted me first. I didn’t tell them to jump me.”
“So, they chased you into the alley?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you annoyed?” he asked.
“Because two other friendly pain-in-the-asses have taken it upon themselves to teach my Tontos shit I would really rather they didn’t know.”
Ted rubbed his eyes. “I feel like I’ve fallen into the Twilight Zone here. Back to the Bitches. Why are results a problem?”
Tabitha’s voice softened. “Ted, listen to me.” He nodded. “I could walk into any of your precinct houses and kill everyone there. I’d be hurt, that’s true. I might possibly not live through it, but I could do it.” She put up her hand. “I’m not telling you this to brag, I’m telling you this so that you understand. I’m a cop, in my own way. I’m law, I’m justice. I’m better with guns and shit than you guys, sure. But I can’t touch a Bitch. We,” she pointed back and forth between the two of them, “are law officers. The Bitches? They are warriors. Badass motherfuckers that are dropped on problems. If Bethany Anne were to point to a country and tell one of those five to subjugate it, then that country is so fucked they wouldn’t have a clue. John could go through a whole military base with Jean’s weapons.”
“You’re describing a superman, Tabitha. I’m not sure I’m buying it.”
Tabitha picked up her tablet and started typing blindingly fast on it. Ted’s eyes widened slightly as he realized she was typing too fast for a human. Even a teenage girl human.
She turned the tablet after she hit a button and Ted noticed the noise cancellation dropped as she handed him the tablet. He was surprised she did that and then saw her looking behind him. He looked over his shoulder as their waitress came up to the table. “More coffee?”
“Yes, thank you,” Tabitha said and Ted lifted his cup.
Ted took a few sips of his coffee and looked at the news clippings she had called up. He read through them, and his mouth dropped open before looking up at Tabitha. “You’re saying the Bitches, those guys, did this?”
“That’s from years ago,” Tabitha held out her hand, and he gave her the tablet. She hit a button, and the noise protection dropped into place once more. “That was the guys blowing off some steam. Hell, they were just Bitches one point zero then.”
“What are they now?” Ted asked, thinking back to the carnage the report described and her comment about the guys just blowing off steam.
“Probably about two point five or version three.”
“What do you call these guys besides Bitches?” Ted asked.
“Me?” Tabitha asked, and Ted nodded. “I call them friends.”
“What are you people?” Ted asked, not really expecting an answer.
“We are the Earth’s best chance of staying free,” she said. “We are Bethany Anne’s people, come hell or high water. We are her law and her justice, all wrapped up in a no-nonsense group of humans who will walk through hell and clean it the fuck up. Satan best hope Bethany Anne never points us that way.”
“Is that what you were doing here, in New York?”
“In a way, yes. I’ve been chasing some assholes for a while, and I’m back.”
“Those guys tonight just got in your way?”
“More like they accosted justice, and justice kicked their asses. If they had truly been in my way, I would have taken them out. If not me? Then Barnabas, a Bitch or Bethany Anne. And actually, God help them if I ever call her.”
“Why?”
“Because it means vengeance is coming, and she doesn’t drop flowers behind her,” Tabitha said. “She’s a great leader, don’t get me wrong. But she has a zero bullshit policy and that’s what I deal with… bullshit. There is a lot of bullshit in our lives, and I’m pretty good at rolling with it. Bethany Anne?”
“Yeah?”
“You probably wouldn’t have found those dicks.”
“She would have killed them?” Ted asked, his eyebrows drawing together. “For being rude?”
“Ummm... accosting a woman is not simply rude, it’s a horrible experience. This time, the little woman fought back. But no, Bethany Anne can do things far worse than killing them and before you ask, I won’t tell you. Hell, I don’t know them all.”
“Then why do you follow her?” Ted asked.
Tabitha took a sip of her coffee before answering. “Because she saved my life, and then she saved my soul. I get the chance to pay it forward, and I’m going to do it. The man I call my father might be back one day, and I’m going to be there, right beside Bethany Anne, to welcome him back.”
“Your father?”
“You wouldn’t know him. His name is Michael. Once we have our present task completed, I know we’ll be searching and we will find his ass, I guarantee it.”
“He’s dead, gone, lost or what?” Ted asked.
“He’s definitely lost. Bethany Anne says he isn’t dead, but I don’t know why she says that. They have a connection, that’s all I know, and I trust her completely. If she says he’s alive? Then he’s alive. She tells me to clean up New York City, I come here and start cleaning up New York City.”
Tabitha cocked an ear and touched her tablet to drop the sound field. “There’s a mugging going on, leave it alone or fix it?”
“Ah, fuck,” Ted said, and Tabitha smiled. She was up and out of the diner before he stood up.
There was a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and Ted had never seen her put it there.
Who the hell was this woman, really? Or should he be wondering what?
He started jogging to catch up.
He heard a whistle to his left as he exited the diner and started running that way. He came up to an alley and could hear Tabitha’s voice.
“Look, shithead, I don’t care if you need the money to put your momma through college, stealing it from this woman isn’t the right answer. Getting a job, perhaps after taking a bath, would be a good start.”
Ted reached for his badge, hesitated, then slid it back in his pocket.
This was what he had been researching, wasn’t it? Now he wasn’t so sure he should have made up the lie about having a girlfriend.
He walked, as quietly as possible in the shadows, to see Tabitha in between a woman crying on the ground and two punks.
The larger, taller white guy spoke to her. “Look bitch, we takin’ this money, and whatever fucking money you have too.” He pulled out a ten-inch knife, the glint off the blade in the poor light flicking up and down the alley.
“That’s not a knife!” Tabitha replied in an Australian accent. She reached inside her jacket, and the guy jumped towards her screaming “AAiii!”
The man shot across the alley, a loud CRACK then a crunch as his body hit the wall, slumping down. Simultaneously, Tabitha’s foot came back down.
“Well, that was fucking rude,” Tabitha huffed and spoke to the second guy. “You giving me back her purse and money, or are you going to take a dirt nap like your friend over there?”
“He… he dead?” the second punk asked looking at the guy crumpled on the ground.
Tabitha spared a glance at him. “No, not yet. His lung is bleeding from where my kick broke his ribs and punctured it. I can hear the blood causing problems already.” She turned back to him. “I suggest next time not stabbing first and asking questions later.”
The guy handed the purse to Tabitha who helped the lady to stand up. “Check if anything is missing.”
“Will you help Jim?” the second thug asked. �
�He might not be much, but he’s the only friend I got.”
Tabitha looked back at the punk. “You got a name?” He nodded. “So, tell it to me already.”
“Thomas.”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 33