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  “Of course, my friend,” Fareed said with a cold smile that didn’t possess a shred of sincerity as far as Pierce could see. When the day came, if Fareed had his way, a soft little blob like Clark would be slaughtered with the rest of the infidels. Jenny, for sure, and maybe even Margery, would be raped to death for the glory of Allah. Pierce knew that a lot of black people had fallen for the Muslim line, but he never had. There was such a thing as taking “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” too far.

  No, if Fareed and the guys like him ever captured any real power, Pierce wanted to be as far away as possible when that happened.

  “All right,” Fareed said as Pierce sat down, “we were talking about the unholy alliance between the corrupt American government and the equally corrupt capitalist business and industrial cartel and the imperialistic military establishment and how it is the sacred duty of all free, peace-loving peoples of the world to destroy this hegemony of evil and greed . . .”

  Pierce wondered if this was going to be on the test.

  CHAPTER 20

  Cal Granderson felt a bit of satisfaction as he tucked the parking ticket under the windshield wiper of the SUV sitting there in a No Parking zone in front of the Language Arts building. The driver deserved it, not just because he believed he could defy the college’s parking regulations but also because he drove a gas-guzzler like that. Didn’t he know what his greed was doing to the planet? He had just turned away to continue on down the sidewalk when somebody called, “Hey! Hey, man, no! You can’t do that.”

  Granderson turned his head to look and saw a fat white guy with shaggy hair and a mustache hurrying toward him. The guy waved a hand at the SUV and went on, “I just went in there for a minute to make a delivery.”

  “This ain’t the delivery entrance, pal,” Granderson said. He pointed at the No Parking sign. “And this part of the street is clearly marked. You don’t see anybody else breaking the law along here, do you?”

  “It’s not the law,” the guy blustered. “It’s just some bullcrap rule you campus rent-a-cops have.”

  Granderson jutted his chin out and moved up on the guy in a hurry. He rested his hand on the stun gun holstered at his belt as he said through clenched teeth, “Are you creating a disturbance, mister?”

  “Wait. What?” The guy started to back off. “No, no, I’m not lookin’ for trouble, I just don’t think you should’ve given me a ticket. I was just in there for a minute.”

  “I don’t care if it was just ten seconds. It’s still a violation.”

  “Yeah, I guess so, if you want to get technical about it—”

  “It’s not a technicality,” Granderson said, making an effort not to snarl. “The law is the law.”

  “Fine, fine.” The guy raised his hands, palms out, and patted at the air in a placating gesture. “I’ll pay the damn fine—”

  The stun gun came out of the holster as Granderson’s eyes widened and he started to breathe harder.

  “Lower your hands!” he screamed. “You’re assaulting an officer of the law! I’ll take you down, you son of a bitch!”

  “What?” The guy backpedaled faster. “No, no! I’m not assaulting anybody—”

  “On the ground, on the ground! Get down now, you scumbag!” Granderson’s thumb trembled as it poised above the stun gun’s trigger. He wanted to press it so bad . . .

  “Cal!”

  The shout startled him and almost made him fire the weapon anyway. The deliveryman shrieked like a girl and threw his arms up over his face. He must have seen the nearly out-of-control rage in Granderson’s eyes.

  Granderson managed to hold off on pressing the trigger. With his chest heaving from the effort that restraint required, he looked over his shoulder to see who had called his name. Frank McRainey trotted toward him, a little red-faced because he was hurrying and wasn’t as young and fit as he’d once been.

  Granderson believed, in fact, that the job of chief had passed McRainey by. It needed a younger, more vital and energetic and dedicated man.

  A man much like Granderson himself. In moments when he allowed himself to dream, he saw himself in the chief’s uniform, leading the campus police force to be the fine representatives of law and order that they should be . . . instead of freakin’ meter maids.

  He shoved such thoughts out of his head for the moment and snapped, “Shut up,” at the delivery guy, who had stopped shrieking but was sniveling now, a truly disgusting display for somebody as big as him. Didn’t he have any self-respect?

  McRainey pounded up and stopped, panting a little as he asked, “What’s . . . going on . . . here?”

  “This guy thinks he can just park anywhere,” Granderson said as he waved his free hand at the man. “And when I gave him a ticket for it, he came after me, yelling and threatening to assault me.”

  “That . . . that’s not true,” the guy said. “Yeah, maybe I yelled a little when I first came out of the building and saw him giving me a ticket, but I calmed down right away, and I never threatened him.”

  “He raised his hands to me and made aggressive gestures,” Granderson insisted.

  “What? I did this.”

  The guy did those placating pats again. As he did, Granderson jerked the stun gun back up and yelled, “Stand down! I told you to get on the ground!”

  “Cal!” McRainey moved to get between Granderson and the delivery guy. “Cal, for God’s sake, stop it! That’s not an aggressive gesture. He’s not threatening you or trying to assault you. He just doesn’t want you to use that stun gun on him.”

  “Then he should cooperate with law enforcement and do as he’s told,” Granderson said, tight-jawed again.

  McRainey scrubbed a hand over his florid face and muttered something under his breath that Granderson couldn’t quite make out. He thought for a second that McRainey had said, “Asshole,” but that was impossible. The chief would never say that about his most loyal, dedicated officer.

  McRainey turned to look at the man and said sharply, “Get that ticket, get in your vehicle, and get out of here.”

  “Sure, sure, Chief,” the man said as he hurried around the front of the SUV. “I never meant to cause any trouble—”

  “You can pay the fine for that citation online, and I’d advise you to do so,” McRainey interrupted him. “It’s just a parking violation, so it won’t be reported to your insurance company, and your rates won’t go up. But if you ignore it, it’ll cause more trouble for you in the long run.”

  “I won’t ignore it. I’ll pay it, I swear.”

  The guy climbed into the SUV, slammed the door, and drove off.

  “The speed limit on this street is twenty-five,” Granderson said. “I think he’s going faster than that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Cal,” McRainey told him. “He’ll be off-campus in a minute, and he won’t be our problem anymore.” He pointed at the stun gun still in Granderson’s hand. “Put that away. You shouldn’t have drawn it to start with.”

  Granderson frowned and said stubbornly, “I didn’t have any choice, Chief. He was aggressive, I tell you.”

  “Well, he’s gone now, so let’s just forget about it.”

  “I should have given him the ticket, shouldn’t I? You can’t be saying that I should have just ignored a parking violation.”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. You just . . . Sometimes you get . . .” McRainey stopped whatever it was he was trying to say and shook his head. “Why don’t you just go on over to the library and stay on duty there this morning?”

  “Library duty?” Granderson snorted. “Nothing ever happens on library duty.”

  “That’s the way I like it. It’s a good thing when nothing happens.”

  Granderson supposed that from a law-enforcement standpoint, that was true. He sighed and nodded with obvious reluctance.

  “All right, Chief. But if you need me, my walkie will be on.”

  “Of course it will,” McRainey said.

  “You just give me a call.�
�� Granderson slipped the stun gun back into the holster clipped to his belt. “I’ll be ready.”

  He turned and headed for the library, careful to stay on the concrete walks that led around the buildings.

  As he moved through the campus, students crowded onto the walks, and Granderson knew without checking the time that the eight o’clock classes were over. They stayed out of his way as he weaved through them, and he understood why. He was a symbol of the oppressive system they hated. His grandmother, who had been right in the thick of things at the University of Texas in Austin during the sixties, would have called him The Man, if she’d still been around. She had pretty much raised him, especially after his mom had disappeared, just walked off and never came back, following one of her failed stays in rehab. He had grown up hearing about fighting the establishment and speaking truth to power and what a great day it would be when the revolution finally came and the workers were in charge instead of the fat cats of the military-industrial complex, and he had soaked it all in.

  Then he had gone and betrayed that heritage by trying to become a cop, a pig. All he’d managed to do so far was hire on with the campus force. Like most kids, he supposed, he had reached a point when he wanted to rebel against authority, and where his grandma was concerned, that meant joining forces with the authority she had rejected.

  He had waited until after she’d passed away before he did that, though. There was no need to hurt her unnecessarily.

  Since then, he had often felt like he was two people: cop on the outside, devoted to the rule of law; free spirit on the inside, wishing for that brighter day when all people would live together in peace and harmony like his grandmother had dreamed of.

  For that to ever happen, the fascists on the right of the political divide had to be brought under control, or even gotten rid of, permanently. That would be just fine with Cal Granderson. There was no place for such relics of oppression in the new world that was coming. Round ’em up and ship ’em out, and if that didn’t work, there were plenty of other ways to accomplish the goal. The ends justified the means, after all. Everybody from Alinsky on down taught that.

  It could happen, too, once everybody understood and accepted that the only people in this world who ought to have guns were the police and the military. The Second Amendment had to be done away with and all the firearms in private hands confiscated. It would be a different world then, when he and the people who thought like he did were the only ones with guns. He would have a Glock or a Sig on his hip instead of some stupid stun gun. And when anybody tried to cause trouble, like that Jake Rivers, they’d be sorry. They’d be real sorry.

  Granderson went up the steps, between the white columns, across the porch, and into the library. He saw the sidelong glances the students gave him. They just didn’t understand, he told himself. He might be a townie, but he was really one of them, somebody who believed in all the progressive ideals and wanted to put down the racist, sexist, homophobic fascists. All they saw was the uniform he wore. They couldn’t see what was in his heart.

  He had gotten into an argument once with a guy who had called him a crazy, mixed-up son of a bitch, before Granderson beat the hell out of him.

  Granderson just didn’t see how anybody could feel that way about him.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jake knew he probably ought to be worried about the summons to President Pelletier’s office, but he couldn’t bring himself to even think much about it as he waited in the administrator’s outer office that morning. Pelletier let him cool his heels a while this time, and the only reason that bothered Jake was that it meant he would have less time to spend with Natalie at the library before he had to go to class. Assuming he still had a class to go to. It was entirely possible Pelletier might tell him to haul his butt off campus and never darken any of Kelton College’s doorways again. That wouldn’t be fair, of course—Jake hadn’t done anything wrong, and the video Pierce Conners had shot and uploaded proved that—but “fair” wouldn’t stop Pelletier from doing whatever he wanted to do. Jake knew he would have some legal recourse if he were expelled. His grandfather would be willing to help him fight the expulsion in court, he was sure of that. But he was no longer sure that he wanted to. He was tired of the whole damned thing.

  He would have walked away from Kelton College without any regrets . . . other than one.

  That would mean walking away from Natalie Burke, too.

  “You can go in now,” the president’s secretary told Jake, breaking into his thoughts of Natalie.

  He nodded and got to his feet, then hesitated. Go on into Pelletier’s office, or say to hell with it, turn, and walk out?

  Might as well see what the guy had to say, Jake told himself. He went to the door of the inner office, turned the knob, and went in, but his steps were a bit on the heavy side as he did so.

  “Sit down, Mr. Rivers,” Pelletier snapped from behind the desk. “I’m sure you know why I asked you to come here this morning.”

  Pelletier hadn’t exactly asked, Jake thought. It was more like an order. He said, “I suppose it has something to do with what happened in the biology building yesterday afternoon.”

  “You clashed with another student again. It was a violent encounter.”

  Jake thought about some of the fights he’d been in during the past six years and said, “No offense, sir, but that wasn’t violence. That guy might as well have been trying to play patty-cake with me.”

  Pelletier frowned across the desk.

  “Don’t make light of this, Mr. Rivers. I’ve already spent more time on your, ah, adventures recently than I like to think about. I have the real work of running this college to take care of, you know.”

  “And it would be a lot easier if I wasn’t around, wouldn’t it?”

  Pelletier’s lips thinned.

  “I consulted with the college’s legal counsel this morning. We watched several different videos uploaded by students. They paint a very vivid picture of what happened.”

  Jake slipped his phone from his pocket and held it out to the president as he asked, “Did you watch the one I have on here? One of those students who witnessed the whole thing gave it to me. It shows everything from start to finish and makes it clear that I didn’t start the trouble. All I did was—”

  Pelletier surprised him by slamming a hand down on the desk. That was unusual vehemence from the aging college president. His hand made a loud crack when it struck the wood.

  “All you did was defend yourself,” he said, his voice rising in anger. “My God, don’t you think I’ve heard that enough from you, Rivers? It’s your excuse every time you brutalize one of my students.”

  “I’m one of your students, too,” Jake pointed out tightly. He was mad, too.

  “For one of the few times in my academic career, I wish that were not the case,” Pelletier said. “I wish you had never decided to attend this institution, or that you hadn’t been granted admittance.”

  “But that was never going to happen because my grandfather donates too much money to Kelton, doesn’t he? And that’s not all he does. He helps fund-raise from other sources, too. A lot of the personal and corporate donations the college gets are because he did some persuading . . . or arm-twisting.”

  Pelletier made a sour face.

  “Fund-raising is a necessary evil, I’m afraid. But there’s a limit to how much I’ll tolerate because of financial considerations, young man. I have to look out for the college community as a whole, and your presence here is a serious disruption to the learning environment.”

  “Why? Because I’m a conservative? In an institution of higher learning, especially, shouldn’t there be room for all different kinds of viewpoints?”

  “Not the ones devoted to hate,” Pelletier said as his lip curled in a sneer.

  “I don’t hate anybody. Look around at the rest of the country, sir. The stock market’s up, unemployment is down, the economy is growing at a nice rate. Around the world, other countries respect us agai
n.”

  “You mean they fear what that lunatic in the White House might do.”

  “A little fear can be a healthy thing,” Jake said with a smile. “And as time goes on and things keep on getting better, the only ones who think the guy’s a lunatic are people like you who live in your little echo chambers and never hear what normal people think. You wouldn’t believe it if you did.”

  Pelletier stood up, leaned forward, rested his hands on the desk, and snarled, “Get out, you impudent little . . .”

  Words failed him, and he couldn’t go on.

  Jake stood up, still grinning, and asked, “Out of your office, or out of this college?” He shrugged. “Right now, I don’t much care which it is.”

  Pelletier was so mad he was breathing hard.

  “Out of my office,” he said. “I have no grounds for expulsion right at this moment—”

  “Ah, so you have seen the unedited video,” Jake couldn’t resist saying.

  “But if you so much as get a parking ticket on this campus, you’ll be gone, mister. I’ll be speaking to all of your professors and to your faculty advisor, as well, to make sure they understand all the academic requirements to which you have to adhere in order to maintain your status as a student in good standing.”

  Jake shook his head and said, “My grades are fine. You won’t be able to cook up something and claim that I flunked out. Not without falsifying a lot of records and getting a bunch of people to go along with you.”

  “Don’t be so sure I couldn’t do that,” Pelletier warned.

  He probably could, Jake thought. After all, the left specialized in banding together and spinning false narratives. The mainstream media had been doing it for decades. They took pride in being able to tell the public what to think, whether the so-called news they peddled bore any real resemblance to the truth or not. They had claimed that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate for president in the history of the country, hadn’t they?