Page 4 of The Aura Answer
“Judge’s robe. I’ll be right down.”
Gunshots fired below. Screams, cursing, and smashing glass—the mob must have breached the metal detector. Shouts of “Free Mayor Block!” echoed up the stairs.
Had the former mayor been alive, he’d have been grandstanding for his supporters right now and the mob might have retreated. This mob had been planned.
Jax glanced at the bodies surrounded by yellow tape. He’d like to shout backBring a coffin and you can have him.
Instead, he took the police baton the sheriff handed him and waited for the first of the mob to stumble over his spider web.
Two
“You Yanks really knowhow to throw a riot.” Nick Gladwell, stranded British marketing expert, knew he’d crossed into foreign territory when he accepted the flaming broom his ginger-haired hostess shoved into his hands. Against the darkening December sky, the fiery twigs looked more like a hand warmer than a threat. “Has anyone told you that you’re wearing paper in your hair?”
His lawyer’s significant other ran a hand through her tangled curls and grimaced. Short and nicely rounded, Evie was cute and fierce when she was angry. Nick, thankfully, preferred his women long, lean, and sophisticated. Not that he expected to find city sophistication in the South Carolina cotton fields where he currently moldered.
He had to find other ways to amuse himself. Flaming brooms hadn’t been on the agenda, but he was open to new experiences.
“We need to clear the more vulnerable out of harm’s way.” Evie gestured at a gray-haired bundle of quilted nylon waving a wooden sign heavy enough to be a weapon. “The sheriff will unleash water cannon if this escalates.”
“Escalates? Any more of these brooms and they’ll burn down the whole damned town! Or at least that dried-out Christmastree on the lawn.” He swung the glowing twigs over his head but the flames didn’t change. He scowled at the weirdness.
“Fake fire. Don’t ask. My mother has a cigarette lighter torch in hers that can do real damage though, so stay out of her way.” Evie worriedly watched the mob swirling around the evergreen decorated in childish ornaments and blinking lights, then winced at a high-pitched male scream from the mob.
They both glanced in that direction.
As if to confirm Evie’s warning, flames licked at the long, scraggly, gray beard of a shrieking man in a camouflage jacket. A stout woman with flaming broom marched away in a swirl of colorful shawls and caftan while bystanders doused the beard with water bottles, some with great glee and little accuracy. He’d be a popsicle by nightfall.
“My word, she’s ferocious, although face hair that ugly deserves torching.” Saluting Evie, Nick waded into the fray, waving his fake fire to separate sign-swinging seniors from rude fellows carrying hatchets and tire irons.
He whacked a few rioters using machetes to hack branches from the sun-dried evergreen. Evie was right. Even the paper decorations didn’t suffer from his weird broom, but the ogres with beards retreated warily.
At some point, Nick decided the signs were more useful than non-flammable brooms, and he made a trade with a senior whose arms were giving out. He pointed her off after the rest of the torch parade, then used the signpost to flog a saber-wielding bounder in a helmet.
He was a dealer and a marketing expert. He knew how to trade and talk. The warrior thing was new, but he was bored and eager to create an impression.
One couldn’t really make an impression in a mob without suitable armor and weapons, but his tweed coat was more stylish than fur vests and camouflage. Little old ladieslistenedwhen hedirected them out of danger with an air of authority. If, in the process of clearing their escape, he bashed a few hard heads, who noticed?
He was feeling quite righteous by the time the massive Cajun he knew by the ridiculous Scots name of Roark pointed to a fire engine and halted Nick’s sign-swinging. “They’re coming down. Help me move them somewhere safe.”
Who was coming down? The gods? Certainly, whatever. Following Roark’s direction, brandishing his sign post horizontally with both hands to clear a path, Nick worked his way around to the relatively open area by the emergency vehicle. He had to poke a post into a burly thug or two who took objection to their progress, but he’d dodged worse in pub brawls. Took him right back to his youth, if only there were a beer waiting at the bar.
Apparently, they were using the ladder truck to evacuate the courthouse upper floor. Jolly good fun. Along with the firemen, Nick assisted a motley lot off the big red truck, including a couple of judges in black robes. Always good to be seen on the right side of the law. A few reporters, janitors in overalls, and a bunch of prosperous-looking old white men in rumpled shirts and ties joined the precarious descent from the upper story.
Once safely in the parking lot, most of the business suits peeled off and headed down a side street, muttering and cursing. Nick wasn’t familiar enough with the town to know where they went, but he knew people well enough to recognize a clique when he saw one. He desperately needed a job. He should probably follow the money.
That’s how he’d reached this crossroads in his life. He liked having money. But right now, he wasn’t too fond of the people who had it. Or pretended they did. He needed to adjust his people radar.
Roark shouted, gestured, and led the remainder of the escapees down an alley. Nick decided to stick with the person he knew. Presumably Jax’s friends wouldn’t lead him astray.
A few journalists bearing news cameras and microphones peeled off and ran down Main Street to risk their necks in the melee. Intent on breaking and entering, the howling horde ebbed and flowed up the courthouse stairs as they found entrance through windows. Nick winced as a bunch wielded the Christmas tree as a battering ram. More glass smashed.
“Is there anyone else in there we need to rescue?” he asked once he realized they were leaving the action and escorting the judges and the remainders to the safety of Jax’s law office.
No one answered. Oh well. He hung on to his sign, just in case.
Once inside the quiet lobby, one of the black robes shrugged off the billowing garment and handed it to a short, distinguished man in a suit. “Thank you, your honor. I appreciate the loan.” She brushed the lint off her blue skirt.
Nick blinked, recognizing the flamingly gay transgender mayor the mob was out to kill. He resolved never to be mayor of a small town if the last mayor had been thrown in jail and the other was a target for a mob. It was impossible to please everyone.
