Avenged by Janice Cantore Read Free Book Online Page A

meant they were not tied down to a beat and could handle calls anywhere.She figured he did that in case something went down with the gangs. She and Joe wouldn’t be assigned to anything that involved Nick if it could be helped. Department policy did not allow married officers to work together, especially if one outranked the other. While some officers thought the policy stupid, Carly reserved judgment. She loved Nick dearly but wondered whether she’d be distracted by worry for him if they were involved in a high-stress situation together. It was a question she was not ready to answer, so being a wild car suited her just fine.
    Her musing was rudely interrupted and she had to shift gears quickly when their police radio screamed with emergency traffic.
    “All available units, respond to One Marina Plaza for a 415 crowd, growing violent.”
    There was trouble in the marina.
    “Let’s go,” Joe said as he pulled his door closed. Carly hit the accelerator and burned rubber out of the lot after another black-and-white.
    An afternoon sergeant keyed his mike to give specific instructions to responding units. Carly could hear yelling, glass breaking, and air horns blaring in the background. She braced herself for what they were rushing into.
    When she and Joe screeched to a stop at what officers called the DMZ, a two-hundred-foot-wide buffer zone between the construction area and the protestors, a mini riot was boiling over. According to the judge’s ruling, the protestors weren’t supposed to encroach into the zone, butapparently something had happened. It looked as though all of afternoon watch was facing off in the zone with about a hundred chanting protestors. Carly could hear them repeat a profanity over and over in remarkable unity. Basically they implied that the police were hassling them for no reason.
    She and Joe immediately ran to a couple of officers who were struggling to arrest two troublemakers. Carly sneezed when the acrid smell of pepper spray hit her nose, and her eyes burned. She could hear an afternoon sergeant on his PA giving an order to disperse. By law, the order had to be given three times and audible to all in the area before the police could wade in and clear the area. She braced herself, wondering if this would be the night they’d don riot gear and clear the place out. Violence would provide the cause to act before the court case finished.
    Once the two cursing, spitting protestors were cuffed and secured in a squad car, Joe grabbed his and Carly’s riot helmets from the trunk, and they joined a skirmish line with the other cops.
    “Natives are restless,” Flanagan told them. “They know they’re likely to be evicted, and I think they want to go out with a bang.”
    But even as Carly pulled the protective face shield down, the chanting was fading. The two who were going to jail had probably been the spark plugs, and now they were gone. There was debris on the ground, but as Carly dodged a bottle, she concluded that there was less flying through the air. And the sergeant didn’t give the audible, official order again.
    A stubborn group of chanting, taunting protestors occupied their time and attention. Shoulder to shoulder, Carly and the other officers stepped forward in unison, moving the mass of people in front of them back across the DMZ. It was as delicate as it was forceful. Carly and the others held riot batons and worked to be as menacing as possible without being the aggressors. The objectors slowly complied and Carly could tell from their faces there was no fight left in them, but for form’s sake they moved slowly. After about forty minutes they were back in the park. Carly learned from Flanagan that the protestors and a private security officer had gotten into a screaming match that ended with the security guard being pelted with trash and debris. Security had responded with pepper spray.
    Once the situation returned to an uneasy truce, the skirmish line held position for about