Trigger Warning Read online

  But not all “victims” were helpless. And they weren’t even victims.

  They were hunters and killers.

  The fleeing man hadn’t reached the sidewalk when Jake left his feet in a flying tackle from behind his quarry. He crashed into the man and brought him down. Both of them landed hard. The jolt sent fresh explosions of pain from Jake’s battered side through the rest of his body.

  The man had tried to escape, but that didn’t mean all the fight had gone out of him. He brought an elbow back and around and slammed it against Jake’s jaw. That gave him enough wiggle room to squirm free.

  When he had a little distance between them, he aimed a kick at Jake’s face. Jake saw it coming and grabbed the man’s foot, stopping the kick before it could land. He gave the foot a hard wrench that forced the man to roll over.

  Jake tried to pounce on the man’s back. If he could get the guy in a sleeper hold, this fight would be over in a hurry. The man kept moving, though, and avoided Jake’s dive. This time the kick he pistoned out landed on Jake’s upper left arm and twisted him around. That arm went numb for a moment and hung uselessly from his shoulder, so he couldn’t use it to block the blow when the man clubbed both hands together and swung them with stunning force at Jake’s head.

  The two-handed blow caught him above the left ear and stretched him out. It was a good thing his skull was so thick, he thought vaguely as he tried to recover. Before he could do so, the man landed on him and dug a knee into his belly. That didn’t do any damage to the slabs of muscle there, but it did force the air from Jake’s lungs and disorient him a little more.

  He got his right hand up, planted it on the man’s face. The hand slid because of the hood. Jake dug his fingers into it and ripped upward. The hood came off.

  The shadows in the plaza were so thick Jake still couldn’t see his enemy’s face, but he could feel the guy’s hot breath panting on him now. He threw the hood aside, grabbed the man’s hair at the back of his head, and jackknifed his body in the middle so he could head-butt the guy in the face. Cartilage crunched and blood spurted as the man’s nose flattened under the impact.

  That stunned him enough for Jake to grab his shoulders and fling him aside. Both of Jake’s arms were working well enough now that he was able to grab the man’s right leg and lever it up until something gave with a sharp snap. The man let out a thin shriek of agony that Jake choked off with a hand around his throat.

  Jake hovered over him and increased the pressure. The man was in too much pain from his broken or dislocated hip to fight back anymore, but the lack of air and the desperate need to breathe made him spasm ineffectively.

  “I could kill you right now, you know that, don’t you?” Jake said in a hoarse half-whisper. “All it would take to crush your windpipe is a little more pressure. Then I could walk away and you’d lay there and suffocate, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do to stop it.”

  Instead of doing that, Jake eased up a little. The man gasped in some air.

  Then used it to rasp, “F-Fascist!”

  Jake squeezed again.

  “Are you really that stupid? You think a real fascist, a real Nazi, would let you live right now? I’ve been listening to you idiots for years now, yammering about how any politician you don’t like is literally Hitler. When all along it’s been your side that’s been acting like the brownshirts and going after anybody who doesn’t agree with you! Free speech! But only if it’s speech you approve of, speech that fits your precious narrative! Anything else gets shut down, with violence if need be. Hell, you like the violence. Makes you feel big and powerful. Punching Nazis feels great . . . only you’re the Nazis.” Jake lifted the guy’s head by the throat and banged it against the ground. “Are you listening to me? Damn it, you’ve got me so mad I’m the one who’s yammering now. So just listen to this: if the other side was as bad as you believe it is, if we wanted death camps, then by God, we’d have death camps by now. But we’re still willing to live and let live, if you’ll just let us. If you won’t . . . well, do you want a civil war? Because that’s how you get a civil war. And it won’t be nearly as much fun as you think it will be.”

  The guy wasn’t struggling anymore. Jake didn’t know whether he’d heard all of that. He was a little disgusted with himself for running off at the mouth that way. But his side hurt, and he was frustrated and angered by the sheer stupidity and cognitive dissonance of almost everything he had seen and heard since coming to Kelton College.

  Then he hoped he hadn’t killed the guy. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over it—the four hooded men had been trying to kill him, after all, and he felt justified in using deadly force against them in return. But if this one, or any of the others, were dead, it could sure as hell turn out to be a hassle.

  He let go of the man’s neck and was relieved to hear the rough breaths in his throat. Jake stood up and looked around. The plaza remained dark and quiet. The fight hadn’t been loud enough to make anybody call the cops. That was good, because Jake didn’t think he could stomach another encounter with Cal Granderson tonight.

  He went to the other three men who were sprawled here and there and bent over to yank the hoods off their heads, too. They were all breathing. A couple had passed out, but one was still conscious and whimpering in pain.

  “Don’t . . . don’t hurt me,” he begged.

  “Don’t try to bully somebody who’s willing and able to fight back,” Jake told him. “Better yet, don’t bully anybody. People have a right to believe whatever they want to believe.”

  “S-social justice—”

  “Is bull. There’s just justice. And sometimes it’s a bitch, just like karma.”

  Jake walked off and left the man there sobbing.

  He took deep breaths as he walked along the sidewalk in front of the library. The place was closed by now, although some lights were still lit over its long, columned porch. Jake took inventory of his condition. The twinges he felt as he inhaled told him he might have bruised ribs—he definitely had bruised muscles—but he didn’t believe anything was broken. He worked his shoulders. Sore but good to go there, too. The damage he had taken in the fight was minimal, he decided.

  That thought was running through his mind when someone stepped out from behind one of the columns on the library porch and said, “I saw what you did back there.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jake stopped short. Instantly, he took in several details about the person who had just spoken to him, enough that he was reasonably sure he wasn’t about to be under attack again. Although he couldn’t be certain about that, he reminded himself. After all, women could be dangerous, too.

  Even women as attractive as this one. Maybe especially women as attractive as this one. A guy might stand there thinking about how hot she was and never even realize she was about to kill him.

  But in this case, she didn’t make any threatening moves. She just stood there with her hands in the hip pockets of the jeans she wore and looked at him. It was a casual stance, but it might have been calculated to make her breasts stand out a little more prominently against the shirt she wore. If that was the case, it worked.

  The hair that tumbled around her shoulders shone reddish-gold in the light. Jake couldn’t see her eyes, but he was willing to bet they were brown. A deep, rich brown.

  He didn’t need to be thinking about that. Other things were more important.

  “Are you going to take out your phone and call the cops?” he asked.

  “Would you try to stop me if I did?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “That would be entirely up to you. I’d like to point out, though, that I’m the one who was attacked, and there were four of them against one of me. If that’s not self-defense—”

  “The same situation as earlier this evening, right?” she interrupted him. “When you allegedly assaulted those two students and then got into a fight with the Antifa patrol?”

  “Patrol?” Jake repeated scornfully. />
  “That’s what they say they’re doing, patrolling the campus for any signs of extremist, right-wing aggression and oppression.”

  Jake snorted.

  “They must not stay very busy. How many people on this campus aren’t progressive idiots? A dozen? Two dozen? I’d say we’re all outnumbered.” He paused. “And I apologize if you’re a progressive idiot.”

  “You’re an obnoxious young man, aren’t you? In addition to being a violent one.”

  “I speak my mind too bluntly sometimes, I suppose. Free speech,” Jake added dryly. “As for the violence, I’m as peaceful as a kitten as long as nobody backs me into a corner.”

  “But then you fight to win, no matter what it takes.”

  Jake shrugged.

  “Never saw any point in being any other way.”

  For a long moment, she regarded him in silence, standing at the edge of the porch with six broad steps between her and Jake on the sidewalk. Then she said, “I’m not going to call the campus police.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “You’re already liable to be in enough trouble from the earlier altercation, even though it wasn’t your fault.”

  “You admit that?”

  “I know those two—Craig and Annie—and their relationship is fraught with drama, as the literature professors might say. They fight and break up and get back together almost daily. The real problem is, Craig actually is abusive, and Annie is a textbook example of an enabler. I’ve talked to her, tried to get her to see that, but it hasn’t done any good.” A sad smile touched her lips. “These students consider themselves so progressive and forward-thinking and woke, but a lot of the time they’re just like young people have always been, making foolish choices about whose pants they’re going to get into.”

  “You sound awfully world-weary and cynical for somebody who’s pretty young, herself.”

  “I’m older than you,” the woman said.

  Jake shrugged.

  “By six or seven years, maybe. I’m Jake Rivers, by the way.”

  “I know who you are. You’re not exactly the run-of-the-mill Kelton College student. There are rumors among the faculty that you must be related to some big donor, but nobody seems to know exactly who it is, or if they do, they’re keeping it to themselves.”

  “You’re a professor?”

  “Criminal justice. Dr. Natalie Burke.”

  “I’d say that you don’t look like a criminal justice professor—”

  “But that would be sexist, exclusionary, patriarchal, and oppressive,” she said sternly. “Haven’t you read the speech guide?”

  “I looked at it,” Jake hedged. “I was more interested in the sexual-conduct guidelines.”

  “Yes, well, we don’t have to worry about that. And you even bringing that up is harassment, you know.”

  Jake held up both hands, palms out.

  “I surrender, Doctor. What can I say, I’m an evil cisnormative heterosexual. I can’t help myself.” He smiled. “Say, does that mean I’m mentally ill? That cuts me some slack. I’m a disadvantaged, oppressed minority. On this campus, for damn sure.”

  Dr. Burke laughed. She looked a little ashamed of herself for doing so but couldn’t seem to help it. She slipped her phone from one of the hip pockets of her jeans.

  “I’m terrible. I should have already gotten help for those poor young men you attacked. That’s the way they’re going to spin it, you know. They’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that it was all your fault.”

  “My word against theirs,” Jake said. “Assuming nobody comes forward to back up their story.”

  She held up the phone.

  “What about video evidence?”

  “It’ll just show for sure that I was defending myself, assuming it actually exists.”

  “It doesn’t,” Dr. Burke admitted. “And I was the last one out of the library tonight and had other things on my mind, so I didn’t notice exactly what happened. All I can testify to is that I found those injured men in the plaza and called 911. And that’s what I’m going to do . . . now.”

  “Good night, Doctor,” Jake said.

  “Good night, Mr. Rivers.”

  He walked a few more yards to another sidewalk that cut across the plaza to Olmsted Hall. When he glanced back, Dr. Natalie Burke wasn’t in sight. The trees must be hiding her, as the porch columns had earlier.

  He was a little confused. It had seemed at times as if the woman was actually flirting with him. If that was true, it was one hell of an odd time and place for her to be doing that. At the same time, she had been right about one thing: despite everything else swirling around them, political tomfoolery and the like, people still had universal emotions and were driven by them at times.

  And she had said that she taught in the criminal justice department, he recalled. Maybe she wasn’t quite as caught up in the so-called progressive movement as some. Then, remembering how he had read where some criminal justice experts always blamed society for creating the predators, or the victims for being preyed upon, and he wasn’t so sure again.

  The whole encounter had him baffled. Maybe she would throw him under the bus, maybe she wouldn’t, but either way, there was nothing he could do about it now.

  He used his keycard on the front door of Olmsted Hall and went inside without encountering anyone else. It was late enough that the lobby was deserted and nobody was behind the desk. At this time of night, everybody was studying, sleeping, killing time on the Internet, or having sex . . . following the proper guidelines, of course.

  Jake went up to the second floor. Only a few hours had passed since he heard the frightened cry through the open window and went out into the night, but it seemed much longer to him. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, tossed it on the bed, and went into the bathroom. The mirror revealed large bruises on his side, shoulders, and arms. He looked like he had been through a fifteen-round fight. Getting whacked with lead pipes would do that.

  He went back over to the desk and picked up the book he was supposed to read for his economics class. After everything that had happened, forcing himself to concentrate on it wasn’t easy, but he gave it a shot.

  After a few minutes of trying to digest the turgid, academic writing that had the evils of capitalism as its central thesis, he was almost wishing he was getting hit by lead pipes again. It might not hurt his brain as much.

  CHAPTER 8

  The confrontation between Jake and the Antifa “patrol” was big news for a couple of days. It was all over the Internet and the cable news channels, and the various cell phone videos shot by people in the almost-mob got millions of views in total, on all the different social media platforms. In almost all the news stories, Jake was referred to as “alt-right,” “far right-wing,” “extremist,” “white supremacist,” “Nazi,” or accused of being a member of the KKK—even though the trouble had had no racial component whatsoever. The fight with fists, pipes, and chains was hysterically headlined as a “mass shooting” by one of the Boston papers. The New York Times decried the “right-wing brutality,” while sneeringly implying that such was to be expected because, after all, Kelton College was in Texas, and everybody knew what sort of presidential candidates those Texans voted for.

  With all of that going on, it was no surprise that reporters were waiting for Jake as soon as he stepped out the front door of Olmsted Hall one morning. He was big enough that he could shoulder his way through the crowd without having to stop and say anything. He was extremely careful how he did it, though. The tiniest action that could be construed as the least bit aggressive would be portrayed as the violent attack of an alt-right lunatic against a free press.

  But there wasn’t a single word about the four men Jake had left scattered around Nafziger Plaza in various states of injury, at least not that he saw or heard. Maybe the Kelton College administration had hushed up that incident for some reason that was beyond Jake at the moment.

  As it was, he had more than enough unwanted attention.
It made it difficult for him to get to class, and once he was there, he had trouble concentrating because the other students, and usually the professors, as well, were staring at him with a mixture of fascination and fear. He was like some exotic zoo animal, he thought. They lived in such a philosophical and political bubble that they couldn’t even begin to comprehend how someone could fail to share their views on everything.

  And that exotic animal comparison was apt in another way, because they all seemed to be worried that he would attack and try to rip their throats out for no reason, with no warning.

  The twenty-four-hour news cycle’s insatiable thirst for fresh content meant that some new, outrageous story would be along soon, and so it was in this case, and three celebrity sexual harassers, two corrupt congressmen (both Democrats, although little mention of that was made), and a transsexual beauty queen of color later, nobody cared about that right-wing barbarian Jake Rivers anymore. Jake was glad of that.

  Then he received an email telling him to be at President Andrew Pelletier’s office for an appointment at ten o’clock the next morning. The email further advised him that he could be accompanied by legal counsel if he so chose. Jake did not choose to do so. Whatever boom they wanted to lower on him, he didn’t much care. If they kicked him out, at least he could tell his grandfather that he’d tried to fit in and get the “college experience” the old man wanted him to. And Pelletier and the rest of the administration could deal with whatever fallout that brought from Cordell Gardner.

  That’s what Jake told himself, anyway, as he walked toward the administration building the next morning. Deep down, though, he bristled at the thought he was going to be punished for something that wasn’t his fault.

  Nobody ever said the world was fair, though, he reminded himself.

  There were no reporters clamoring around this morning, all of them having moved on to other stories, so he noticed when someone stepped up beside him, hurrying to keep up with his long-legged strides.

  “You look different this morning,” Dr. Natalie Burke said.