King of War Tech novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Taken Phone

Imogen looked at the chief's open hand.

Then she looked at me.

I gave her the smallest nod I had.

She laid the phone in his palm.

"Cards," he said.

She counted four cards onto his hand, then the car key and the office pass.

"Now the papers."

He turned toward the desk, where the statements lay.

Marjorie moved faster than I had seen her move in three years.

She scooped the pages together with her left hand and swung the cane with her right.

It struck the chief's sling arm at the elbow, where the bone was still mending.

He howled, a high, ugly sound, and the phone dropped out of his fist.

Nobody in the room moved.

"Touch my son's papers again," Marjorie said, "and the next one lands on the good arm."

The two strangers looked at Stellan.

Stellan stood with his hands in his pockets and did not look bothered.

"Keep them, Mother," he said. "Paper doesn't last long against a doctor's signature."

"A woman who hears her dead son in a phone call and makes a scene in his bedroom should see someone about that."

"Noon," he told me. "Not a minute after."

He left, and his men took the chief out between them, still cursing.

Marjorie slid the statements into the envelope and pushed it into my hands.

"Take these to the only man in a uniform I trust," she said.

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