Badge Boys Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Declaration

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Badge Boys

  By

  Caliente Morgan

  WhitePubs

  Declaration

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: www.whitepubs.com or [email protected]

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Badge Boys Copyright © 2016 by Caliente Morgan and WhitePubs Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact Donnamaie E. White at [email protected]

  Visit the Caliente Morgan website at: www.CalienteMorgan.com

  Cover design by: D. E. White

  Images from: Shutterstock

  Formatting by: Mia Downing

  ISBN (digital) 978-0-9828036-8-4

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition May 2016

  Published By WhitePubs Enterprises, Inc.

  WhitePubs®

  WhitePubs is a registered Trademark of WhitePubs Enterprises, Inc.

  All other trademarks referenced or implied by use are the property of their respective owners.

  Chapter One

  Another Saturday, another meeting. But she’d been sitting too long.

  Annie needed to move. She’s be hobbling if she didn’t. Her mind was already running on autopilot. Plot bunnies roamed in her head. Of course they did. Her ADHD had slipped its tether.

  Elizabeth Ann Burnside, Annie to her friends, squirmed in the hard meeting room chair, because she had forgotten to bring her foam chair cushion in her hurry to race out of the house and get to the meeting on time. It was the best she could do. God forbid she’d arrive early.

  Well, let’s face it, girl. The hero of the piece you were writing was a major distraction this morning. Why can’t I meet men like the ones I make up?

  Maybe she should race out to the truck and get its foam seat cushion. Maybe that would stop her nibbling at the provided lunch. Maybe that would get her blood circulating better. Help her refocus. Maybe get her brain back in gear.

  What she needed was to inhale fresh air, well, not so fresh air. The hotel where the meeting was held was next to a big freeway interchange. She did not want to speculate on the particulate count. Still, it would also have oxygen. Oxygen deprived. That was a name for he mental fogginess. She should get an oxygen tank and bring it to meetings. Oh yeah. That would be a laugh riot.

  You are being silly.

  A crowded room. A bunch of writers. A speaker. She had been taking notes—until her hand got tired. Until her eyes were drifting. Not in a good way. She needed to stand up, shake out the kinks, and acquire coffee.

  Why wasn’t there a break? Because all of a sudden, she found she really wanted coffee. As in craved it. Great. Now her OCD was stepping in. Now she had focused on coffee, nothing else much mattered.

  Now you are really being silly.

  Sixty to ninety minutes talking and then a break, people. It’s a rule. Especially with a room full of older women.

  Sitting is the new tobacco. They were saying this. The ubiquitous they that told you daily how to shop, what to wear, what to eat, what one should weigh, how to exercise, and just about anything the mass public was deemed to need to know on a seasonal basis. All while people were struggling to get organized for the day and waiting for them to please actually report on some news in between the laugh-fests and the endless commercials. Whatever happened to morning news? With like—actual news?

  Trying to find a weather report had made her late. Okay, a lot of things had made her late. Otherwise, she’d have stopped and picked up a custom coffee. Blame it on her latest hero.

  She’d also wanted a traffic report before she got on the local freeway. Lately driving had become a crapshoot. But these days, even traffic reports got short-shift.

  And yes, thank you, she really did want to know if a freeway was closed, a toll road was open, and where the latest drunk had crashed overnight.

  Because not a day went by...

  Some survived. Some did not. Lately, the drunks had been making an effort to see how many people they could take out with themselves as they sped down a freeway at two a.m. as a wrong-way driver. There was also the occasional hauler that managed to dump a load.

  Annie had to bite her lip remembering the high-speed chase that had ended at the Mexican border, only to have the idiot pull a U-turn and race back into California as a wrong-way speeder. Unfortunately, he took four innocent souls with him. She never, ever left her house after nine at night. Not any more. Not until she moved out of San Diego. North. She wanted to move north. They seemed to be more civilized.

  Cops were not allowed to chase wrong-way drivers. Cops had to obey traffic laws. CHPs on the other hand...

  Those thoughts sent her mind off wondering what was the best way to catch and stop a wrong-way driver on a freeway with a median. Would that make a neat minor crisis for her current book?

  Plot bunnies were so damn evil. She had to fight to refocus on the speaker.

  It was the early hours of the meeting, on a Saturday, her normal day to sleep in a little. Not today. Meeting days she had to get up two hours before she was scheduled to leave the house so she could do pills, vitamins, breakfast, at least one cup of coffee, maybe a shot of espresso, put on make up, find all the things she wanted to take with her, and find her bra, which of late had taken to ending up in strange places. She had spares. Spare bras. She had spare everything. It didn’t help.

  And then she had find her shoes since they had exhibited a strange tendency to be afraid of the dark in her closet and sometimes, in deference to the cat, would be found high on a bookshelf. What could happen when she hadn’t had enough coffee.

  So she really did need caffeine and she really was addicted and reminded herself of this every few minutes. She also knew she shouldn’t really drink so much, so she had compromised. Drink all you want in the morning, none in the afternoon. Probably why now at nearly noon, her quota unfulfilled, and she was antsy for coffee. Note to self. Bring a can of coffee next time. They had a lot of cho
ices on the market these days.

  They were right. Her legs were complaining. Her back was stiff. Her hands were responding to the temperature swings. Her circulation was crawling to a standstill. Her ankles would swell up next. Her mind was racing around from topic to topic and not staying put on any of them. A sure sign she needed a break, a little oxygen instead of stuffy meeting room air, and a jolt of nerve firing, blood pressure amping caffeine.

  Annie hadn’t brought any chocolate. Well, not much.

  She wrote a mental note to get the standing desk for her home office. Or the core chair. Something. The standing treadmill desk. She had several of these notes. One of these years she would submit. Actually get something. She only hesitated because she was worried how she could type, be creative, and not Pratt-fall off the treadmill. Maybe they had seatbelts.

  Her typing was crap now. How bad would it get? Could it get? There were days she’d try to correct the mess and have so many typing errors even she couldn’t decode what the hell she had been trying to write. Sometimes a word was lost. Sometimes a whole damn sentence.

  Whatever happened to one hundred words a minute?

  Age. You are not twenty-something anymore.

  It was impossible to stay awake. Stuffy, hot room. Stale air. Poor air circulation since she was either freezing or disrobing in cycles. Why she was in layers. The quality of the speaker was irrelevant—they were all good. She couldn’t concentrate because her body had a timer.

  She caught herself nodding off a third time and made the call. Move. Either that or end up falling off the spindly, creaky chair.

  Annie got up from her table and stepped back to the coffee center consisting of a tiny square table. The hot water and the real coffee pots were empty and the decaf pot had just enough for a partial cup of grounds. Since she had stood before she took note of this dearth of substantive fluid, she was caught and stayed where she was. Going back to her seat empty-handed would not help. Besides, she’d become an object of attention. She did not want that.

  One plus of her moving to the back of the room was that the door out to the hall was near this location.

  This had advantages. She could hit the tiny two-stall restroom before the line backed up when there finally was a break, or before several women’s bodies and bladders declared war and the stampede to the hallway started official break time out or not. That happened when one or two slipped out of the room. The walk of shame.

  Annie had, in fact, more or less started that this time. The rules were clear. She could not return to her seat unless she either had a new cup of coffee or she had escaped to the restroom and was returning. She idly wondered when all these rules had been developed. The knowledge passed down by example. Cultural customs on display.

  At least she’d have less bolting past other people with the same thought if she had this head start. No motel, hotel, or conference center ever had enough restrooms for women. Sometimes, women ganged up and captured a men’s room for the duration.

  Planners and architects had a questionable sense of humor. Her opinion anyway.

  Annie had done that once. Captured a men’s room. Made the men walk the extra distance. Some wit had even put flowerpots in the urinals. She suppressed a smile. She was trying to look interested, but the talk had veered into an area that she already knew about and it was becoming difficult to pretend interest. Why was she alone? When would a second woman break ranks?

  While waiting for that event, she surreptitiously shook out and stretched her legs, ankles, and knees. Woke up her body. Got the fog out of her sleepy head.

  She was still listening to the speaker even if distracted. Having lectured in front of a class herself, she knew the rules. It made her a very bad student. She found she was hoping for an interruption. Anything, just so she could move. Hopefully, soon. Or, she would really have to simply skip out, lead the pack so to speak, and then there was the other problem. Getting back in.

  She sighed. Deep breath, hold and let it out. Hope the added oxygen would help her stay awake. Hoped for the speaker to break. Hoped that the staff would anticipate and get in here with fresh pots of coffee. Hoped for something, anything to get the ball rolling.

  She got her wish. Not the way she wanted.

  Running feet echoed in the hallway. Heavy steps. Boots. Multiple men. The sounds got louder. The speaker, confused by the coming interruption, stopped talking. Heads spun around toward the door. Annie remained in place, with her attention on the double doors.

  Unintelligible shouts rang out behind the door. There was a rising murmur in the room as women turned to see what was about to enter and began to assume the worse was about to happen which in turn meant they had to speak up. Come to a consensus about what to do. Fast. But everyone was sedentary.

  What was going on?

  A few women stood up. Hands and arms flapped. The speaker froze. Annie froze.

  The banging opening of the meeting room doors as they crashed into tables and the wall set off screaming and motion, away from the doors.

  Annie heard gunfire, multiple shots. A cop had crashed into the room and was turned in a standing gunfight. He was firing. Annie watched the flame burst from the end of his service weapon.

  Holy shit!

  Annie had her answer. What was going on was a gunfight. Active shooter. Sweet Jesus.

  She dropped down, avidly watching the scene unfold. The cop was young. He was fully exposed. He had more than one shooter gunning for him if the bullets flying around were any indication. A couple of holes erupted in the far wall. She guessed a large caliber by the gunfire spray, probably an AK or similar weapon. Guns were not her specialty. She did understand the basics. Like, this was not a good thing.

  Lovely.

  A couple bullets had hit the cop. Mostly in his vest. It knocked him a little backward. His stance kept him upright. He fell when one bullet hit his leg and shattered bone.

  The cop slamming into the carpet had Annie ducking down below the tabletop. People were screaming and scrambling, tables crashed over to provide cove. The cop’s gun spun across the carpet right into Annie’s hands. Well, after it bounced off her ankle.

  She grabbed it, totally a reflex action. The gun felt familiar. She had shot target practice with one before. She always hit what she aimed for with it so that was not a problem. Laser sight. If you knew the sighting trick, it was easy to hit a target, human or otherwise. She knew the trick. Worked fine when the target wasn’t moving.

  Annie glanced at the young cop, now on his back, grabbing his leg with one hand, shouting into his shoulder mic. The ETA for back up to arrive would be a few minutes. Whoever had chased him was outside the self-closing doors, which had managed to slam back shut. Said shooters were about to come in, hard and fast, and they would not be friendly. They were shooting at random through the now closed door.

  Reckless.

  She heard the cop’s panicked radio call.

  No way could she not try to stop this. No way she could sit back and not try to save a life. She would never forgive herself. She felt the feel and weight of the gun in her hands, the barrel warm from the recent firing. No time to check just how many bullets she had.

  Annie stepped over random legs and tumbled chairs as meeting members had risen and fled for safety deeper into the room, knocking others down in the process. A couple of ladies fainted. Others were on hands and knees. There was one other exit for this room, but all exits were here, within ten feet. A technically correct situation but totally impractical. In case of fire people would be trapped. In this case of gunfire, they were.

  The shooters about to come in had neatly penned everyone in this room. Annie took this all in quickly.

  Oh hell, no.

  Assessing that this was not going to stop even as she moved forward, and given the delay in response times, and that there was no one else between the cop and possible death, Annie stepped over to the downed officer and took up a shooting stance right as the door opened. Time dilation. She ha
d counted on it.

  Three of them. Good god. Three of them. I’ve got less than eight or nine bullets.

  Seven, maybe, her mind corrected. A bullet had hit the wall above the door when the cop had gone down. She had only seen him fire the one other shot. Didn’t mean he hadn’t fired before he got in, before her brain had hopped into overdrive. Before she was standing without protection, facing a trio of animals with firepower far superior to her own.

  In the cacophony she heard someone shouting and realized it was her voice she heard. She was running on autopilot. Her training was there even if her brain hadn’t fully caught up. She shouted for them to drop their weapons. One of them was not listening. Three guns were in play as the two doors were kicked fully opened. One was again spraying bullets at random, striking the wall above and behind her.

  No time to think about where those bullets ended up. Knowing the bullets went through walls, and that people could be hit that were not involved in this event, she went ahead and took out that shooter, the meanest looking one. Lucky shot. One shot had hit the gun. One had grazed his head. She’d been aiming for his chest. Oh well.

  “Drop the weapon. Hands up. Drop the weapon. Hands up.” She shouted at them over and over. The rules were simple.

  Give short, simple commands. Repeat them. Do not let them try to argue.

  Her commands were from her diaphragm. Her command voice at least an octave lower and decibels louder than her normal voice.

  She’d have a sore throat in the morning.

  The remaining two shooters were in an initial state of confusion. This was not a highly skilled group. A pissed off woman with a large caliber gun had evidently not been considered. The one she had shot was the older, she guessed the leader, and was not getting up. Hopefully stunned. The other two were trying to decide what to do now that he was down. Who should take the lead and risk getting shot next? If they had a brain they would be thinking that.

  They had stopped shooting for the moment. A pause. Just for moment. Annie was not flashing a badge, but she looked mean as all hell. At least she hoped she did. She was trying to anyway.