Outcasts: All good things... (The Outlaw Book 4) by A.L. Janney

Author:A.L. Janney [Janney, A.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sparkle Press
Published: 2016-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

What say you?

Pro patria mori

“He’s insane,” Katie remarked. Her voice sounded tight with repressed grief. We lay on the bed in her cabin, scanning the Chemist’s email. It was now several days old. The Chemist had attached a photograph of Andy Babington lying unconscious on a table, surrounded by grisly surgical instruments. “Poor Andy.”

I shook my head in frustration and glared at the screen. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

“A little, yes. La Barre was a French martyr, killed for his religious beliefs. I think the body of the email is a translation of the court’s decision against La Barre.”

I sucked at my teeth in thought. “So the Chemist is calling himself a martyr.”

“Yes.”

Puck spoke up from my speakerphone. “He refers to you as Duval do Soicourt. I looked him up. Duval is the judge that condemned Le Barre to death.”

I made a Pfft noise. “The Chemist thinks I’m the one persecuting him?”

“That’s how the email reads,” Puck said. “But the dumb-ass condemns Andy with La Barre’s court decision. So he’s getting his martyrs confused.”

“In this email, the Chemist is both the judge and the victim,” said Katie. “It’s either clever, or he’s insane.”

“Puck, you can’t tell where he sent this from?”

“No. It has zero digital signatures, a very impressive feat.”

“Would sending the email to the FBI help? Could they find something?”

“…for the sake of our friendship, Puck will pretend you did not ask that.”

“What does Pro Patria Mori mean?”

Katie replied, “A rough translation is, ‘It is good to die for one’s country.’ That’s his one clear advantage over you. He’s a zealot. He’s willing to die for his cause.”

“I’m not willing to die for Andy. Right? Should I be?”

“I don’t know.” She rested her head on my shoulder and stroked my arm. “Maybe not?”

“Self-discipline,” I said. “I won’t throw my life away on a small battlefield.”

“Is an innocent human life a small battlefield?”

“Unless you are the innocent human life, it’s tiny.”

She shook her head minutely, tears leaking onto my arm. “You’ve got to stop thinking that way. I’m your weakness.” She caught a sob before it escaped her lungs, and she rolled over, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “This is lunacy. I miss English class. I should be getting ready for the spring Model UN competition. I was totally going to win this year. Instead, my boyfriend I are debating whether he should die or not.”

“Like our own private debate club.”

“That’s not funny,” Katie sniffed. “I miss my debate club too. I was the captain of our team. And I was going to be valedictorian!” She pounded the bed with her fists. Her tiny, perfect, nerdy fists. She shouted at the ceiling, “I already had half my speech composed!”

“You had half your speech written in December?”

“Of course!” She went to the bathroom, which Samantha called ‘the head’, and blew her nose.

“Puck, write him back. Ask what it would take for him to release Andy.”

“Sure homie,” he replied. “Although maybe you could just ask his wife.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.