AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alpha
“Daddy, I miss Mommy,” four-year-old Laurel Lee said as she and her father left the diner, stepping out into the steamy summer night. The air was still and humid and it instantly enveloped them, replacing the coolness from the air conditioner in the diner. Smoke hung like dense fog, which made breathing difficult. Dumpsters had been set on fire throughout the neighborhood again, the fourth night in a row.
“I know honey,” her father, Denzel Lee, said, scooping her up and into his arms. “I miss her too.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. Sweat instantly formed where her skin touched his.
Denzel carried her as he walked the block to the alleyway that ran behind their home. Sirens wailed from several directions, a few dogs barked, and air conditioners hummed. Those sounds would be forever etched in Laurel’s mind. Those sounds and the gunshots.
Halfway down the alley, a group of men approached the pair. Denzel Lee knew who the men were. They were trouble and they were most likely there, waiting for him. He wouldn’t turn back, though. They wouldn’t hurt him with his daughter there. They were thugs, but they didn’t hurt children.
Denzel was wrong.
“I’m told you didn’t get the message, Lee,” the man he knew to be the ringleader said. He stood in front of the pair now. “Are you that brave or that stupid?”
“There are good people in this neighborhood, people with families that are fighting to keep it a decent place to live,” Denzel Lee said. “You can have your working girls out on the streets, sell the shit you sell on every other corner, but Christ, leave the kids alone. Leave the church and the old people alone too. And put the word out that the stores are off limits. Two grocery stores are done, we only have one left and a few liquor stores with convenience items in them. Where are people going to go to buy food if that one goes out too? There are too many boarded-up buildings as it is. They serve no purpose besides giving the homeless a place to squat and the junkies a place to shoot up.” Denzel’s voice was impassioned and pleading. “Even you have to see that a thriving neighborhood is a better business opportunity for you than one that is dying.”
“Funny that you use the word dying. You ain’t welcome here. We don’t want the people in this neighborhood all stirred up and feeling brave from your stupid-ass speeches. And after you’re gone, no one else will speak up. You and your wife will be remembered all right, but not for changing anything. Her blood is on your hands,” he said and then paused as he smiled sadistically. “Or on the hood of my car, as it was.”
Realization dawned on Denzel Lee. La Vonn Jefferson pulled his thirty-eight special and pointed it at Denzel’s head.
Denzel put his daughter down. “Run to the diner! Laurel! Run!”
The little girl ran back up the alley in the direction from which they’d come. She was only feet away when she heard the gunshot. She turned back as she continued to run and saw that her father was now lying on the ground. She tripped and fell, cutting her head on a broken beer bottle, but she got up and she ran faster, rounding the corner. She ran right into a man and let out a shriek.
“Shots fired, shots fired, eighteen hundred block of Washington!” beat cop Charles Saxton broadcast. “It’s okay, sweetie,” he said, bending down to pick the crying child up.
His partner beside him drew his service weapon and peeked around the corner. He saw the downed man lying half-way up the alley and he’d caught but a glimpse of the backs of two men as they rounded the corner near the end of the short alley. He transmitted the update and called in more units and an ambulance.
The ambulance was unnecessary and was replaced by the coroner.
Twenty-Five Years Later
First Lieutenant Laura Lee Saxton, U.S. Army, reported to her CO’s office as ordered. She had an idea what he wanted to see her about. She had requested a transfer. Her yearly eval that she’d received two weeks earlier ranked her performance at the top of the scale. Even so, she had been denied a higher rank due to other criteria, which she believed were subjective and impacted because her CO and many of her co-workers didn’t like her. That, coupled with the fact that her unit had just been notified they’d be deploying to work on projects in Africa, made Saxton want a transfer anywhere.
She was the only woman on her squad that consisted of eight engineers. She was one of two electrical engineers in her work group. The other was male. He’d just made captain. And he had always been assigned the better, higher-profile projects and been assigned as lead. Of course, he made captain before she did. It may be the twenty-first century, but it was still the boys’ club and women were still treated as less by their male counterparts. It was infuriating.
Laura Lee had worked her butt off both in college and in the Army. She’d gone the ROTC route, taking the scholarships that carried with them an obligation of service after she’d earned her degree. She had two years left on her obligation of active duty.
She arrived in the outer office and greeted her CO’s admin, seated at his desk outside the closed door that led into the lieutenant colonel’s office. “Hi Sean, he summoned me,” she greeted the private, first class, who she knew well. “Got any idea what it’s about?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I honestly don’t know, Laura. But he isn’t alone in there. Some female captain is with him and she’s not from this command.”
“Oh, crap, this can’t be good,” Laura Lee remarked as Sean got up from his chair and approached the door.
He knocked.
From within, Laura Lee heard the lieutenant colonel. “Come.”
She watched Sean crack the door open.
“Lieutenant Saxton is here, sir,” Sean said.
“Send her in,” the lieutenant colonel said.
