The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

The Helio Systems employees were on hand as a show, but they’d also been asked if they were comfortable giving tours of the new array in case any locals asked. The roommates had speculated that they’d get few takers, and the rest of them would stand around trying to look like they were busy. Instead, they were shocked when people piled up, dividing up the employees and asking rushed questions.

Cage had to hand it Dr. Murasawa. She’d done an amazing job integrating Helio Systems into the nearby towns by hiring key people in each community who could be strategically vocal social organizers. She educated them and then let them educate and advocate within their communities. She’d hired them early and paid them well.

Three hours after the ribbon cutting, Cage had given three different local families a quick walking tour, answering questions about how the array worked and how the panels would track the sun. He’d explained that it would provide cheap power and listened to his sister help another family calculate their savings. Dr. Murasawa had made them all memorize the new numbers they expected local households to be paying. But she believed in under-promising and over-delivering.

Joule had happily spouted, “By our low-end estimate, it should cut your power bill by 40 percent.”

“That’s not that much,” the man said.

“That’s four hundred and eighty dollars a year, sir. On the low end. What could you do with that? Or more?”

It was the wife who had nodded along; she seemed to be making plans for the savings. But Joule also told them, “A Helio Systems Team will be staying behind for at least the first year.”

She explained how they would phase all the daily operations and repairs into the community.

Joule and Cage were not part of that the team, though. They'd been hired as frontline workers, and this hand-off to the community marked the end of their part of the contract.

After they returned home today, they’d have a few weeks of break before they moved to start the next job. They had a few more weeks rent covered at the new apartment building where they now lived with Dev and Sarah and Toto. The insurance had been slow to fix the missing chunk out of the Desperado’s Hideaway dining room.

But Cage had other plans now.

He'd made it through the surgery, so Dr. Patel had never told Joule about the tickets.

As the last stragglers left, he walked up behind his sister and tapped her on her hand to get her attention. “Hey, Joule, I have a surprise.”

Thank you for reading The Tempest.

Next up in the Black Carbon Series:

The Swarm

It was supposed to be a vacation. Warm weather, sun, the kind of water the twins could enjoy--A clear aquifer with manatees.

But the mosquitoes would be the death of them...

Look for the The Swarm coming soon…

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If you enjoyed Cage and Joule’s story, you’ll love The Vendetta Trifecta. The FBI doesn’t know their most wanted killer…is a girl.

One Click VENGEANCE now

Chapter 1

The thick smell of blood wasn’t a shock. He was used to it. What startled Lee was the woman.

She was sitting at the dining room table, seemingly oblivious to the carnage mounted on the wall behind her. She was working over something, like she was writing, and was deep in her efforts where she didn’t acknowledge him.

A large red bow, the kind you would put on a three-foot Christmas present, stole his attention sitting there on the table beside her. She wrote with precision, her head bent low, her rich chestnut hair worked into braids and wound round her head in a style that called to mind The Sound of Music.

Lee suppressed the boiling anger in him down to something in the range of a solid simmer and took a step toward her, wondering if she was in shock. Her right hand came up sharply, one leather gloved finger telling him to wait a minute, but the rigid control he saw in her told him she intended for him to wait as long as she wanted.

In that moment he saw what he had previously missed. She wore leather, in several shades of shadow, from her fingertips to her toes. The braids weren’t cute, they were cop hair‒the kind you couldn’t get a hold on and use to yank a person around.

“There.” Surprisingly, given the growing stench of death emanating from what Lee was now pretty certain was her handiwork, her voice was musical and held a low note of pride. She stood and turned to face him, holding the bow and what was apparently a large gift tag. And she smiled at him.

As the smile reached her large chocolate eyes, Lee felt the blood drain out the soles of his feet. She was insane. Clinically insane. There was no other reason a person would be truly happy here. Add in that she was armed to the teeth‒a short dagger was sheathed at her waist, a pair of matched sais were slid into long, thin pockets down each thigh, strange wood and metal sickles slipped gracefully through lined up loops so they didn’t jangle when she walked‒and the sweetness he had initially perceived fled like dandelion tufts.

She looked at him like she would a small puppy sitting at the edge of her living room, like he was cute and non-threatening. Lee’s hand inched under his jacket to his hip, fondling the warm butt of the 9mm there. Given everything else, he wouldn’t put it past her to be fast.

But she didn’t say anything, just went about fastening the bow to the body and plumping it a little, like she was Martha Stewart off to a birthday party. The body was held to the wall behind it by serviceable, unadorned throwing knives. At