Ransom X

  *****

  There were voices in the hallway minutes before six o'clock. Chess heard the muffled sounds and lost all concentration on her homework. The conversation was now stationary parked just outside of her door. Now that was unusual. That doorway was a no-talking zone. Moreover, alongside her father’s hushed baritone was a woman’s voice. Chess looked around the room for some sign that the universe at large had been altered in some kind of fundamental way. Before she could fully develop an alternate reality theory that allowed for her father to be talking to women outside of the door of their home, the clock struck six. The locks twisted and released, a percussive progression in perfect 3/4 time. Legacy either had an unconscious devotion to the waltz or a driving need to keep those in straight time waiting for that extra beat.

  There was a pause before the door opened, for Chess it was like the tides had failed to pull in the next wave, and the shock didn’t end there. An additional surprise occurred after the door opened. As Legacy entered she could hear footsteps trailing away. It was all but impossible. It wasn’t a chance conversation or brief hallway greeting; someone had actually walked him to his door, and then departed. Legacy never allowed anything to intrude upon his routine. The door closed with a sharp click. Her father walked up and wrapped her up in a warm hug.

  “OK now this is getting creepy.” She said in a subversive teenage tone. Legacy nodded noncommittally, he agreed that the world was a pretty creepy place today. It was getting better when Chess extended her arms around him and squeezed back. “What’s up with you today?”

  He accepted the fatherly embrace but he must have noticed tension running through her wrists. Chess moved quickly to insure her advantage of surprise, she locked her hands in the small of Legacy’s back and using a Judo move she leaned heavily on her right leg, pulling back her left, to shift his weight.

  Chess was top in her class and it was a maneuver that sent her other classmates flying, but with Legacy, it barely rocked him back and forth, turning their hug into a dance. “Almost.” He said, kissing her forehead.

  “Do you have time tonight?” Legacy said pulling back with his hands on her shoulders. “We could go to the range –”

  “The general rule is that we only go on the weekends.” Chess must have seen something in her father’s expression that made her want to give him a break.

  Legacy thought back later that it must have been something pretty strong, because the teenage girl’s response threshold for giving their father a break is almost insurmountable. Instead of offering more resistance, she changed the topic - “Other kids go bowling with their parents.” And made a gun with her forefinger and thumb.

  “Other kid’s parents take them to the Ice Capades, do you want to start doing that?” Legacy played upon Chess' deep dislike for anything kitsch or tacky.

  “What’s going on?” Chess asked.

  “I want to see my daughter shoot. Is there anything more natural than that?” Legacy replied.

  Chess stopped and seemed to be thinking it over, there were probably many things wrong with what he’d said, but she wasn’t in the mood for being difficult. Or was she? “Who was out in the hallway? I only ask because I’m not old enough to control my impulse to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I have a new case, a live one.”

  Chess slipped on her jacket and headed for the door, “If you have something important to do at work you can stay there after hours. You know that.”

  Legacy’s voice dipped into a deep baritone, “Nothing will ever be more important than family.” He knew that his choice of words left Chess a void to fill in a word in her head. Legacy noticed Chess pause in thought.

  “Again.” Was the word that rattled around the minds of both father and daughter.

  They walked out of the house; Legacy patted his jacket feeling for his empty holster. He checked his own sidearm out of the cage everyday when he arrived at work and checked it back in on the way out the door. He would pick up Chess' 38 from the gun locker he had at the range.

  Legacy only allowed one gun in the house and it was fingerprint coded to he and Chess alone. There was a microchip in the butt of the gun that wouldn’t unlock the firing mechanism unless it recognized the finger on the trigger from a three directional laser scan that took under a quarter of a second to process. The gun made a decision faster than the owner could squeeze the trigger. Legacy had spent three year’s bonuses on the technology in that gun and it had never been fired.