Lit Fuse (A Tanner Novel Book 44) Read online

  Lit Fuse

  A Tanner Novel - Book 44

  Remington Kane

  Contents

  Introduction

  Join My Inner Circle

  Acknowledgments

  1. Eat The Rich

  2. Going Back To Cali

  3. Wrong Place, Wrong Time

  4. Change Of Plans

  5. From Bad To Worse

  6. Shoot-Out

  7. Taking Out The Trash

  8. Escape Into Madness

  9. Batter Up

  10. No Shelter From The Storm

  11. Useful Idiots

  12. Follow The Arrows

  13. Idiot No More

  14. Come And Get It

  15. The Gauntlet

  16. Tables Turned

  17. Revelation

  18. Truth And Consequences

  19. Love In The Dark

  20. Into The Wrong Hands

  21. The Way Of The World

  22. Dead Or Alive

  23. The Truth Comes Out

  24. Seek And Ye Shall Find

  25. The Shack

  26. Who Was That Masked Man?

  27. I’ll Trade You

  28. Pointing Fingers

  29. Passing Sentence

  30. Unsung Hero

  NEXT BOOK

  Afterword

  Join My Inner Circle

  Bibliography

  Coming Soon

  Make Contact

  Introduction

  LIT FUSE – A TANNER NOVEL – BOOK 44

  Tanner finds himself in a city being torn apart by a riot.

  Join My Inner Circle

  REMINGTON KANE’S INNER CIRCLE

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  Acknowledgments

  I write for you.

  —Remington Kane

  1

  Eat The Rich

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  Joshua Mullins spotted a guy wearing an expensive suit as he was dropping his passenger off at the airport’s departure terminal. Joshua worked for a company named People Pick-up, which was a competitor to Uber. He had spent close to an hour weaving his car through heavy traffic and made what amounted to chump change. Once you subtracted his fuel costs, the percentage of his monthly car payment, and the wear and tear on the vehicle, Joshua figured he made less money than the guy in the fancy suit had paid for the high-priced coffee he was carrying.

  Joshua’s passenger, who herself was dressed rather smartly and wearing diamond jewelry, slammed the back door of his car as she got out. On the ride to the airport, she had been acting as if the traffic was Joshua’s fault and kept telling him he should have taken a different route.

  Joshua had kept his cool and hadn’t argued. There was no point in arguing. He had learned that lesson as a child. People will do what they want to do and will blame you for situations they themselves created. Joshua was able to recognize this trait in others, but not in himself.

  If the woman wanted to get to the airport with plenty of time to make her flight, she should have left her hotel earlier, like before rush hour on a Friday. Maybe then she wouldn’t be in such a hurry.

  As expected, the woman stiffed him on the tip. Joshua was sure she’d also leave a negative review on the app. If anyone was looking at him, they would think he was calm. They would be wrong. There was hatred simmering inside Joshua Mullins. That animus was born from a union of envy and frustration.

  Joshua was a white male who had a degree in economics from a respected university. If history, statistics, and popular culture were to be believed, Joshua should be one of the privileged, or on his way to becoming one. Instead, he was twenty-six and lived in a small space that had once been a detached garage. Years after graduating from college he’d yet to find a position in the field he’d studied and was working at a job that required no training. He owed eighty-seven thousand dollars in student loans and had credit card and auto loan debt that took a good chunk of his income to keep current.

  Despite having decent looks and being in good shape, Joshua didn’t do well with women. Most women didn’t want guys like Joshua who barely made enough to buy them a meal at a fast-food restaurant. They wanted men like the guy in the expensive suit who could treat them to weekend trips on Catalina Island. They wanted rich men.

  But he couldn’t complain. Of late, he did have a girlfriend; one he had met at a protest rally directed at police violence. Joshua hadn’t been a part of the rally. He had been riding his bike and stopped to see what all the noise was about. That was when he met a woman with dyed blue hair, and they began talking. Her name was Haley. She wasn’t a long-legged blonde, but she was cute, only twenty-two, and Joshua liked being around her. It was thanks to Haley that he’d grown a social conscience.

  Joshua followed the guy in the suit out of curiosity. He could tell the suit was expensive by the way it fit the man like a second skin. That suit was tailored, made of wool, and had to cost more than Joshua cleared in a month.

  The man was about forty, in good condition, had curly dark hair, and was getting looks from most of the women he passed. Predictably, the guy drove a Mercedes. It was a sporty red convertible.

  The car was parked at the end of a row in the long-term parking lot. Joshua pulled to the curb near the fence and watched as the man placed his lone suitcase inside the car’s trunk. When his phone rang, the man answered it in a deep voice that carried well.

  “This is Charles Kensington.” The man smiled as he listened to his caller, then spoke again. “Yes, Anthony, I was told to expect your call. I just arrived back in town and look forward to our meeting on Monday.” Kensington did more listening as he walked around and got into his vehicle. His next words were swallowed up as he closed the door on the car. With nothing better to do, Joshua continued to follow him.

  Charles Kensington, Joshua mused. Even the prick’s name sounds rich.

  Kensington lived in a gated community. It was one that Joshua was familiar with because he had picked up customers there before. The homes in the community cost a million dollars or more. When the revolution began in earnest, Joshua would make it a point to tear down those gates and burn the homes.

  He filed away the information in his mind and headed back the way he had come. He was done working and was looking forward to gathering at a bar with his friends.

  They were people like himself. Most had gone to college, studied hard, gotten good grades, and entered the marketplace to find there weren’t many decent jobs around. What well-paying jobs did exist were handed out to relatives or those with other connections. If you didn’t know someone who could set you up in a better position, you wound up working as a barista, bartender, a waiter, or as a glorified cabbie, as Joshua did.

  If you went to work for a fast-food restaurant or a retailer you were rarely offered full time employment, because they didn’t want to have to offer you benefits.

  Joshua knew a dozen people like himself who had degrees and were doing jobs that used to be filled by high school dropouts. Meanwhile, men like Charles Kensington and the rude woman he’d driven to the airport became richer every year.

  Joshua was sick and tired of the inequality, and so were his friends. In the beginning, there were about a dozen of them. They would go to protest rallies and gather signatures on petitions. Later, as their numbers grew, there were over a hundred of them.

  Joshua grinned as he remembered how they had brought traffic to a standstill on the highway several weeks earlier. By doing so, they had caused the president’s motorcade to take a different route. That helped them make the news and brought attention to their group. It al
so resulted in twenty-nine of them spending the night in jail. Joshua hadn’t been one of them. He and Haley had managed to get away with three others and make it back to his car.

  It had cost him two hundred dollars to chip in on the bail for his friends who were arrested, but it had been worth it. The media attention had gotten them a sponsor of sorts. Joshua wasn’t aware of who it was, but whoever they were, they had money, and they had used some of it to help them.

  The group was given a place to hold meetings. It was a bar that had seen better days and was up for sale. It had been the type of place where factory workers would go after their shifts were done. Joshua’s own father, Richard Mullins had been one of those men back in the day. The factories were gone, and so were most of the workers. The new residents in the area bought their beer at the supermarket and were more likely to get high on drugs instead of booze.

  The old building made for a good hangout. It had a huge flat-screen TV, and the bar was kept stocked by their benefactor, who also footed the bill for what they called their uniforms, which were leather vests. Many of the guys wore them without shirts while the women wore them over their tops. They also had white ski caps that could be pulled down to cover their faces.

  Along with the money came assistance. A woman named Naya Powers was in charge now. Everyone liked her, and Joshua had to admit, he had a crush on Naya. She was about his age, had long dark hair, and gray eyes that looked right through you. If she was an American, she hadn’t grown up in the US, because she had a slight accent that was German. Naya was a serious person and made sure that everyone was as dedicated as she was to the cause. Whenever she smiled at him, Joshua would feel his knees go weak.

  Naya was the only one who knew the name of the person helping them. Sometimes, Joshua wondered if it wasn’t Naya herself. No one knew anything about her. She just showed up after the group had been on the news for closing down the highway.

  She’d said she represented someone who was sympathetic to their cause and wanted to help the organization grow. They had grown all right. There were so many new faces around that Joshua couldn’t keep track of their names. Haley could though, and she and Naya had become friendly. That was one of the things Joshua loved about Haley, her outgoingness. She was good at making friends and everyone liked her. In contrast, Joshua was the quiet type. Haley complemented him well.

  Before they were being sponsored, the group just thought of themselves as anarchists or rebels. Now they had a name. They called themselves, “Die Fistulous.” No one seemed to know what it meant but because Naya had a German accent, and the word “die” in German could translate to the word “the” in English, Haley figured that Die Fistulous was German for The Fist, or something like that. Joshua liked it and the name had caught on with the media. They were Die Fistulous, The Fist, and like a fist they would knock out their opponents.

  During the last protest rally they attended in San Francisco, everyone in the group was paid to attend and were transported to it for free on buses. They also received money for food, and someone had brought along beer and weed. It was like a big party. Joshua had to admit that not all rich people were assholes. The one helping them wasn’t, that was for sure.

  Joshua thought he was going to be one of the first ones at the bar, but the streets were full of vehicles, and he had to park his car three blocks away. Haley would already be inside. She only lived two miles from the bar. She’d either get a lift from one of her two roommates or take the bus.

  He found Haley in a corner of the large room holding a bottle of beer and talking to some of the new people. There were six of them and they were three couples. One of the couples was gay, one black, and the last couple looked like teenagers. The boy was short but muscular, while his girlfriend was skinny with a model’s face. Joshua thought they were high school kids but learned they had both just dropped out of college.

  He wished he had dropped out early on. He would owe a lot less money if he had. That was okay. When the revolution happened, all debts would be forgiven.

  Naya didn’t show up until the place was packed with people. Haley took a rough head count and said that there were over two hundred and fifty people. Die Fistulous was growing. Someday it would be too big to ignore.

  Naya climbed up onto the bar to speak and the crowd cheered her, then grew hush to let her talk. Naya’s smile lit up the old tavern as she looked at the faces in the crowd.

  “Hello, my friends. It’s good to see so many of you here.”

  Naya’s voice was melodious, and a bit husky. Joshua thought she would do well as a late-night radio talk show host. There was a chorus of greetings back at her. When she raised up a hand, the group became quiet again.

  “As you all know, there’s an important trial beginning on Monday north of here in the city of San Padre. It looks like the jury may get to deliberate on the case by late next week. Die Fistulous will be there, outside the courthouse. If the jury returns the wrong verdict, all hell will break loose.”

  The gathering erupted with shouts of agreement and the shouted phrase, “No justice, no peace!”

  The trial referenced by Naya concerned the death of a six-year-old child. Her name was Sharonda Washington. She’d been struck by a Ferrari driven by Kyle Anderson. Sharonda Washington was black and poor, Anderson was white and the twenty-four-year-old son of a plastic surgeon who catered to Hollywood’s elite.

  Little Sharonda had been hit by the Ferrari as she ran into the street chasing after a ball. Instead of stopping to see if the girl was all right, Anderson took off. He returned to the scene thirty-one minutes later with his father, Dr. Ben Anderson. Kyle Anderson claimed that he hadn’t fled the scene of the accident but had gone to get his father instead, so Sharonda would get immediate medical assistance.

  As one media pundit quipped. “The child didn’t need a facelift; she needed an ambulance.”

  Sharonda was dead by the time Dr. Anderson arrived at the scene. It’s estimated that Kyle Anderson struck her while going over fifty miles an hour in a thirty-five mile an hour zone. Video taken after the accident appears to show Anderson being more concerned about the dent in his car than he was about the child he’d injured. One of Anderson’s uncles was a United States senator, while his late grandfather had been a former longtime mayor of San Padre. Anderson’s aunt was the city’s current mayor, and her husband ran the city’s newspaper.

  Anderson’s lawyers claimed that Anderson didn’t flee the crime scene, but that he went to get help from the best doctor he knew, his father. When asked why Anderson didn’t stay at the scene and summon his father on the phone, the lawyers stated that such questions would be addressed at trial. That trial was soon to begin, and the case was expected to be handed off to the jury within a few days.

  Naya jabbed a finger at the crowd and most of the noise died down. “There will be justice. We will see to it. If Kyle Anderson is found innocent of the hit and run charge, we will make the authorities aware that there are consequences for injustice.”

  Someone raised a hand. He was a tall black guy Joshua didn’t recognize.

  Naya pointed at him. “Do you have a question?”

  “Yeah. There are going to be cops everywhere at that courthouse.” The man looked around. “There’s a lot of people here, but not enough to deal with the cops and their tear-gas and attack dogs. They’ll probably just throw us all in jail.”

  Naya smirked at the man before scanning the crowd. “We have guests with us tonight. Would you all join me?”

  People started moving toward the front. In all, there were about thirty of them. They were the people Joshua had thought were new recruits because none of them wore vests. Half of them joined Naya up on the bar while the others stood in front of it. Naya beamed at the crowd.

  “These are my partners. Like me, they have their own Die Fistulous groups in different towns and cities across the state. We are not hundreds—we are thousands. They don’t have enough police officers to handle us. When the verdi
ct comes in and they try to set Kyle Anderson free, we will be there to get the justice little Sharonda Washington deserves, and we will burn that city to the ground.” Naya thrust a fist into the air. “No justice, no peace!”

  The chant went up and filled the old bar. Joshua thrust his own fist in the air and joined in. Thousands, Naya had said. They were an army. And like an army, they would conquer.

  2

  Going Back To Cali

  STARK, TEXAS

  Saturday morning found Cody Parker in the ranch house’s kitchen having breakfast. He was with his live-in housekeeper, Franny Facini, his wife, Sara, and his two children, Lucas, and Marian.

  Cody saw the sadness in Franny’s eyes before she revealed what had caused it. Franny had excused herself from the table after she’d received a call. When she returned to the kitchen, it was obvious by her demeanor that the call had relayed bad news to her.

  “Is everything all right, Franny?” Sara asked.

  Franny looked at the children and forced a smile onto her lips, but her blue eyes remained sad. They were also reddened, as if she’d been crying.