No Judgments by Meg Cabot

Author:Meg Cabot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Never venture outside after a storm until local authorities have deemed it safe. Hidden hazards such as damaged electrical equipment can cause life-threatening injuries.

Ed Hartwell threw back the door to his toolshed—the one next to which he’d built the rabbit hutch—and revealed he’d filled almost the entire thing with red plastic canisters of gasoline.

“Wow,” I said, eyeing them. “I’m really glad I didn’t know about this during the storm.”

He didn’t understand why I found the idea of one hundred gallons of fuel sitting in a wood shed during hundred-mile wind gusts upsetting.

“Why?” He grabbed one of the five-gallon canisters. “It’s totally safe. Unless somebody came out here and smoked.”

The problem was, people had been out there smoking during the hurricane party. The canisters had to have been there then, and Ed had never said a word.

I thought it better not to mention this. What was done was done.

After cleaning the leaves and mud off my motorbike, then topping it off with fuel, Ed had a few pieces of parting advice for me.

“Anyone waves to you, don’t stop,” he said. “No matter how desperate they look for help. They’re probably only after your bike.”

“Jeez, Ed,” I said. “This is Little Bridge, not The Walking Dead. Do you really think that’s going to happen?”

“It might,” he said. “That’s why, just in case, you might want to bring this along.”

He rolled up a pants leg and revealed that he wore an ankle holster. Tucked inside was a snub-nosed .22.

I recoiled at the sight of it.

“Ed. No. No way.”

Of course I’d heard the rumors that Ed Hartwell walked around armed. For what other reason, Angela often argued, would a sixty-five-year-old man in reasonably good health wear a fanny pack, if not to hold a small pistol? His wallet, keys, and cell phone weren’t in it. We could clearly see the outlines of those things in the back pockets of his jeans.

We knew that ever since Wilhelmina, when the Mermaid’s cash register and meat slicer had been looted, Ed had begun keeping a pistol strapped beneath the counter, near the pie window display.

I’d been told, however, that he’d never had occasion to use it, due to the frequency with which members of law enforcement dined at the Mermaid.

But now I had incontrovertible proof that Angela was right: Ed was packing heat, only not in his “bum bag,” as the British tourists we frequently served referred to fanny packs, but in an ankle holster.

“Ed,” I said. “I’m literally only going across town. I do not need a gun.”

“Do you know how to fire one?” he asked, ignoring me.

The funny thing was, I did. You did not grow up the daughter of Judge Justine and a Manhattan defense attorney without, at some point, being taken to a gun range and offered target lessons by one of their well-meaning if dodgy clients. My dad, in particular, had defended some fairly reprehensible individuals—old-school mafiosos, dirty politicians, Russian mobsters, hired killers.

But that didn’t mean I hadn’t enjoyed the lessons. Especially the part where everyone had praised me for turning out to be an excellent shot.

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