Chapter 1

Summer was over, and it was time to get this new year started.

I know that the year starts in January; but when you’re in school, it always feels like it really starts in August, as that’s when school is back in session. Our Caribbean vacation had been ... interesting, but it was now over, and there was a lot to do.

While I had taken a month off for a little R&R, Ronald had been making steady progress on his desalinization project. The initial funding for Evolve had gone through, and the charity was ready to take on projects. Of course, Carter Talmon had also begun sending over messages concerning updates on Emily.

The way this year had started was a pretty clear sign that it would be just as wild as the previous year.

I was going out for my early run; alone, as usual. The girls didn’t mind doing exercise with me, but they still thought my early morning wake-up run was insane, and refused to join me. So the house was silent as normal when I walked out the front door.

That was when I got my first surprise. There was a car sitting in front of my house, across my driveway. Standing at the front fender of it, were two men. The first word that popped into my head when I saw them, was ‘goons’. They were beefy, dressed in suits, and both were giving me hard stares.

I had no idea what they wanted, but people with harmful intentions towards me had become more common than I would have liked. I knew to recognize the signs when I saw them, and these two definitely had negative thoughts towards me in mind.

I headed towards them, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

‘I probably won’t be helping them, but you have to start these situations somewhere, ‘ I thought as I edged closer.

Mostly, what I needed to do was buy time while I got to within arms reach of them. If there was one thing I had learned acutely over the last six months, it was that all the training and enhanced musculature in the world, did little good against guns. So, I needed to stall as I closed the gap, in case they were armed.

“Your name Caspian Grey?” the larger of the two men said.

“Yes,” I replied, edging closer.

“You need to come with us,” the bigger man said.

“Who is us?” I asked, now within arm’s reach.

“People you should listen to,” he said, pulling aside his coat, revealing the butt of a gun.

That seemed particularly stupid. I was now well within arms reach and his gun was holstered. There was absolutely no chance he could pull his weapon before I got hands on him.

“No,” I told him, getting a good balance, ready to move.

I guess he finally realized he was in a bad position. He took half a step back, bumping into his car, and started reaching for his weapon. My right hand snaked out and impacted, knuckle first, with his throat. He dropped towards the ground making gurgling sounds and clutching his neck. I hadn’t hit him hard enough to damage his windpipe, or permanently cut of his air flow, but he would be speaking in a strained voice for several days. I followed that with a left hook, contacting solidly with the side of his head as he went down.

As he went down, his friend started reaching into the side of his jacket. Dollars to donuts said he had a gun in there. I reversed the movement of my right hand, gabbing at his elbow and pulling it towards me. While I was strong, this wasn’t a position for good leverage against him, so I allowed him to pull against my grip. This wasn’t the end of my planned move, however.

It added his body weight to the force I was putting on his arm when I kicked into the side of his right knee. The angle was wrong to break it, but considering the way he started to crumple in my direction, I most likely damaged it quite badly.

I twisted and kept pulling his arm as he dropped to his good knee, ending up between him and the car. My twisting motion and the sudden help from gravity allowed me to pull his arm all the way back. Leading with my knee, I landed on his back, forcing him onto his face. Sliding my grip to his wrist, I continued twisting, bringing his arm behind his back, both immobilizing him, and allowing me to cause pain in his arm if he tried to buck me.

“Who are you,” I said in his ear.

It took a moment for him to answer, and when he did it was with in a pained voice.

“I work for Joe Richards.”

I had no idea who that was, let alone why he would send people to my house looking for me.

“What do you want with me,” I asked.

He didn’t answer me right away, so I twisted his arm a bit further to give him a little nudge. Sweat was starting to collect on his forehead from the pain.

“Mr. Richards wants you to leave. We were supposed to take you to a quiet place, and convince you to leave Texas.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You interfered with something that involved him, and he wants you gone.”

I had gotten into a few things since last August. A bunch of those could have been the cause for someone getting pissed at me, although nothing I had done had struck me as notable enough to bump against some kind of organized crime. Which is what these two practically shouted in the way they acted.

Maybe it was connected to the MilTech thing, last year. But the owner had seemed pretty stand-up, and it didn’t seem likely that one of the now fired VPs who had set up the hit on me and my partners would have had that kind of backing without it touching the CEO. But then, there was the hired muscle he sent. That had to come from somewhere. It’s not like you could just take an ad out in the paper for that kind of thing.

At that moment the front door opened and Mom stuck her head out. We hadn’t made that much commotion, but a glance out the front window would have been enough. And most school mornings she would keep an eye out for me to return from my run so she could wake up the girls and cook breakfast.

“Call 911,” I said. “These guys jumped me, and are armed.”

She looked surprised, but didn’t say anything. She just turned and disappeared into the house to make the call. She left the front door open, and after a few moments, the girls came pouring out of the house in t-shirts and shorts. Vicki brought some kind of rope, although who knows where she got it. They trussed up both men, allowing me to get off the guy I was holding down.

A patrol car showed up a few minutes later.

“Where are the guys with guns?” the first officer asked as he stepped out of his car.

He was on the other side of the two goon’s car, and since they were tied up on the ground he couldn’t see them.

“Right down here, officers,” I said, pointing down and stepping back.

The two cops came around the car and found our prisoners.

“Well, that makes this easier,” he said.

“We didn’t do nothin,” the guy who had been unconscious said.

“Yeah, yeah,” the cop said as he patted the guy down, “what do we have here.”

He pulled a gun out of the guy’s suit jacket, and after a little more checking did the same with the other goon.

“I hope you two are licensed to carry these,” he said as he started to handcuff, and then untie the first one.

“Lawyer,” the goon told him.

They handcuffed and freed the second goon and stuck both in the back of their patrol car.

“What happened here,” the police officer asked after the guys were secured.

“I was coming out for my morning run, and these two guys were waiting outside for me. They told me I had to go with them. When I declined, they started to go for their weapons, so I put them down.”

“You put them down?” the officer asked a bit incredulously.

“Bill, this is that kid who was in all those fights and that shootout last year,” the other officer said.

“Ohh, yeah, ok,” he said to his partner before turning back to me. “You are going to have to come with us, give us a statement, and file charges on the attempted abduction.”

“Can he give you his statement now, and then come down to the station and do the rest of the stuff this afternoon. He has the first day of school today,” Mom said.

She had made it very clear, earlier in the week, that school was still my priority. I couldn’t just get by on my genetically super-charged brain. If she thought I wasn’t trying, she was going to bring the hammer down. I guess that included letting little things like an attempted kidnapping distract me.

I know most teenagers would have chafed at that kind of thing; but after so long without a real family, having a parent lay down the law felt nice. I had gone so far as to call up Ted, Marcus, Carter and everyone else the previous week, telling them I would be getting back to the grind after I got the new school year started. I had also reminded them they had done a pretty good job of keeping things running before a pushy teenager came into their lives, and I was confident they would be able to live without me for a while.

“Yeah, fine,” he said. “Just write out your statement, and make sure to come down to the station. We can hold them at least until then, on a firearms charge.”

I filled out the statement, and the cops left with their prisoners. With all that taken care of, we went in to change for school. Thanks to the morning’s adventure, we needed to skip breakfast. It was annoying, but what can you do?

One area where we didn’t have any trouble was how to get to school. Near the end of our trip, Vicki had turned sixteen. Her dad had a car waiting for her when she came home. What that meant was our transportation woes were at an end, although it created a new problem. The year before, we all rode to school together. I knew the girls wanted to keep doing that, but there would be many days I would need to go to the office right after school, while they were still in cheerleader practice.

So we ended with a compromise. Vicki picked up Tami while Zoe rode with me. I figured the days I’d have to head out, Zoe could catch a ride back with Vicki and Tami. On the other days, Zoe and Tami could switch. Plus, it’s not like we didn’t see a lot of each other.

The first stop that morning was a meeting with Mrs. Polaski and Mrs. Runkle, about our accelerated classes program.

“Now that we are all here,” Mrs. Runkle said when the girls and I walked in.

We had tried our best to make up for lost time in getting ready, but were still five minutes late for the meeting. The girls were already annoyed because they had planned on looking put together and ready for their first day, and now it was pony tails and casual clothes. I didn’t mind, since t-shirt and jeans was my preferred dress, but I knew better than to point that out.