Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) Gary Ross (most popular novels txt) 📖

I looked at Ramos for a long moment. He was different. His once pristine guayabera was wrinkled and stained with sweat, with Bishop’s makeup and tears. For the first time since I’d met him, his hair was unkempt. But the true change was in his eyes, now narrowed into slits, hardened and angry. “All right,” I said. “The kitchenette floor is the only space left. Got a sleeping bag?”

“I can get one from my cousin,” he said.

I nodded. “You’ll all need fresh clothes, toothbrushes and toiletries. Did you drive today, Yvonne?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you all go do what you need to do while Drea rests. Pete and I can watch the monitors. We won’t go to the reception till you get back. We’ll stay maybe fifteen minutes. Then we can all get down to some serious work.”

“God’s work,” Cissy said.

If there is a God, I thought but did not say. And if that God is good.

“Okay,” Yvonne said. “We can be back in an hour.” She looked at Ramos. “Maybe an hour and a half. But you might want to check on Drea. She seems kind of out of it.”

After they left, Pete manned the monitors and I tapped on Drea’s door.

“Come in,” she said.

I opened the door and found her sitting on the bed, shoes off but still dressed in her day outfit, her back against the headboard, staring at the screen of a television she had not bothered to turn on. The emptiness in her eyes was disconcerting.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “You haven’t said much of anything since we left the police station.”

She looked up at me and bit her lip. “I’m wondering what kind of person I am.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though I thought I did. I sat on the side of the bed.

“You’ve all had the decency not to ask me how I feel,” she said. “Maybe you think I’m reliving the night my husband died and I’m feeling so much pain I can’t talk. Maybe you suspect the truth and don’t want me to say it because you don’t want to think less of me.” She looked off for a moment. “You see, I’m glad the slimy motherfucker is dead.”

For a moment, neither of us said anything. She turned back to me and her eyes held mine.

“I wish I had pulled the trigger instead of Lucy,” she said. “What I’m struggling to hold inside is a scream of joy that will last too long for my friends to accept.” She blinked, eyes glistening as she looked away again. “What kind of person takes such ungodly pleasure in someone else’s death?”

I handed her one of the pillows. “Use this,” I said. “Scream into it as much as you want. I’ll be right here.”

30

“My fellow patriots, it is truly a sad day when one of our number can be gunned down in broad daylight and the mud woman who pulled the trigger gets to stagger away free. Carter John was a devoted member of our movement to reclaim America for Americans. He was in the lakeside city of Buffalo for one reason and one reason alone, to challenge the arrogance of a national gathering taking place there that promotes the lie diversity is our strength. If that were true, cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit would not be called post-industrial. They would be called thriving. But as companies added more and more inferior workers to assembly lines and blast furnaces, the factories and mills of such cities failed, leaving in their wakes wastelands of blight, crime, urban carnage, and an influx of immigrants from the least desirable corners of this planet. These are the products of so-called diversity.”

Cissy paused the playback and shuddered, tightening her lightweight kente cloth robe. “I need a minute. That damn robo-racist was creepy as fuck the first time. But now…”

It was about five-thirty in the morning. We were all in the living room of our suite, gathered around a coffee service cart Yvonne had wheeled in moments earlier. A short time ago, most of us had been asleep—Ramos in the kitchen, Yvonne in Pete’s bed, Drea in her own, Pete and me back-to-back on the pullout. But it showed in our faces that none of us had slept well. Now we were awake to assess the latest move in whatever ham-handed game we were playing with Liberty Storm. Like me, Pete and Ramos still wore the T-shirts they’d slept in. A loose blue caftan covered Drea. Yvonne wore a robe similar to her sister’s. Everybody had coffee. Mine was black.

“How long has this been online?” I asked.

“It dropped twenty minutes ago,” Cissy said. “It hit my phone and Matt and Mark bounced it over just as a Google alert with mud people came up. I listened with headphones ‘cause you and Pete both looked so tired. Then I woke Vonnie up. She said you needed to know now and we all needed to hear it.” She shrugged. “So she got coffee.”

“Much appreciated,” Pete said, hoisting his cup toward her. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

“Sorry I was so restless,” I said. “Even with AC, it’s too hot in here for a crowd.”

“No problem, man,” Pete said. “Betty’s a fidgeter too.”

“I’ll order two rollaways for the kitchen. Get Manuel off the floor.” I turned back to Cissy. “I assume there’s more.”

Cissy sucked her teeth. “It gets worse.”

We both looked at Drea. She had yet to say anything but her face showed the strain of having smiled and small-talked her way through the reception last night. Then, when asked about the shooting, she had deflected by saying she could see nothing from inside the library and invited the questioners to talk about themselves. Now, her eyes shifting from mine to Cissy’s, she nodded we should continue listening.

Cissy clicked her mouse button.

“Carter John was prepared to use his oratorical skills in the service of our cause one more time. But before he could enter a public building to challenge the lies of