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  He had gotten the revolver out one day while he was at the range, and Randall’s twelve-year-old daughter had looked at him with contempt and said, “I hope you’re planning on throwing that at somebody, instead of shooting at them. You’ll do more damage that way.”

  “It’s not the size of the gun, it’s what you know how to do with it,” Jake had responded, then immediately wished he hadn’t said such a thing to a twelve-year-old girl. He needed to watch his phrasing in the future.

  If she’d been offended, though, she hadn’t shown it. She’d just snorted disgustedly, shook her head, and gone back to the AR-15 she was sighting in.

  Today, Randall checked Jake in, then followed him out to the range, knowing that Jake didn’t mind having other people watching him shoot.

  As Jake was loading the 1911, Randall asked, “How are things in Greenleaf these days? Everybody doing their part to keep the place weird?”

  Jake grunted and pulled his ear and eye protection into place, then steadily and methodically emptied the gun into the target twenty yards away. He lowered the gun and let the echoes die away, then went on, “You don’t fool me, Keith. You know there’s been trouble there on campus.”

  Randall grinned and said, “Yeah, the way the news media played it up, it was all-out war between those anarchists and the second coming of the Third Reich. Only come to find out, the Nazi horde was just one guy: you.”

  “You’ve got the numbers right but everything else flipped around,” Jake said. “It was me against a mob, all right, but they’re not anarchists. Just the opposite, in fact. They want everything controlled by the government . . . and the government controlled by them.”

  “That kind of makes them the Nazis, doesn’t it?”

  Jake cocked an eyebrow.

  “Ya think?” He paused, then went on quietly, “You don’t know about this, Keith, because for some reason there hasn’t been anything in the news about it, but I’ve been jumped twice since that big fight. They haven’t been just brawls, either. The first time they were out to hurt me, and last night I think they would have killed me if they could.”

  Randall stepped closer and frowned.

  “Are you kidding me? Jake, that . . . that’s unacceptable! What happened? How did you keep from getting hurt? You’re not hurt bad, are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I guess I put up more of a fight than they expected. I gave better than I got, and they took off.”

  “You didn’t see who—”

  “Guys in black hoods, like those Antifa kids. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what this was, though. Antifa is a bunch of amateurs. Would-be badasses playing at being revolutionaries. I caught at least a hint of professionalism from the guys who attacked me.”

  “Have you told the cops?”

  “Frank McRainey knows about what happened last night, but I downplayed the whole thing, so as far as he knows it was connected to the trouble several nights ago. He may suspect that it’s more than that, but he doesn’t have any way of knowing for sure. He wasn’t there, didn’t see how those guys handled themselves.”

  “But you haven’t said anything to the town cops?”

  “Kelton College is the most important business in Greenleaf, you know that,” Jake said. “The mayor and the city council will go along with whatever President Pelletier and the Board of Regents want. And what they’d like more than anything else is for me to just go away. The only reason they haven’t booted me out before now is that they don’t want to tangle with my grandfather.”

  “Well, you can’t blame them for that,” Randall said. “Nobody in his right mind would want a scrap with Cordell Gardner. But look, Jake, if you’ve got a target on your back, you can’t just go around waiting for people to take shots at it. You’re about as good at taking care of yourself as anybody I’ve ever seen, but you’re surrounded by enemies in a place like that.”

  Jake laughed and said, “Pretty ineffectual enemies.”

  “Mostly, maybe. But not all of them.”

  “No,” Jake agreed, thinking of the men who had jumped him when he was on his way back to Olmsted with Natalie. “Not all of them.”

  * * *

  As Jake sat in his microbiology class later that afternoon, he wished he was back out on Keith Randall’s gun range. That had been a lot more fun than listening to Dr. Montambault drone on and on. Despite wanting to please his grandfather, Jake was feeling more and more like maybe grad school hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  That opened up the question of what he would do with his life, but a possible answer was nagging at the back of his brain.

  Earlier that day, when he’d been finishing up his practice, another guy had arrived at the range and taken a position several places down the line. Jake hadn’t paid much attention to him at first, but then he had heard the swift, evenly paced way the man shot and looked at the target, only to see an incredibly tight grouping around the center of the silhouette printed on the hanging piece of paper. Jake had no false modesty about his own abilities—he was a damned good shot and he knew it—but he didn’t think he had ever put that many rounds quite so close together. This guy was good.

  That realization had led Jake to take a closer look at the man firing. His hair was mostly gray, and age had weathered his rugged features. However, he carried himself with a youthful vitality that belied his obvious years. He might have been seventy, but he moved, stood, and shot like a man in the prime of his life. Jake had a sense that, age difference or no age difference, he wouldn’t want to tangle with the man.

  When Randall walked by, Jake had angled his head toward the older man and asked quietly, “Who’s that? I don’t think I’ve seen him around here before.”

  “His name’s Rivera,” Randall replied. “He’s been coming here to shoot for a few months. I don’t know a thing in the world about him except that he’s one of the best with a gun I’ve ever seen. He might be retired law enforcement. FBI, maybe.”

  “Not many of those lawyers-with-guns can shoot like that. Most LEOs can’t, either. No reason to get good at it when you only have to shoot a few rounds each year to qualify.”

  Randall shrugged.

  “Maybe some sort of private operator, then. Security specialist. You can go ask him if you want to.”

  Rivera was loading a fresh magazine into a Browning Hi-Power. Jake watched him for a second, then shook his head.

  “He doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who’d appreciate anybody poking into his business.”

  “I can’t argue with you there,” Randall had agreed.

  But since then, Jake hadn’t been able to get the man named Rivera out of his head, or Randall’s comment about the possibility of him being a private security specialist. That sort of work appealed to Jake, or at least the idea of it did, anyway. He’d had training and experience that had enhanced his own natural skills to the point they were something not often needed in normal society. Not many people needed an ever-rougher man than usual standing ready to do violence on their behalf.

  But when they did, it was often a matter of life and death, and Jake enjoyed pitting himself against high stakes like that. It was why he had never minded taking point on a mission, and that willingness to embrace danger probably was one big reason he had survived so many harrowing situations. He just wasn’t the type to run scared.

  He could see himself doing private security work. Some people would call him a mercenary, but he had never cared much what anybody thought about him.

  If he dropped out of school, though, more than likely he would never see Natalie Burke again, and the thought of that bothered him more than it should have, he told himself.

  He dragged his attention back to class for the last few minutes before it was over, then gathered up his stuff to leave. He needed to do some studying tonight . . . but that wasn’t going to be easy when he would rather be thinking about those other options.

  In fact, that was why he was distracted as he
left the lecture hall and bumped right into another man hurrying along in the hall outside. Jake muttered, “Sorry,” and started to step around the man with whom he had collided.

  “Watch where you’re going . . . Nazi.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Jake knew he should just keep going and pretend he hadn’t heard the man, but instead he stopped and half-turned to look back at him.

  “What was that?” he asked as casually as if he hadn’t understood the hateful words.

  “I told you to watch where you going.” The man wasn’t content to leave it at that. He smirked and added, “And then I called you what you are: a Nazi.”

  He was about Jake’s age, maybe a little younger, wearing a black T-shirt with #resist and #fascism printed across the chest. There was also the word HISTORY with an arrow underneath it. His dark hair was fairly long and swept up. Fashionable stubble adorned his cheeks and jaw.

  Jake shook his head and said, “You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else. I’m not a Nazi.”

  “No? Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

  “That’s none of your business. They call it a secret ballot for a reason. People used to be able to vote for whoever they thought was the best candidate without being harassed for it.”

  “People need to own their bigotry. Everyone on campus knows who you are. You’ve attacked women and people of color and gays. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “I’m not denying anything,” Jake said. “If you’re talking about that riot the other night, when somebody in a black hood is trying to bust my head open, I don’t stop to ask them what color they are or what parts they have or what they do with those parts. I just keep them from hurting me or anybody else.”

  A group was gathering in the hallway now. All of them glared at Jake. The man who had confronted him appeared to be right about one thing: everybody on campus knew who Jake was. And none of them liked him, either.

  It was a good thing he didn’t give a crap whether they liked him, he thought.

  He didn’t have anything else to say to the guy who’d confronted him, so he turned around and walked away. Students in the hallway stepped aside, although some of them with obvious reluctance.

  “Hey! I wasn’t done talking to you.”

  “But I’m done talking to you, snowflake,” Jake said without turning around.

  “You heard him insult me!” the guy yelped. “You’re all recording this, aren’t you?”

  Smartphones, Jake thought. A wonderful invention, but the bane of modern life in many ways.

  He heard rapid footsteps behind him.

  “That’s hate speech!” the guy said. “He attacked me with his words! I don’t feel safe. None of us are safe as long as this racist, sexist, homophobic bigot is here at Kelton!”

  Maybe he wouldn’t be for much longer, Jake thought. He was tired of this farce. The mood he was in right now, the only thing keeping him here was his determination not to give these lunatics the satisfaction of thinking they had run him off.

  The guy ran up behind him and grabbed his left arm.

  “We’ve had enough of your aggression—”

  It was all Jake could do not to turn around quickly and pop the guy. He didn’t figure it would take any more than one punch. In fact, that punch might well break his jaw. That would shut the annoying little bastard up, anyway.

  And dozens of videos of the punch would be plastered all over social media in a matter of minutes, and by that evening Jake would probably be under arrest, and President Pelletier wouldn’t hold back this time, no matter who Jake’s grandfather was. Jake would be out of here.

  Well, wasn’t that what he wanted?

  Yeah, he thought, but not this way. Not on the enemy’s terms.

  He kept walking.

  The sudden alarm on the face of a young woman in front of him in the hall, facing in his direction, made him stop short and turn. He didn’t seem to be rushing, but he got around in a hurry.

  The man who had been mouthing off at him was about to hit him. Jake reached up. His reaction was almost too fast for the eye to follow. The guy’s right fist smacked into the palm of Jake’s left hand. The man grunted as his fist’s forward motion was stopped instantly and utterly. A little off balance because of that, he leaned toward Jake.

  Jake’s fingers closed around the guy’s fist and started to squeeze.

  The man’s eyes widened. His mouth opened. Some of the color drained from his face.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, balls.” His voice was thin and breathless with pain.

  “My name is Jake Rivers,” Jake said, his voice loud and clear. “This man just attempted to strike me with his fist from behind, with no warning or provocation. I was attacked, and my action in response to that attack is entirely in self-defense. Any video you might see that makes this incident look or sound otherwise has been doctored to give that appearance. I don’t know this man who has attacked me and am not at fault or in any way to blame for what he’s done or for what I’ve done to defend myself. I’m going to let go of him now, and I won’t take any further action against him as long as he doesn’t attack me again.”

  Jake had spouted that speech off the top of his head, giving in to the whim that had come over him when he looked around and saw all the phones being held up by the other students as they recorded the confrontation. Most, if not all, of them were against him and might well try to edit what they were recording, but some might post it in its entirety. Jake wasn’t really worried about what might happen to him. The speech wasn’t a way of covering his ass. He just wanted the truth to get out there so people could see it and make up their own minds.

  The left didn’t want the truth getting out, though. To them, the liberal elite was smarter than anyone else, and so they ought to be the ones to tell people what to think and do. And liberals always included themselves in that elite, without it ever occurring to them that if the communists or the Islamist fanatics ever took over, they would be among the first lined up against a wall for the firing squads.

  Jake looked at the guy whose fist he was holding. The man had another fist, and Jake hadn’t done anything to stop him from using it. He could have tried to throw another punch and break free from Jake’s grip at any time.

  But instead he stood there, pale and trembling, clearly paralyzed by pain and fear. Jake had squeezed hard enough to make bones grind together in the guy’s hand, but he hadn’t broken anything.

  A tear ran down the guy’s cheek into his meticulously trimmed stubble.

  Jake let go of him and stepped back.

  The man’s fist fell like it was a weight. He caught it with his other hand and cradled it against his chest as a sob escaped from him.

  “You . . . you animal!” he gasped at Jake. “You barbarian!”

  “You’re the one who tried to sucker punch somebody,” Jake said. “It backfired on you. Not my fault.” He looked around at the phones recording him. “Self-defense, people. Remember it. It’s a handy concept to master.”

  When he walked on this time, no one tried to stop him. He made it out of the building unmolested.

  When he was on the steps, though, somebody called behind him, “Hey, Rivers, wait up.”

  Jake stopped and turned to look at a young black man coming toward him. He didn’t seem like he was after a fight, so Jake just stood there and waited to see what was going to happen.

  “I got that whole thing on my phone,” the man said. “Give me your number and I’ll send it to you. You might want a copy of the unedited footage.”

  “Why don’t you just upload it yourself?” Jake asked.

  “Oh, I intend to, but I thought you might like to have it, too. Experts would be able to prove it hasn’t been doctored, if you ever needed it for legal reasons.”

  “Like in case of a lawsuit?”

  The young man laughed.

  “Idiots like that couldn’t win a fight against you on their best day. He just let himself get carried away by his poli
tics and the belief that being on the so-called right side of history makes you invulnerable.” He paused. “It doesn’t. Nobody’s invulnerable.”

  “That’s the truth. I appreciate the gesture . . . ?”

  “Pierce,” the man introduced himself.

  “Really?” Jake said, then wished he hadn’t.

  The guy just laughed, though, and said, “Don’t get racist on me when I’m trying to do you a favor, man.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Jake said. “It’s just that Pierce seems like kind of a trust-fund name, you know.”

  Pierce cocked an eyebrow.

  “I happen to have a trust fund, you know.”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t have a clue.”

  “My family has money,” Pierce said without any self-consciousness about the admission, “just like nearly everybody else here at Kelton. It’s not old money, mind you. My dad made it in the dot-com boom. But it spends just as well as if it were fourth or fifth generation.” He lifted his phone. “Now, how about me sharing that video with you?”

  “I appreciate that.” Jake told him the number, and Pierce spent a minute tapping on his phone’s display.

  “There you go.”

  “Thanks. But I have to ask . . . why are you doing this? I mean—”

  “Why’s a black guy helping somebody accused of being a white supremacist?” Pierce shrugged. “For one thing, I was there and saw what happened the other night. There was nothing racial about it. Those guys mobbed you, and you had to fight back. Same thing here. You were trying to get away from that loudmouth without any trouble, and he wouldn’t let you. I believe in fairness and sticking up for the underdog, whether I agree with his politics or not. Doesn’t mean I have any use for Nazis or the KKK.”

  “Believe me, neither do I,” Jake said. “A person can be a conservative without supporting either of those groups of loons.”

  “Maybe. I’ll give anybody the benefit of the doubt . . . until they prove otherwise.”