Don't Cross This Line (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 14) Read online

  “Ted, you are making this up,” Tabitha told him.

  “Why do you say this?” Ted asked as he dodged a guy in a trenchcoat who was paying more attention to his texting than who might be in his way on the side walk.

  “Because you are, and you are a pitiful liar,” she told him.

  “Well, imagine my surprise when I find out you are in town,” Ted continued, “near the altercation with the five punks, one of which is admitting they got their ass kicked by a woman, a hispanic woman.”

  “Wow, you New Yorkers grow them up tough,” Tabitha told him.

  “Uh huh,” Ted replied.

  “Why are you on this, Ted? I thought Detectives worked murders and money cleaning.”

  “If you mean counterfeiting, that’s the Feds. If you mean money laundering, then perhaps. However, stop trying to sidestep the question. Was that you beating up the guys this evening, Tabitha.”

  She stopped and looked at him, “Why do you ask questions you know I am not going to answer?”

  Ted looked up the street at all of the lights, car lights and hearing the honking horns. “Because Tabitha, I tracked you down enough to know you work for TQB. You work in their law group, right?”

  Tabitha pursed her lips, then gave him a slight nod.

  He looked down the other way, back the way they walked and sighed. “Here, come have coffee with me. I know a small diner around the corner.”

  “You are asking me out on a date, Ted?” Tabitha asked, smiling at him.

  He shook his head, “Hell no. This is cop to … cop.” He admitted, “And if my girl friend sees me with you, you had better back my ass up on that.” Ted started walking towards the next intersection leaving Tabitha alone for a second watching him walk away, her mouth open.

  “What girlfriend?” she called after him, jogging to catch up to the detective.

  Schwabenland, Antarctica

  “Maria,” Barnabas rubbed his eyes, “I’m not an envoy for Bethany Anne. I’m the head of her Rangers.” When he looked back at her, she was still sitting here as determined as ever to give him a headache.

  “Yes, you have told me this before, Barnabas and I have looked up the background. You are a self-reliant law unto yourselves, within reason, to track down and apply the Queen’s justice,” she told him.

  “Exactly. So why are you asking me to get involved in a discussion like this?” he asked. When it came to Maria, for a reason he still didn’t quite understand, he refused to read her mind. It did make life more interesting working with her, but the frustration level was considerably higher, as well.

  “Because as a man of justice, you are one of the few I trust, implicitly to do this for me,” she leaned back in her chair.

  Barnabas looked at the woman, considering her request. “I don’t have a reason to be involved, Maria.”

  “No, not one that is part of your Ranger’s group, that is true,” she told him, “However, would you do it as a friend, for me, Barnabas?” She asked him, her eyes opened enough to draw Barnabas into reading her top most thoughts.

  He closed his eyes and nodded, “Yes, I will make the request,” he opened his eyes again, “But the decision is Bethany Anne’s.” His eyes pierced her soul. The absolute and granite assurance that she couldn’t press him another inch was resolute.

  Why, she wondered to herself, Weren’t you in Germany a hundred years ago?

  CHAPTER SIX

  New York City, NY - USA

  The waitress brought two cups of coffee and set them down, “Sugar or Splenda?”

  “Black, thank you,” Ted replied.

  “I’ll take them both,” Tabitha replied, and the lady opened her hand over the table, dropping five packages of each on the table.

  The waitress looked over and nodded to a couple that sat down two booths away, “Be right there, sweetie.”

  Once the waitress left, Ted asked, “Are you in town for personal, or business reasons?”

  “What, exactly, are you going to do with this knowledge, Ted?” Tabitha asked him. She grabbed the five sugars and cleanly ripped the tops off and dumped them into her coffee.

  Normally, Ted would have expected Tabitha to make some cute comment such as, “my coffee is sweet like me” or something. This Tabitha across from him was someone different.

  This one was all business.

  Ted looked around and then back to Tabitha, who was still staring him directly in the eyes, “Uh, why so serious?”

  “Because you are asking to be involved in stuff that is above your pay grade, Ted,” she answered. “Before, when it was Ted and ... maybe, maybe not, vigilante Tabitha, it was one thing. If you are looking into my background and you really want to find out? Well, that trust comes with a price.”

  “Expensive?” Ted asked.

  “Deadly,” she answered.

  Ted’s eyes opened wider and leaned towards her, “What the hell, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha put up a finger and listened around, there were no tell-tale signs of anyone listening. She unzipped her coat a few inches, reached in and pulled out a small tablet and set her thumb on the bottom button. She hit a couple of areas on her screen, and Ted’s eyes opened in surprise when all of the diner’s noise diminished and what he could hear was garbled.

  “What the…”

  “Technology, Ted,” she told him. “Look, I can be daffy if I want to be, and perhaps I’m reacting a little here, knowing you are a man with a job and a girlfriend … and a life. But, trust me when I say that you would have never put me behind bars.”

  “No? Why is that?” Ted asked.

  “Because my Queen never forsakes her own ... EVER. I would have been released either by the system, or I would have been retrieved without the government’s permission. It wouldn’t have mattered which one. Perhaps my boss would have come to get me, perhaps I would have told them I’d just get out myself.” Tabitha told him, “I’m a Queen’s Ranger, and as such, my responsibility is to find injustice. I take cases and solve them. Punishment, if there is no obvious other way, is my responsibility. Those five toughs? Yeah. That was me.”

  Ted’s eyes opened wider. Not only because she finally admitted to an altercation, but his head was swimming. Those cases he had from a couple of years ago with the vigilante support and now this evening.

  “Not all of them are me, obviously,” she told him.

  “Can you read minds?” he asked.

  “Have you been studying us, detective?” Tabitha asked him.

  He nodded, “A little. Stuff I can find out without raising too many suspicions,” he admitted.

  “Then, you need to realize that there are things that go bump in the night. The Queen’s Rangers bump back.”

  “What if they are too big to bump?” Ted asked.

  Tabitha started laughing and put up a hand. “Sorry,” she covered her mouth and got herself under control, “Ted, if one Ranger can’t take care of the problem, then that Ranger will suffer a lot of shit, mostly harassment. I have my own team, and we are a hell of a plan A, trust me. But, there is always a plan B.”

  “And what’s B?” Ted asked.

  Tabitha put up her closed hand, then opened one finger for each name she called out, “John, Eric, Darryl, Scott, Akio.” She told him, “B is for Bitches and trust me, you wouldn’t want to piss them off.”

  “Why is that, are they super tough?” Ted asked, his testosterone fueling a desire to prove himself capable to Tabitha.

  Tabitha shook her head, “Ted, don’t go there. A Queen’s Ranger,” she pointed to herself, “Me, Barnabas and whoever else is in our group has a constraint, and that is Law. We are bound by it, by Bethany Anne. It is part of our creed. The Bitches have a different creed they live by.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Results,” she told him, “I try to keep the pain down.” Ted snorted in disbelief as she continued, “Look asshat, I did keep it down for those five twerps. They were just something to take my annoyance out on, and they accoste
d me first. I didn’t tell them to attack me.”

  “So, they chased you into the alley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why were you annoyed?” he asked.

  “Because two other friendly pain-in-the-asses have taken it upon themselves to teach my Tontos shit I would really rather they didn’t know.”

  Ted put his hands to his face and wiped them down, “I feel like I’ve fallen into the Twilight Zone here. Back to the Bitches. Why are results a problem?”

  Tabitha changed her voice from her command persona, to soft and caring, “Ted, listen to me.” He nodded, “I could walk into any of your precinct houses, and kill everyone there. I’d be hurt, that’s true. I might not possibly live through it, but I could do it.” She put up her hand, “I’m not telling you this to brag, I’m telling you this so that you understand. I’m a cop, in my own way. I’m law, I’m justice. I’m better with guns and shit than you guys, sure. But I can’t touch a Bitch. We,” she pointed back and forth between the two of them, “are law officers. The Bitches? They are warriors. Bad-ass mother-fuckers that are dropped on problems. If Bethany Anne were to point to a country and tell one of those five to subjugate it, then that country is so fucked they wouldn’t have a clue. John could go through a whole military base with Jean’s weapons.”

  “You are describing a Superman, Tabitha. I’m not sure I’m buying it.”

  Tabitha picked up her tablet and started typing super-fast on it. Ted’s eyes opened slightly as he realized she was typing too fast for a human. Even a teenage girl, human.

  She turned the table after she hit a button and Ted noticed the noise cancellation dropped as she handed him the tablet. He was surprised she did that and then noticed her looking behind him. He looked over his shoulder as their waitress came up to the table, “More coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Tabitha told the waitress and Ted lifted his mostly filled cup.

  Ted took a few sips of his coffee and looked at the news clippings she had called up. He read through them, scanning mainly, and his mouth dropped open before looking up to Tabitha, “You are saying the Bitches, those guys, did this?”

  “That’s from years ago,” Tabitha held out her hand, and he gave her tablet back. She hit a button, and the noise protection dropped into place, once more. “That was the guys blowing off some steam. Hell, they were just Bitches one point zero at that time.”

  “What are they now?” Ted asked, thinking back to the attacks the report had spoken about and her comment about the guys just blowing off steam.

  “Probably about two point five or version three.”

  “What do you call these guys besides Bitches?” Ted asked.

  “Me?” Tabitha asked, and Ted nodded, “I call them friends.”

  “What are you people?” Ted asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “We are the Earth’s best chance at staying free,” she told him, “we are Bethany Anne’s people, come hell or high water. We are her law and her justice, all wrapped up in a no-nonsense group of humans who will walk through hell and clean it the fuck up. Satan best hope Bethany Anne never points us that way.”

  “Is that what you were doing here, in New York?”

  “In a way, yes. I’ve been chasing some assholes for a while, and I’m back.”

  “Those guys tonight just got in your way?”

  “More like they accosted Justice, and Justice kicked their asses. If they had truly been in my way, I would have taken them out. If not me? Then Barnabas, a Bitch or Bethany Anne. And actually, God help them if I ever call her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it means Vengeance is coming, and she doesn’t drop flowers behind her,” Tabitha told him, “She is a great leader, don’t get me wrong. However, she has a zero bullshit policy and that’s what I deal with … bullshit. There is a lot of bullshit in our lives, and I’m pretty good at rolling with it. Bethany Anne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You probably wouldn’t have found those dicks.”

  “She would have killed them?” Ted asked, his eyes drawing together, “For being rude?”

  “Ummm ... accosting a woman is not simply rude, it is a horrible experience. This time, the little woman fought back. But no, Bethany Anne can do things far worse than killing them and ... before you ask, I won’t tell you. Hell, I don’t know them all.”

  “Then why do you follow her?” Ted asked.

  Tabitha took a sip of her coffee before answer, “Because she saved my life, and then she saved my soul. I get the chance to pay it forward, and I’m going to do it. The man I call my father might be back one day, and I’m going to be there, right beside Bethany Anne, to welcome him back.”

  “Your father?”

  “You wouldn’t know him. His name is Michael. Once we have our present task completed. I know we will be searching and we will find his ass, I guarantee it.”

  “He’s dead, gone, lost or what?” Ted asked.

  “He’s definitely lost. Bethany Anne says he isn’t dead, but I don’t know why she says that. They have a connection, that’s all I know, and I trust her completely. If she says he’s alive? Then he’s alive. She tells me to clean up New York City, I come here and start cleaning up New York City.”

  Tabitha cocked an ear and touched her tablet to drop the sound field. “There is a mugging going on, leave it alone or fix it?”

  “Ah, fuck,” Ted said, and Tabitha smiled, she was up and jogging out of the diner before he stood up.

  There was a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and Ted had never seen her put it there.

  Who the hell was this woman, really? Or should he be wondering what?

  He started jogging to catch up.

  He heard a whistle to his left as he exited the diner and started running that way. He came up to another alley and could hear Tabitha’s voice.

  “Look, shithead, I don’t care if you need the money to put your momma through college, stealing it from this woman isn’t the right answer. Getting a job, perhaps after taking a bath would be a good start.”

  Ted reached for his badge, hesitated, then slid it back in his pocket.

  This was what he had been researching, wasn’t it? Now he wasn’t so sure he should have made up the lie about having a girlfriend.

  He walked, as quietly as possible in the shadows to see Tabitha in between a woman, crying on the ground, and two toughs.

  The larger, taller white guy spoke to her. “Look bitch, we takin’ this money, and whatever fucking money you have as well,” He pulled out a ten-inch knife, the glint off the blade in the poor light flicking up and down the alley.

  “That’s not a knife!” Tabitha replied, in an Australian accent. She reached inside her jacket, and the guy jumped towards her screaming “AAiii!”

  The man shot across the alley, a loud CRACK then a crunch as his body hit the wall, slumping down. Simultaneously, Tabitha’s foot came back down from kicking him.

  “Well, that was fucking rude,” Tabitha huffed and spoke to the second guy, “You giving me back her purse and money, or are you going to take a dirt nap like your friend over there?”

  “He…he dead?” The second tough asked looking at the other guy crumpled on the ground.

  Tabitha spared a glance at him, “No, not yet. His lung is bleeding from where my kick broke his ribs and punctured it. I can hear the blood causing problems already.” She turned back to him, “I suggest next time not stabbing first and asking questions later.”

  The guy handed the purse to Tabitha who helped the lady to stand up, “Find out if anything is missing.”

  “Will you help Jim?” the second thug asked, “He might not be much, but he’s the only friend I got.”

  Tabitha looked back to the tough, “You got a name?” He nodded, “So, tell it to me already.”

  “Thomas.”

  “Ok, Thomas. I’ll help your friend but if he ever pulls this shit again? I’ll let him die, understand?” He nodded to her, “Just so you
know, that guy behind me is a cop, so don’t be getting ideas.”

  Ted walked up behind them and watched as Tabitha pulled something out of her jacket. It was a syringe and a vial. She pulled some of the liquid into the syringe then kneeled down by the tough and ripped his shirt. “If you want to help Ted, call him a paramedic. This will save his life, but he is still going to be sore as shit and need some bandages and help. I’m not making him feel all better, and sure as hell, I’m not kissing his boo-boo’s,” she told him as she stuck the needle in between a couple of ribs and administered the shot.