Chapter 1

Characters appearing in the first several chapters:

Maximilian Hardtrick (Max)

Father, retired Major Special Operations Forces; 6’-4’’ tall, 230 pounds, 36 years old, short blond hair, blue eyes, and a powerful Talent.

Jillian Kelley

Magic user, 5’-3’’ tall, 115 pounds, 34D-22-34, 24 years old, long flaming red hair, bright green eyes, and very cute

I awoke in Jill’s spare bedroom just before nine the next morning, Tuesday the 21st of July. Having had a restful night, I felt pretty good. The room was air conditioned, the bed was large enough for my 6’-4’’ frame, and the mattress was just firm enough. It was the best night’s sleep that I’d had in over a month.

On awakening, I checked my wards surrounding the room, but they hadn’t been disturbed. Rising from the bed, I decided that a real shower would definitely hit the spot. Grabbing some of the new underwear that I had purchased yesterday from the dresser where I had placed it last night, I dropped my wards around the room, and headed for the bathroom to take care of my morning business, brush my teeth and take a real shower.

I found that Jill’s house had a large shower enclosure, and used it after taking care of the other things. The hot water felt great, and the soap in there had a pleasant scent. There were also several large fluffy towels to dry off with. Back in the room, I donned a pair of new slacks, and some socks before heading downstairs to find Jill and hopefully some breakfast.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Jill said in a bright voice, as I entered the kitchen. It was obvious that she had been up for some time, as she had already finished breakfast, as the empty plate and glass in front of her on the table indicated.

“Good morning,” I replied, wondering if I should just sit down at the table, but I was soon told what to do.

“Have a seat, and I’ll make you some breakfast,” she told me, rising from her place.

“How does ham, eggs, juice, and toast sound?” she asked moving toward the counter by the stove where those things were already laid out.

“Fine,” I answered.

She started the stove and poured already beaten eggs into a frying pan before adding two slices of bread to the toaster and starting it before bringing me a glass of juice. She returned to the eggs for a minute before turning to butter the finished toast and placed it on a small plate. The eggs were soon finished, and she added the ham to the frying pan after scooping up the eggs with a spatula and placing them on a plate, and adding salt and pepper to the eggs. The ham was soon hot, and she placed it on top of the eggs before bringing them and the toast over to me at the table.

“Would you like some coffee also? I have some brewed,” she asked.

“Yes please, hot and black, thank you,” I told her as I picked up the utensils there on the table. The ham and eggs smelled great, and I was halfway through the meal before she began to speak again.

“It’s a good thing that we left Atlanta when we did,” she told me.

“Oh ... what happened last night?” I asked.

“A lot, or so they said on the news this morning, and from what I saw on the television news, I certainly have to agree,” she told me before explaining.

“It started with demonstrations at around six in the evening.”

“Demonstrations as in more than one?”

“Oh yes, there was one by the Councilman’s supporters, a second by the activist’s followers, and finally there was one by those upset by the death of the State Representative, but they didn’t arrive until later when there were already riots and fires in progress.

“The Police used tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets until someone in the crowd started shooting at them. They had already had rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails thrown at them. There was also looting and a number of buildings were on fire.

“The National Guard was called in early, and they brought up some armored vehicles with them, and also fired over the heads of the crowd, or that was what they were supposed to do. Several people were found dead from gunshot wounds after the crowd panicked and fled. There were also a number of injuries from the panic,” she finished.

“Sounds like a busy night,” I told her.

“Oh, that was only the warm up,” she told me with a grin.

“Warm up, there was more?”

“Oh yes, the gangs and the criminals came out even before the curfew started. They attacked the Police and the National Guard patrols in addition to starting more fires. As soon as they started attacking the National Guard, the Police, and the Firefighters, the Governor issued a shoot to kill order. He also ordered the curfew changed to start at eight at night and to end at eight in the morning in addition to extending it to the weekend.

“The Guard and the Police just opened up on anyone out on the streets who didn’t immediately surrender when encountered. The Guard had automatic rifles of course as well as machine guns, and their armored fighting vehicles had small cannon and machine guns. They just drove them through the street barricades when they encountered them,” she finished.

“Barricades? Damn, things really got out of hand last night,” I commented.

“It spread to Decatur also. The gangs and criminals there came out later than those in Atlanta, and the Guard had already been issued the new orders, so they didn’t get much of a chance to get started before they were taken under fire. There were also a number of firefights at street barricades during the night. Before dawn today, the Governor had called up two more Infantry Companies and a light armor company.

“According to the news, which had videos of some of the encounters, the hospitals are overloaded, as are the jails and the morgues in both cities. The business community is up in arms about the extended curfew, and the ACLU is filing suit over the curfew and the shoot to kill orders,” she finished.

“Damn, that was a hell of a night, almost like Ashcanastan,” I said.

“Any friendly casualties?” I asked following that.

“There are two dozen Police officers in the hospitals from gunshot wounds or burns and there are five dead. There are a dozen Firefighters in there also and one dead. There were also a number of Police taken to the hospital because of faulty gas masks, but they were released after a time. The Guard has thirty people in different hospitals, some from gunshot wounds and some from burns and stupid accidents. Of course they had their armored vests on.

“The hospitals were so crowded, that the Police and the Guard stationed people in the emergency rooms to both watch those there and to ensure that their people were treated first,” she finished.

“Damn,” I said again. “I never thought it would get that bad,” but had another thought.

“They should put those ACLU people out in the front lines with the Infantry, and then see who they were anxious to sue. The ones who survived that is,” I told her with a laugh. Jill had poured us a second cup of coffee while explaining the events of last night; however, she had something else on her mind and now brought it up.

“What about all of that money?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Don’t you want to know how much there is?” she asked in a miffed voice.

“Yes, should we count it now?”

“I thought you would never ask,” she replied with a smile. We went into the dining room, where we had left the money last night, and I canceled the wards around it.

“What shall we start with?” I asked.

“Let’s start with the gold. I have a digital scale that we can weigh it with, but after I draw the curtains,” she told me. I opened the strong box containing the gold while she dealt with pulling the heavy curtains over the windows, and turned on the overhead lights. She needed to go upstairs to get the scale, so I had started removing the coins and the small bars from the box and started stacking them up before she returned. Jill was a bit startled on returning to see all of the gold that I had stacked up already.

“I didn’t think there was that much,” she said after setting down the scale.

“You weren’t the one carrying the strong box,” I told her with a smile, before we started stacking the coins and bars on the scale and soon had the box empty. The scale read sixty pounds.

“That scale measures in regular pounds, but gold is sold by the troy ounce. There are 14.586 troy ounces to a standard pound, and gold is currently at eighteen hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. That would be...” she said as she calculated the amount.

“A million, six hundred and nineteen thousand dollars and change,” I told her.

“Yes, just a bit over that,” she said with a smile.

“Guess my estimate was a bit off then,” I confessed.

“Yes, and some of those coins may be worth more than their gold value alone. We’ll need someone to look at them,” she told me.

“For now, let’s just put it all back in the strong box,” I told her, and we returned the gold to the box stacking it in there carefully before locking the box, and I cast my strongest ward on it.

“I now wonder how far my estimate of the cash could be off,” I said following that.

“There is only one way to know,” she told me.

“Yes, but this could take a lot of time,” I told her.

“Why?”

“Some of it is loose or held together by rubber bands. We’ll need to count most of it,” I told her.

“Okay, did you have anything else planned for today?”

“I was thinking about getting a better haircut,” I told her.

“You can do that later,” she insisted.

“Okay,” I agreed. “There are a hundred one hundred dollar bills in ten thousand dollars, and fifty twenty dollar bills in a thousand dollars. It’s best to count out piles of ten hundred dollar bills and five of twenty dollar bills before combining them,” I told her. “We may need more rubber bands or envelopes to secure them,” I added.

“I have rubber bands,” she told me, and we started counting out piles of bills laying them out on the table. The small piles were then combined into bundles of ten thousand dollars or one thousand dollars. Smaller denomination bills were put aside to be counted later.

The bundles of ten thousand dollars were later combined to make a hundred thousand dollars and put in a bag. We eventually wound up with twenty-five bags containing one hundred thousand dollars each, or two and a-half million dollars plus some change in small bills. We just sat there looking around at the bags on the table for a time in shock.

“You were way off,” Jill finally said.

“Yes, by a factor of four at least. Two and a-half million plus in cash and a million and a-half plus in gold is something over four million dollars, and that doesn’t count the small stuff,” I agreed in wonder.

“You hungry?” she asked, “I’m starved.” I looked at my watch to discover that it was late afternoon already.

“Yes, I could eat again. We need something to put all of this cash in.”

“I don’t have anything large enough,” Jill told me.

“We’ll need to look tomorrow after I get a haircut. Something like a small heavy duty foot locker would do,” I told her. We moved all of the cash bags close together before placing them on the floor, and I cast a ward around them and the gold filled strongbox.