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  Counselors provided by the college were overworked as they tried to help the students deal with the trauma they had gone through. This had been a macroaggression, and some of those already easily triggered snowflakes would never get over it.

  That was the trouble with being a snowflake. You melted if things got the least bit warm.

  Dr. Alfred Montambault tendered his resignation from the faculty. He planned to go on a trip to France, to see his ancestral homeland and allow his nerves to recover, he said.

  Pierce Conners remained enrolled, but he told the other members of his study group that he thought he would be studying on his own from now on.

  President Pelletier worked almost around the clock trying to keep the college’s wealthy patrons—many of whom had children who’d been affected by the crisis—from pulling all their funding. Cordell Gardner could have led the charge by dropping his donations, and that might have been the death knell for the school. Instead he helped Pelletier keep the place open . . . on one condition.

  * * *

  “At least it’s not a damn statue,” Jake said as he looked at the plaque with his name on it mounted next to the entrance of the Burr Memorial Library.

  Frank McRainey said, “Hey, your grandfather told me he thought about making them rename the whole library, but he decided the plaque was enough, since you didn’t die and all.”

  “Yeah, staying alive fouled it all up, didn’t it?”

  Jake still had a few twinges in his chest now and then from the bullet that had ripped through there, but it hadn’t hit anything too vital. The minor pains would go away in time. Probably.

  He went on, “You know, Granderson ought to have a plaque, too.”

  “We’ll put something up in the station for him, don’t worry.” McRainey gave a slow shake of his head. “He sure was an unlikable kid.”

  “Yeah, he was,” Jake agreed, nodding, “but when the time came, he did what he had to do. Proving that assholes can be heroes just like anybody else.”

  “And a good thing, too, since most of us fall into that category at least some of the time.” McRainey put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Are you really not coming back as a student?”

  “That’s right. I’m just not cut out to be in college these days, Chief.”

  “You could be a campus cop . . .”

  “Oh, no. Spend every day dealing with these . . . No, just no.”

  “All right.” McRainey stuck his hand out. “Come back to see us sometime, anyway.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that,” Jake said as he shook hands, even though he knew he wouldn’t.

  McRainey headed off. Jake decided he would take one more walk around Nafziger Plaza, since it was a really beautiful autumn day, before he left for good. Classes had started again at last, and although a subdued atmosphere still hung over the campus, it was starting to get back to normal.

  Jake had walked halfway around the plaza when he became aware that a man had fallen in step beside him. Funny, he hadn’t heard the guy come up at all. Even more surprising, when Jake glanced over, he recognized the man from Keith Randall’s gun range.

  “Mr. Rivera,” he said.

  “Not quite, Jake,” Rivera said.

  “We haven’t been introduced, so I guess Keith told you my name like he told me yours.”

  “Not exactly. I’ve known who you are for a long, long time, Jake. And the name’s not really Rivera, although I’ve gone by that for almost as long. It’s Rivers, just like your mother’s name. And your grandfather Big Joe’s name.”

  Jake stopped and frowned over at the older man.

  “What the hell are you saying?” he demanded.

  “I’m Barry Rivers. I’m your uncle.”

  CHAPTER 44

  A long moment of silence passed, and then Jake said with more than a hint of anger in his voice, “The hell you are. My uncle Barry is dead.”

  The older man shook his head.

  “That’s what the world has believed for a long time, but it’s not true.”

  “He was killed in an explosion, along with his wife,” Jake insisted. “It was some sort of mob-related thing. My mother told me about it.”

  “And as far as Donna ever knew, that was the truth. Only a handful of people, including the president at the time, ever knew it wasn’t true. That’s the way it had to play out.”

  “You’re claiming the whole bomb story was a fake?”

  A shadow seemed to pass over the older man’s weathered face.

  “It wasn’t a fake,” he said in a low voice that held an angry growl somewhere inside it. “The explosion was real enough. It killed my wife, Kate, and it came awfully damned close to killing me. But not quite. I lived . . . if you can call it that.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of Barry Rivers,” Jake said stubbornly. “You don’t look like—”

  “The blast tore up my face, and when the doctors put it back together, I didn’t look exactly like I used to. I think you can still see a hint of the old me here and there, if you know where to look, but most people never would. And you never saw me when you were a kid. I was . . . dead . . . before you were born. So was your Uncle Paul. He died in that insane asylum. Where he belonged, I might add.”

  “I’m not sure he’s the only one who belongs in an asylum.”

  The man who claimed to be Barry Rivers chuckled.

  “Why don’t we go sit down on that bench over there?” he suggested as he nodded toward a concrete bench under one of the trees. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Jake hesitated. While he was in no way prepared to accept this guy’s story, neither did he believe he was in any sort of danger. The man seemed to have an aura of menace about him, but Jake could tell that it wasn’t directed toward him.

  “All right,” he said. “But I warn you, I’m not going to believe a word of it.”

  So for the next half hour, Jake sat there mostly in silence, asking a question only now and then, as the man told him about being funded and equipped by the government to become a sort of one-man strike force free to travel the country and right wrongs wherever he found them. Taking advantage of his background as a trucker, “Barry Rivera”—his new identity following the supposed death of the old one—had used a specially equipped Kenworth in his justice journey. An eighteen-wheel avenger, someone had dubbed him when the rumors began to rise of a mysterious trucker who dealt death to all sorts of evil people. Others called him the Rig Warrior.

  Anytime someone asked Barry who he was, though, his answer was the same.

  “Call me Dog. Just Dog.”

  Now, sitting on the bench in Nafziger Plaza, Jake heard the unmistakable ring of truth in what this man was saying . . . no matter how much he wanted to disbelieve it.

  “That went on for years,” Barry said. Already, Jake couldn’t think of him by any other name. “Lots of years. So much blood that sometimes it seemed like I was wading in it up to my neck. Only real friend I had was Dog. The real Dog. Big, mean-tempered critter who wound up one of the best friends I ever had. Things were never quite the same after he passed. In fact, I hung it up for a while. Found a place in Arkansas, way back in the woods, on top of a mountain, so isolated nobody could ever find me. That’s what I thought, anyway.” Barry shrugged. “But trouble always has a way of finding a man, and I got dragged back into the game.

  “All the while, though, I kept tabs on what little family I had left. My sister . . . and you. Of course, I had to do it from a distance, since nobody was supposed to know Barry Rivers was still alive. But I saw you at least a dozen times over the years. You just never knew it. I could tell you were growing up into a fine young man, though. No surprise. You’ve got good genes on both sides.”

  Jake grunted and said, “You could never tell that by my father.”

  “Well . . . even the best of genes skip a generation now and then, I guess. Your father wasn’t a good man. But you are, Jake.”

  “You’ve been hanging around this part of the country
for a while. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m semiretired again. The government calls on me to do a job now and then. And if I see something that interests me, I’m free to poke into it. Mostly, though, my time is my own, and I’ll admit, I’ve been keeping an eye on you.” Barry grinned. “I wanted to see how a throwback like you was going to fit in on a modern college campus. Not well, from what I gather.”

  “So I’m a throwback, am I?”

  “You’re the kind of guy who’s been getting in trouble because of rules and regulations made by weaker men for thousands of years, Jake. And by weaker I don’t mean physically. You’ve got the sort of code that men used to have, a true sense of right and wrong that won’t let you stand by and do nothing while innocent people are suffering because of evil. You bull right in and take action, even if it puts you at risk. You’re more likely to jump into something if it’s dangerous, because that means you’re fighting for something that’s actually worthwhile.”

  “You seem to think you know a hell of a lot about me.”

  Barry smiled faintly and said, “I told you I’ve been keeping an eye on you. I wasn’t surprised you kept getting in trouble here. I wasn’t really expecting to find you in the middle of a hostage situation fighting terrorist assholes, though. It was their bad luck you were around.” He paused. “I hope you don’t mind that I pitched in a little, too. I knew they were scattered around the campus and you couldn’t be everywhere at once.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jake said. “I heard rumors about how some mysterious guy killed some of Foster’s men and freed a bunch of hostages. The official story downplays that, but too many people have said they saw it happen. Are you telling me that was you?”

  “Just mopping up, really,” Barry replied with a shrug.

  “Damn.” Jake shook his head. “This is a hell of a lot to dump on a guy.”

  “Yeah, it is. But you’re strong enough to take it.”

  They sat there in silence that stretched for several minutes while the campus population continued bustling around them. Life went on. Finally Jake said, “I think I believe you.”

  “Good. I hoped you would.”

  “But why? Why tell me all this?”

  Barry took a deep breath and said, “After all these years, I wanted to look my nephew in the eye and have him know that we’re family. Maybe I’m just gettin’ sentimental in my old age. For a long time, family meant betrayal to me. Your Uncle Paul was responsible for a lot of pain and heartbreak for me and a bunch of other people. But I finally realized that you can’t turn your back on your whole family because of what one person does.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to reach out to my mother, too?”

  “One thing at a time, kid,” Barry said. “Anyway, that’s not the only reason. I’ve got a practical motive for talking to you today, too.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What do you plan on doing with your life, Jake?”

  The question was one Jake had no idea how to answer, not at this point, anyway. He shook his head and said, “My grandfather thought I ought to go back to school. That didn’t work out so well. I guess I’ll get a job of some kind—”

  “Work with me,” Barry said.

  Jake frowned at him.

  “You mean . . . for the government? You said just a few minutes ago that I don’t handle rules and regulations very well, and who has more of those than the government?”

  “It’s not exactly the same,” Barry said. “When they come to me and ask me to do a job—ask me, not tell me—I have a free hand. Because there’s nothing official involved, and that lack of a traceable connection gives them complete deniability. They say, ‘We think this is a problem,’ and if I agree with them, I go and take care of it however I see fit. That’s the only way I’ll operate. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t use a hand now and then.” He chuckled. “And believe it or not, I’m not getting any younger. There’ll come a time when I can’t do this work anymore. But it’ll still need to be done, take my word on that. There’ll always be evil in the world, Jake, which means there’ll always be a need for men to fight it.”

  Jake couldn’t argue with any of that. He had to admit that he was intrigued by Barry’s proposal. A job like that might well get him killed . . . but he wouldn’t die of boredom.

  When Jake didn’t say anything for several moments, Barry went on, “I still have that place in Arkansas. Thought I might head back up there for awhile, do some training. You want to come along?”

  Jake took a deep breath and then said, “I suppose we could see how it goes.”

  A grin split Barry’s face as he nodded.

  “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  He stood up and started walking along the concrete path at the edge of the plaza. Jake fell in alongside him. The tide of campus life ebbed and flowed around them. After a moment Jake said, “Dog, that’s your code name, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do I get a code name?”

  Barry squinted over at him, said, “You’re as big as a horse. How about Horse?”

  “No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Not Horse. That’s not a good code name.” He thought about it. “Now, Stallion, maybe . . .”

  “I don’t think so.” Barry clapped a hand on his nephew’s shoulder as they walked off into the pleasant autumn afternoon. “We’ll work on it.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Though known largely for their westerns, national bestselling authors WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE are the authors of some of the most explosive and timely thrillers of the last decade, including the nationally bestselling Tyranny, as well as The Doomsday Bunker and Black Friday.

  The Johnstones know that freedom is never free. They fully support our military and regularly donate books to our troops. You can learn more about this as well as upcoming releases and special promotions by visiting williamjohnstone.net or kensingtonbooks.com.

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