Free King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 by Maurice Broaddus Page A

taped-down bag, while his other hand lowered the window. He dropped the bag outside.
      "And the trunk."
       Come on , Broyn's contorted face seemed to say. He hunched his shoulders.
      "A girl's got to earn, too," she grunted with annoyance.
      He forced himself to turn from the shotgun, taking it on faith that she was professional enough to not twitch and send his brains spraying onto the passenger-side window. Still, over and over, his mind imagined the clap of thunder before his world turned black. Suppressing a shiver, he reached under his seat for the trunk release. Too scared to know what to do with them, unable to move, possibly in shock, he held his hands out, his mind so disconnected from the action, it was as if they floated on their own. Probably more trying to wrap his head around what to tell Colvin. His eyes were drawn to the pulsing red lights. Almost hypnotic. Then she was gone.
     
    Subtle wasn't in Lee McCarrell's vocabulary. The door exploded open with his first kick. Shock and awe were his calling cards, not because they worked especially well, but more because he enjoyed the rabbit responses his entrance brought. Them "uh-oh" eyes. The dazed lucidity of junkies caught mid-cop. The fear and panic of a dealer. The copper tang of adrenaline on his tongue.
      "You raising up on me?" Lee roared to the halfdozen young bucks lounging around the room. He often sprinkled his words with a liberal dose of street affect, letting them know he understood them and spoke to them in a language they understood. Them. Not us. These were nameless pukes. Omarosa had fed him their names, little more than chum in the pool of sharks. The possibility of her growing bored of him distracted him. Not that it mattered. There was no warranty on relationships and this one had about run its course. He'd made a meal on the tips she'd given him over the months. And he never questioned how she knew so much, or so accurately, for fear of busting a cap in the ass of his fine golden goose. She assured him this would be a bust worth his while, even if these were low-level players.
      "How's business?" Lee smirked. He gave the first boy a long, inventorying look. A good kid, long and lean with bright, intelligent eyes. Even lying on a couch, with the chaos of cops bursting in, he didn't panic and exuded a commanding presence. Skin like smoked meat, he had child-like dimples though he tried to suppress a charismatic smile. In other words, a waste.
      "Good, I guess." The boy sat up slowly.
      People became cops for only a handful of reasons. To carry a gun and tell people what to do (the deputized bully), money ("a job's a job"), freak (too drawn to the badge), or a white knight complex (the hero's calling). Sometimes it took a bully to get things done. There was still plenty of room for Cantrell to play hero.
      "You hear what happened over at Phoenix?" Cantrell asked the second boy.
      "Some folks got got," the second boy said. Young, white, red-headed, the boy had a heroin thinness to him. And he had the disposition of someone who would sell out his dying mother for his next fix to avoid prison. One of his eyes didn't track properly. That area of his face webbed with healed-over scars. The eye was probably glass, Cantrell realized.
      "What's up?" Cantrell's flat voice rumbled without humor. He ran his hands up the boy's socks and then legs. "You know we own this piece now. You operate at our pleasure."
      "What we got here?" Lee stood over the boy's desk. A scree of papers cascaded across it.
      "Homework," the first boy offered.
      "Oh, so you in school now." Upon closer inspection, Lee spied the childish scrawl on papers and the remedial reading text. Lee had the common decency to not comment on this. There was belittling and then there was cruelty which aimed at stripping away all attempts at manhood and dignity. The latter only led to more problems.
      "Come on now," the second boy said. "You fucking up my