Caribbean Rain Read Free Page A

restaurant. The first man was shorter than the other, and much thicker, but both were carrying large handguns, Berettas maybe. The taller man held one of the waitresses around the neck, moving his gun to the side of her head.
    “Everyone stay where you are and you get to leave on your feet,” he yelled, his voice deep and tinted with a Latino accent.
    The short man scanned the breakfast crowd and honed in on Manny. He then strode toward him, raising his weapon.
    “Ah. Detective Williams. Are you ready to meet your maker?”

Chapter-3
     
    He stood, leaning against the antique, mahogany armoire, looking at his calloused hands. He turned them over and over, reflecting on what they were capable of and what they had already efficiently completed. Never had it entered his thoughts that they, or he, would be so important to “the work.” He’d traveled a path like so many others who thought education was the trail to illumination. But in the end, he’d been wrong. His supposedly enlightened professors and colleagues understood nothing concerning what it took to accomplish a gallant endeavor; they lived and died with theory. And his mission, his purpose, was nothing, if not gallant.
    When he’d set his sights on a college education, despite his humble beginnings in Chicago, he’d thought of nothing else. Each day, he consumed what his teachers were serving. Each night, he read until his mother ambled into his room to his warped, two-drawer dresser to shut off the cracked tiffany lamp that glowed bright then dim from the short in the wiring. But it was enough.
    She’d kiss him and tell him to go to sleep. But there were nights when he wasn’t ready. Nights where the book he had been reading had taken his mind, his emotion, his imagination to an exciting new destination, and he simply had to finish. On those nights, he’d pull out the old, yellow flashlight from under his mattress, cover his head with the tattered quilt, and continue reading until he’d finished, or had fallen asleep trying. Several times, the sun was peeking through his window when he closed his eyes. He knew his mother knew, but she wanted him to read, to learn. He loved her for it. They didn’t have much, but they had that.
    Then it all ended so abruptly, he’d barely had time to understand. His mom had stabbed a man at the bar where she worked when he tried to steal her purse that held the month’s rent. The man died, and his mom went away for twenty years; and in essence, so did he, becoming a victim of Chicago’s foster care system. He rarely stayed more than six months in any one home. Some of the families were kind; some were not. But he hung in there and finally hooked up in one place long enough to finish high school.
    But he’d more than finished, hadn’t he? He carried a perfect 4.0 through some thirteen schools, and it had earned him an Ivy League scholarship.
    A few months later, he was on his way to the East Coast and brave new worlds.
    After his first year of college, he’d spent a summer in Puerto Rico, doing volunteer work at El Yunque National Rainforest. The first time he laid eyes on her, he knew what he wanted to do. It had become as apparent as those almost-mystical revelations could be. He was going to take care of El Yunque. Educate people regarding her. It was the reason he had been born, and more importantly, he knew it.
    Finishing his undergraduate degree, flawlessly and in less than three years, had set up his graduate career, and by the time he reached his twenty-fourth birthday, he was a full-fledged doctor of environmental science. His research papers and subsequent dissertation regarding rainforest habitat destruction and utility had met with international acclaim. So much so that he’d been the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Science and Technology two years in a row, an accomplishment that had never been achieved before. One of his speeches included a session on how human interaction in El