Rock Killer by S. Evan Townsend Read Free Book Online Page B

minutes.”
“Oh, Alex,” she cried. “You should have gone if you wanted.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“You sure?” Kirsten asked. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
“Yes,” Alex replied curtly. He picked up a round slice of kimbop. “Want some?”
    Kirsten wrinkled up her nose, scrunching together the sparse population of freckles residing there. “No, thanks. Reminds me too much of sushi.”
    ***
    Mitchel didn’t wear his full uniform very often anymore. At SRI headquarters, he wore a suit and if he needed a security uniform, he used one that had its red space-qualified color as its only pretension.
    But, standing in front of the briefing room, the same one Frank had lectured in just before he was killed, Mitchel wore the red jumpsuit with the SRI patch on his left shoulder, the SRI Security patch on his other shoulder, and his Head of Security insignia over his heart. A cluster of yellow stars under the security patch represented each trip to the asteroid belt and back. Each silver bar in a row on the right sleeve represented one year in space. The NESA emblem on his right breast showed he worked for SRI back when it was a division of the multi-government agency.
    He had eulogized Frank DeWite, speaking of his work and their long friendship. He concluded, “It’s been seven years since Theresa Gold was murdered. Until Frank DeWite, Jimmy Nakamura, and Roger Prince, she was the last member of SRI Security to die because of violence,” he said to the group. He saw Charlie Jones, in the back, staring blankly toward him. “When one of us dies we all feel the pain. When one of us is murdered we all feel the anger.”
    Mitchel left the podium. The chaplain gave a generic prayer (just about every religion was represented) and the crowd filed out slowly and solemnly. Mitchel meant to catch Charlie but too many others stopped to talk to him.
    ***
    When Charlie was a young, pre-teenaged girl, just starting to clumsily discover her own sexuality, her maternal grandmother invited her to visit her for a weekend. That wasn’t unusual; Charlie felt close to her grandmother and she often spent weekends in her apartment and they would talk about Africa and her grandmother’s childhood in the Congo. The country was going through one of those occasional spasms of violence that seemed the baptism of many emerging nations. Grandma never talked about the horror she must surely have witnessed.
    But that weekend was different. Instead of the plateaus and rain forests of the Congo, Grandma started out by asking about boys.
    Charlie flushed. She’d noticed boys and had some idea the big, goofy creatures might have some use after all.
    Grandma smiled at Charlie’s perception of the males around her. Then she talked about boys she knew as a young girl. The conversation went on late into the night and continued for almost all waking hours of the weekend.
    When Charlie returned to her parents, she’d changed subtly.
    And while other girls in her school were having abortions, or worse, babies, Charlie, with a healthy social life, made it to graduation without any biological mishaps: a major accomplishment in her neighborhood.
    What Grandma had taught her in that one extraordinary weekend was respect for and responsibility to herself.
    Grandma died while Charlie was still in high school. Charlie thought she’d never feel pain like that again. She’d learned that “heartache” is an actual physical discomfort in the chest.
    Now, for the second time in her life, she felt heartache.
    They’d sent Frank’s body to the NESA farm where it would be broken down into its constituent elements and would give life to the next generation. To Charlie that was much better than a concrete box in the ground like they did to her grandmother.
    Rodriguez insisted she not work for her safety and others’. Charlie wondered if he thought she’d be ineffectual without Frank to guide her.
    Let’s see , she thought, I’ve denied it; I’ve been