Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Just…” Lee’s voice sounded choked. “Come upstairs,” he finished, like he was forcing out the words.
Nope.
Darius didn’t like this shit at all.
They got up the stairs and into the kitchen, and he liked this less.
He noticed it all, all at once.
He did this knowing, even if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget it.
Not any of it.
Hank was shoulders against the back wall, arms crossed on his chest, ankles crossed, head bent so deep, Darius couldn’t see his face.
Tom was sitting at the table.
His eyes came right to Darius.
His face was ravaged.
Malcolm was standing, holding Kitty Sue.
Kitty Sue was silently crying.
Malcolm looked wrecked.
Darius’s insides seized.
“What’s up?” he repeated, but this time his voice was small.
Because he knew.
His mom.
One of his sisters.
Maybe an accident.
It was something like that.
Something bad.
Kitty Sue stepped out of Malcolm’s hold and called, “Honey, come here.”
He didn’t go there.
He backed up and ran into a wall that was made of Lee and Eddie.
One of them grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt.
The other wrapped his hand around the back of Darius’s neck.
Fuck, he knew.
This was bad.
The adults, they didn’t know. They didn’t know how to deal.
And two of them were fucking cops.
It was Hank.
It was Hank who lifted his head, looked Darius in his eyes, and the infinite sorrow and pain and love in his made Darius’s knees weak.
And then Hank opened his mouth and said words that changed Darius forever.
* * *
Fast Forward – Hit Play
His boy approached, wearing cap and gown.
He went to his momma first.
She hugged him and the tears fell silently from her eyes.
They held on a good while before Liam touched his forehead to hers, smiled at her, let her go and then bent to pick up his baby sister.
“Congradlations, LeeLee!” she shouted.
Liam grinned at her, let her hug him and give him a wet kiss on his cheek.
Then he put her down and turned to his father.
Darius waited for him to make the move.
He did.
Liam wrapped his arms around his dad and pounded him on the back.
Darius returned the gesture.
“Proud of you,” Darius muttered.
“Yeah. Proud of you too.”
Darius swallowed.
Liam held on.
“Oh my God, stop hugging. If you don’t, I won’t stop crying, and I’m hungry. I need to eat,” Malia demanded.
Darius and Liam both leaned back, but they didn’t let go.
They just smiled at each other.
Only then did they let go.
Liam claimed his baby sister again, planting her on his hip.
Darius claimed his wife.
They followed their kids to the car.
And then Darius Tucker took his family to dinner.
Fast Forward – Way Forward – Hit Play
Jimmy Marker
Jimmy’d had the bottle a long time.
A long…fucking…time.
He took it from the place it had inhabited for years at the back of the fridge, got the glasses and walked out on the deck where his wife was sitting.
She looked to the bottle, the glasses, then to her husband.
“No,” she said, not believing it.
It had been years.
But now…it was official.
He sat, put the glasses down on their patio table, and started to take the foil off the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle of champagne.
“Jorge called,” he said.
“From Phoenix?” she asked.
“Yup.”
Jimmy’s friend, and ex-colleague, Jorge Alvarez, was now in Phoenix.
In fact, Jorge moved down there fifteen years ago, and now he was Chief of Police in Phoenix.
Jimmy threw the foil on the table and went after untwisting the wire.
“Cap Jackson moved down there. He’s gonna be part of the new NI setup. Their new branch.”
His wife appeared confused. “Cap Jackson? Is he any relation to Roam and Sniff?”
“Yup.” Jimmy popped the cork and started pouring while explaining, “Seeing as he is Sniff. Kid got back from the Army and he’s no kid anymore. You might try to call him Sniff if you wanted your face rearranged. They called him Cap in the military, not because of his rank. Short for Captain America. And not just because he’s strong, loyal and fearless. But because he looks like Chris Evans, and word got ’round about the scrawny bugger he used to be. The name stuck when he got back.”
His wife fought a smile as she said, “Oh boy.”
“Oh boy is right,” Jimmy agreed. “And Jorge tells me some vigilante, calling themselves the ‘Avenging Angel,’ is doin’ stupid shit in Phoenix.”
“Oh boy,” his wife repeated, her eyes lighting.
“Yup,” Jimmy said yet again, putting the bottle down, picking up both the glasses and handing one to his wife. “Jorge suspects this Avenging Angel is female.”
She was losing the fight with her smile.
Jimmy kept talking.
“And as we both know, Phoenix isn’t even in the same fucking state as Denver. So way, way out of my jurisdiction.”
His woman lost it and started laughing.
Jimmy offered his glass for a clink. His wife reached out and clinked.
“Here’s to Jorge having a shit ton of patience. Here’s to that shit happening down there and not up here. And here’s to it finally being over.”