Read Online Digital Divide (Rachel Peng) by K.B. Spangler - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: K.B. Spangler
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automatic weapon before, but never while standing directly in front of a woman and her child: the mother and son playing Sudoku by the entrance hadn’t had the good sense to move. She leapt towards them and thought that if she did survive this, if he didn’t shoot her cold in the head, if her vest couldn’t stop an entire magazine of bullets, if all of the stars in heaven aligned for a miracle, she’d still have banged the hell out of her knees.
With her back towards the man with the PDW, she grabbed the mother and son by the arms and yanked them off of the ledge. She kicked over a small coffee table with a thick granite top and pushed them down on the floor behind it, crushing the three of them into as small a target as possible. Rachel jerked at the sound of screaming, and it was only after the adrenaline stopped pounding in her ears that she realized she hadn’t been shot.
Everything slowed back to normal speed. The mother was sobbing. The boy stared up at her. He couldn’t have been more than six and had a fresh bloody nose.
“Sorry,” she said, releasing them. The boy scuttled backwards on all fours.
Rachel knelt, wincing at the pain in her knees, then looked over towards her partner. Santino’s Taser was out, a puff of confetti still falling. The man with the Heckler & Koch was on the ground, his gun several feet away where Santino had kicked it away from his hand. The last man standing from Edwards’ little impromptu militia had rushed to the mother and her son, and had gathered them together in a warm familial hug.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Santino helped her up. He was thoroughly shaken, his colors washed out like old clothes. It took Rachel a moment to remember that the last time her partner had committed violence against another human being was in the seventh grade.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Trust me, he had it coming.”
The other man, the one who had thrown the first punch, was on his feet and wobbling towards the door. He ran straight into their backup, two local cops in uniform, who made him stumble back inside and sit down until they could sort out the mess.
“I got here as fast as I could,” Santino said, “but Edwards was spitting bile about the police so I had to run around and find the back entrance.”
“Smart. Real smart,” she said. The arrival of an officer at the moment when the rhetoric was flying hot would have made things worse.
Rachel limped towards the closest upright chair, knees throbbing. Every damned time.
She threw a quick glance at Edwards that was full of all of the venom she could produce, then carefully eased herself down into the chair to put him behind her. He looked at her, deep and probing and only slightly curious, and she cursed herself for jumping before the gun was fully out. Rachel and Santino had gone back and forth on the constitutionality of her scanning abilities, what it meant for her to be an officer who could search anyone with a casual glance. They had decided their best course of action was for her to refrain from using all but the most superficial surface scans on private citizens unless she had due cause. From her point of view, scanning the men tonight fell safely within that category, but she could not have a reasonable discussion about self-policing or the nature of her sixth sense with someone like Edwards. Rachel dropped her head into the cradle of her own arms and tried to not think about how she had just given Edwards and his supporters a firsthand example of how OACET blurred the lines of the law.
The cops came over and the evening dissolved into statements. Rachel had dreaded this part, knowing it would end with a call from someone down at First District Station who would use the incident as an excuse to dump her with clean hands. They separated her from her partner, and as they took him aside, Santino gave her the sad fun while it lasted! half-smile of lost opportunities.
She had two advantages: everything that had
With her back towards the man with the PDW, she grabbed the mother and son by the arms and yanked them off of the ledge. She kicked over a small coffee table with a thick granite top and pushed them down on the floor behind it, crushing the three of them into as small a target as possible. Rachel jerked at the sound of screaming, and it was only after the adrenaline stopped pounding in her ears that she realized she hadn’t been shot.
Everything slowed back to normal speed. The mother was sobbing. The boy stared up at her. He couldn’t have been more than six and had a fresh bloody nose.
“Sorry,” she said, releasing them. The boy scuttled backwards on all fours.
Rachel knelt, wincing at the pain in her knees, then looked over towards her partner. Santino’s Taser was out, a puff of confetti still falling. The man with the Heckler & Koch was on the ground, his gun several feet away where Santino had kicked it away from his hand. The last man standing from Edwards’ little impromptu militia had rushed to the mother and her son, and had gathered them together in a warm familial hug.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Santino helped her up. He was thoroughly shaken, his colors washed out like old clothes. It took Rachel a moment to remember that the last time her partner had committed violence against another human being was in the seventh grade.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Trust me, he had it coming.”
The other man, the one who had thrown the first punch, was on his feet and wobbling towards the door. He ran straight into their backup, two local cops in uniform, who made him stumble back inside and sit down until they could sort out the mess.
“I got here as fast as I could,” Santino said, “but Edwards was spitting bile about the police so I had to run around and find the back entrance.”
“Smart. Real smart,” she said. The arrival of an officer at the moment when the rhetoric was flying hot would have made things worse.
Rachel limped towards the closest upright chair, knees throbbing. Every damned time.
She threw a quick glance at Edwards that was full of all of the venom she could produce, then carefully eased herself down into the chair to put him behind her. He looked at her, deep and probing and only slightly curious, and she cursed herself for jumping before the gun was fully out. Rachel and Santino had gone back and forth on the constitutionality of her scanning abilities, what it meant for her to be an officer who could search anyone with a casual glance. They had decided their best course of action was for her to refrain from using all but the most superficial surface scans on private citizens unless she had due cause. From her point of view, scanning the men tonight fell safely within that category, but she could not have a reasonable discussion about self-policing or the nature of her sixth sense with someone like Edwards. Rachel dropped her head into the cradle of her own arms and tried to not think about how she had just given Edwards and his supporters a firsthand example of how OACET blurred the lines of the law.
The cops came over and the evening dissolved into statements. Rachel had dreaded this part, knowing it would end with a call from someone down at First District Station who would use the incident as an excuse to dump her with clean hands. They separated her from her partner, and as they took him aside, Santino gave her the sad fun while it lasted! half-smile of lost opportunities.
She had two advantages: everything that had
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