LEGACY Book 1: Forgotten Son Read online

  “I’ll get you something to eat after the debate,” Kylie said.

  “Debate?” Liz asked groggily. “Oh yeah, the debate thing with the guy.”

  The guy.

  “We’d better go now,” Kylie said, leading Liz to the door.

  Liz played with the door handle only for a few seconds before exiting the dressing room. Kylie led her to an area just behind the curtain.

  “Wait right here until they call your name,” Kylie said slowly.

  Liz looked like she didn’t understand. Kylie leaned in and spoke slowly. “Don’t leave this spot until you hear your name,” she repeated. “Then go to the podium,” she said, pointing to her side of the stage.

  Liz tried to find the spot Kylie pointed at on the floor, but gave up. All the wood looked alike. She cringed. Hopefully, that didn’t make her a wood racist.

  “They won’t let me stay here, but I’ll be sitting in the front row with the staff,” Kylie said, leaving Liz alone.

  Then it became very quiet, Liz noticed.

  She looked up and…

  …all the way across the stage, behind the curtains on the other side.

  There was that guy.

  …the racist guy who wanted to take over the world.

  He was standing behind the curtain on the other side.

  Son of a bitch!

  He didn’t own that curtain!

  Liz tried to ignore his friendly smile and polite nod.

  But as she thought about his nod, it reminded her of a bobble head.

  His head was bobbing.

  Up and down and up and down and up and down.

  Liz had a bobble head dog in her car.

  It always agreed with her.

  The man is agreeing with me.

  Liz got angry and kicked the curtain. She was his fierce warrior Indian opponent!

  Liz smiled back, waving at him and then flipped him the bird.

  Hi, Mr. Evil!

  Liz snickered at her joke.

  Hey, it’s cold in here, she noticed and then scolded herself. It’s always cold here, stupid!

  Liz wiped the corners of her mouth, careful to stay away from her tribal war paint. She was ready to kick some white boy ass!

  OOOH, look at the confused look on his face.

  That’s right, stupid man! You can’t understand what you never understood! Did you drive your little truck tonight? You’re gonna kill the ozone in that thing, you idiot!

  Did he just give me a look? Did he just give me a look?

  I have something to give you, Mr. Judgmental! Bet you never expected this!

  Liz turned around and hiked her skirt, mooning him.

  Assface! I bet it’s like looking into a mirror, isn’t it? She thought.

  Liz laughed and laughed and laughed.

  What’s wrong with him now? Why is he puking?

  You are one sick moon unit! she thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kathy Courage took a deep breath. She had not wanted to be here, but corporate said that moderating this debate was her last chance at keeping a network position. The woman who once owned morning television took her entire network into a personal kamikaze-like ratings dive when she became anchor of the evening news. She grabbed a donut from a tray and took a big bite.

  She shooed away the makeup artist who was trying to follow Kathy’s instructions of “you better take twenty pounds off my looks or you’re fired” because she saw a small streak of makeup that had rubbed off on her expensive suit jacket when she grabbed the donut.

  “Fum un ceen me up!” she yelled in an explosion of powder donut.

  A local high school gymnasium had been redecorated in red, white and blue. Two serious-looking lecterns stood almost facing each other, and in front of them was Kathy’s moderator desk.

  A stagehand rushed over to Kathy with a handful of baby wipes, trying to remove the mixture of donut powder and makeup. It only caused the mixture to smear even more on the dark jacket. Kathy grabbed a wipe for her mouth and pushed the woman away.

  “Where’s my backup jacket?”

  Another stage hand rushed the jacket to Kathy who quickly ditched the grimy jacket. That makeup artist would get the cleaning bill, Kathy swore. She pulled the jacket on, only to realize that she had indeed gained twenty pounds since she last wore it, but it was too late. She unbuttoned the jacket so she could breathe and hoped no one would notice.

  The debate logo swirled around the screen of one of the monitors as the broadcast went live. Blasts of trumpets matched the tempo of the graphics as if war had just been declared. An animated elephant and donkey rushed toward each other and when they collided, burst into a million tiny red and blue smiley faces, revealing the I-can-be-serious look of Kathy Courage.

  “Good evening. I’m Kathy Courage. Tonight, the fate of the seat once held by the Lion of the Senate will once again be determined. Will it return to its safe home or stay in the hands of their racist opposition? Let’s welcome the candidates!”

  A spotlight turned on at the right side of the stage and a middle-aged man dressed in a smart business suit walked to the podium. The man was smiling and waving to the crowd. A few audience members started to clap.

  “May I remind our audience to make no noise until the end of the debate,” Kathy Courage scolded and the applause died down. “Ladies, gentlemen and those of an undeclared gender, Scotty Black.”

  Trying to keep a look of irritation from his face, Scotty walked to his podium, waving at various people in the audience.

  Then, all the lights in the auditorium went out as a slow drumroll started playing. The stage lit up with disco lights and laser beams. A fog cannon filled the stage with mist and Kathy Courage stood to her feet in applause. The producer turned on the echo effect for her voice and it sounded as if they were at a wrestling match.

  “And now! The next Senator for not just her state, but all of America! Everyone please give a warm welcome to your candidate and mine, Liz Worn!”

  Liz stepped out into the lights and explosions of confetti announced her arrival. A rock band track punched in the background.

  Liz looked around and smiled. It was just like walking into the middle of a Pink Floyd song…

  Kathy squinted. In the middle of the fog and staccato laser beams, it was hard to make out what Liz was wearing, but it looked like…

  Liz walked out in her 1950’s all-wool Indian costume. Dark makeup chevrons streaked across her cheeks and large red dots adorned the tips of her nose and her chin. With the addition of her new blonde Jamaican dreadlocks, she looked like a zombie version of Raggedy Ann.

  Liz walked over to Scotty Black, who had his hand extended. She was trying her best not to giggle. Liz ignored his hand and, her chin jutting forth, walked back to her podium.

  The producer said something to Kathy, but Liz’s appearance had caused her to zone out.

  “What did you say?” Kathy asked.

  “She only wants to be referred to by her Indian name,” the producer said. “Crazy As a One-Eyed Mule.”

  “Crazy Ass what? No way! We can’t do that!” Kathy said in an angry whisper.

  “No, it’s just the opposite. We have to do it. It is illegal to censor a federal campaign. If she wanted to streak onstage while singing the theme song from the Brady Bunch, we couldn’t stop her.”

  “I’m not conducting a debate calling someone Crazy Ass… Mule or whatever!”

  “Too late, we already changed the crawl. You’re back in three…two…”

  Kathy forced a smile and then remembered where she was. She glanced down for a second and put on her serious face.

  “Both candidates have agreed on the terms of the debate. Since we’re in America, the Democrat gets to speak first,” Kathy said, victorious in her refusal to call Liz by her Native American name.

  Liz looked sadly into the camera, a victim of the establishment. The black part of her Indian makeup was already starting to run under the heat of the studio ligh
ting. Her mind had wandered among all of the lights, but it looked to those in the audience as if she were demonstrating her victimhood. The floor director snapped his fingers to make Liz turn back to the teleprompter.

  “Good evening to the oppressed peoples of the Americas,” she said with her fake Jamaican accent, staring straight into the camera. “I am ‘Crazy As a One-Eyed Mule.’”

  As if to confirm, a crawl appeared directly beneath her in a formal font reading “CRAZY AS A ONE-EYED MULE.”

  “I come as a representative of the Sinon…Sanj…the St. Jonono tribe and the persecuted peoples of the Philippines.”

  “Don’t you mean Jamaica?” Kathy asked, trying to help.

  “That is what I said, white woman,” Liz said, scowling at Kathy. She then returned her innocent gaze to the television cameras. “I seek your vote in the coming election to save this planet from one man. That man, right there,” she said, pointing to Scotty Black.

  “This man, like all white men, tried to fool all of us, even me and it is my job to set the record straight. During his junior year in high school, Scotty Black was charged and convicted of cheating on his chemistry lab report, as has been detailed by bloggers at liberalsrule.com and the Hermitpost. He was sentenced to four weeks of extra schooling. Hold up four fingers.”

  Liz grunted and smiled as she looked at her hand. She finally held up four fingers.

  “I am sad to bring this to your attention,” she said, tearing up. “For the warrior within me yearns…it desires, no…it demands a worthy opponent, not one who cheats on his chemistry lab report in his junior year in high school. That is all.”

  Liz stepped back and lowered her head. The streaking makeup freely dripped down on her costume like black tears.

  “Mister Black!” Kathy yelled, judgment dripping from her microphone. “What do you have to say about Crazy Ass One Eye…”

  “Excuse me?” Liz yelled, returning to the microphone. Any pretense at a Jamaican accent was long forgotten. “Did you just call me Crazy Ass?”

  “Ms. Worn, I…”

  “Don’t call me by my slave name! Don’t you dare call me by my slave name! You will address me by my rightfully earned Santa Joe Anna Native American name!”

  “Yes, Ms. Mule.”

  “That’s better! That’s better! Now, what’s my first name?”

  Kathy paused and looked hopelessly at the camera before looking back at Liz.

  “Crazy Ass?”

  Liz’s eyes opened like saucers. She jumped off the platform and dove over the desk at Kathy. The two disappeared behind the debate table. Scotty Black came down in an attempt to break it up.

  Unfortunately, security didn’t see it that way.

  Off-duty police officers, they had been extensively trained in hate crime legislation and merely saw two liberals — in fact, two liberal women — merely engaged in a heated discussion. But as Scotty Black descended toward the pair, it instantly alerted them to a plethora of potential hate crimes. Male-on-female, white-on-minority (multiple minorities in the case of Liz Worn) and worse: Conservative-on-Liberal.

  Security tackled him from behind, mad glee in their eyes.

  “Taze him!” one guard yelled at the top of his lungs. “I said, taze him, bro!”

  The scene collapsed into chaos, as audience members began throwing water bottles and chairs.

  The producer smiled.

  The debate was a wreck, but she could already see Jerry Springer-sized dollar signs as she ordered the cameras to pull out and record the entire scene.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Stone leapt silently from the passing truck and snuck behind the antique cannon mounted at the front of Manny’s fortress. The car carrying Freya entered the compound, disappearing behind a large gate. Stone took inventory of the situation. Nineteenth-century fortress. Reinforced stone and brick. Four guards at the entrance, with dozens more inside.

  All dressed like ninjas.

  Blast it, Sis! Stone thought. This wasn’t part of the plan.

  It was almost dusk. The sun would not set for another hour, but he didn’t have time to wait. Stone would have to try to meld into the landscape and sneak past the guards. Grabbing a deep breath, Stone centered himself once more and moved toward the fortress.

  Freya was carefully studying the entryway. A relatively modern system, electronics had been crudely strewn across the base rock that formed the foundation of the fortress walls. Freya could feel the cameras as they captured her and, with a little effort, she managed to filter them out. With proper training, the body’s natural electric field was able to interfere with electronic signals, including video signals. So once she felt the cameras’ invisible touch, Freya simply adjusted her field.

  They would now record a blurred streak anytime she was in the frame.

  The taxi stopped in front of a blocked moat entrance and waited for an escort. The entrance had been boarded over sometime in the last twenty years. It looked like the only thing holding up the side posts were multiple layers of brown paint.

  Why anyone would paint wood brown was beyond Freya’s comprehension.

  An armed group of soldiers opened the door and motioned for her to follow them. Two more armed soldiers followed behind, their pistols out of the holster but at their sides. Though the dialect was different, she could understand what they were saying from her time in Spain.

  “He gonna kill her?” the tall one asked.

  “I don’t know. Shut up, Felipe,” the other said.

  “She’s hot,” Felipe said, looking back at her sternly as if he were just trying to make sure she wasn’t attempting to escape. “I want her so bad!”

  “Shut up, Felipe!” the other said. “Tomás wants her alive.”

  “You ask him for a raise yet?” Felipe said. “I hate this black stuff he’s making us wear. It’s too hot. I can’t even see through the little slit in the mask! How am I supposed to kill someone if I can’t see them?”

  “You better just worry about getting that package through. Tomás isn’t as nice as Manny.”

  “It’s not right. My kids make fun of me and call me ‘Ninja Turtle,’” Felipe said. “I don’t like it.”

  Freya saw the door they were approaching at the end of the long hall. As they walked down the hall, she felt a system similar to the cameras she had sensed earlier. But while she had easily managed to block the electronics from the field cameras, whatever this was simply passed through her. She didn’t feel any different and the guards weren’t showing any abnormal effects, so she continued down the hall with them. But as she approached the steel reinforced lead door, she could tell that there was a large electronic device or devices behind it. The small hairs on her arm began to rise the closer she got.

  The guard at the door listened to something on his earpiece before looking at Freya. He opened the door and Freya entered by herself.

  “Have a seat,” Tomás said in English.

  “You left your guards outside,” Freya said.

  “I don’t need them against an unarmed girl,” Tomás said boldly. “That hallway you walked through is full of sensors. I was able to count the number of bobby pins in your hair.”

  “I don’t have any bobby pins,” Freya said.

  “Exactly!” Tomás bragged and then frowned. “The point is that I could have counted them if you had any.”

  Freya just stared at him. “Brilliant,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Tomás walked behind her and allowed himself a glance below her waist.

  “I want to know what a teenage American girl is doing in the company of a known American spy,” Tomás said, reading from the questions Helmut left with him.

  “I’m his partner,” Freya answered honestly.

  “Like a secretary?” Tomás asked, puzzled. Perhaps he had not understood the word the way she meant it. English was tricky like that.

  “No, we are equal partners. We are both trained to kill people,” Freya said and Tomás began laughing.


  “Little girl, you are in my castle. I am the only killer here.”

  “Then you know what they’re trying to smuggle through the border,” Freya said.

  “Of course I do! The king knows everything that happens in his castle, but…” he said, glancing back at the paper of questions, “I would like to know your name.”

  “My what?”

  “Your name. Is it Valerie or Jaime or maybe April? I have always liked the name April.”

  “That’s none of your business. Where is the box you are supposed to deliver?” Freya looked around the room but saw no sign of any package or box. Had it already been shipped?

  Tomás looked down. He would find her name later. “What is your partner’s name?”

  “You haven’t been doing this very long, have you? You’re barely older than I am.”

  Tomás dropped the page in anger. He didn’t need any of the Eurotrash’s silly questions. He would beat the answers out of this American girl. But before he could raise his hand, the fortress alarm rang.

  Tomás walked back to his laptop and motioned at Freya.

  “Stay put!” he ordered, pointing to a spot on the Persian rug. He lifted the lid on his laptop as eight guards rushed into the room, bolting the massive door shut behind them.

  “Secure her,” Tomás ordered, pointing to Freya. “We have an intruder. Ah, it’s your ‘partner.’”

  The guards moved toward Freya. One of the men reached for her arm and then found himself reaching for the Pearly Gates.

  The other guards stared, transfixed at the scene. Felipe had simply reached for the girl’s arm and then fell over like a robot with his switch turned off. Had he had a heart attack?

  While they were confused, Freya moved into their midst. Before they could react, she slid her fingernails beneath their collarbones, disabling the part of their central nervous system that controlled breathing. The men fell to the floor, gasping for air as they tried to manually keep their lungs inflated. They dropped their weapons, flopping on the floor like a basket of fish spilled onto a table at a farmer’s market.

  “What are you doing?” Tomás demanded. He pulled out his pistol and aimed it at her.