Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) Read Free

little turns.
    I’ll show you what I mean.
    It started off like any other day and went off the track faster than you could smack an emergency shutdown switch. But that’s okay! Like I said, life does that. But this wasn’t an actual emergency shutdown switch-flip situation. That would have been bad. This looked good when it showed up. Real good.
    Edward Cavanagh made Elon Musk look lazy and unambitious by comparison. That morning, Cavanagh came wandering down the factory floor in a storm of activity. Guy like him makes noise everywhere he goes—paparazzi, girlfriends, hangers-on, bodyguards, yes-men—yeah, he’s got an entourage. If you were a billionaire-genius-playboy-philanthropist in the mold of Tony Stark, you’d have one, too. He was a medium-height, medium-build, heading-toward-middle-age white guy.
    “Oh, damn,” Lawton Evers said. Lawton was one of the guys on my line. I’d known him forever. Dude was three years ahead of me in school. “Big boss is here.”
    “Look who he’s got with him,” said Eduardo Tomas. I didn’t know much about Tomas; he was new to my little fiefdom. (Yes, I think of my team as a fiefdom. Not like they’re serfs or anything, but like … you know, there isn’t really any favorable way to slice this. Carry on.)
    I saw who Cavanagh had with him. Cordell Weldon, a.k.a the reason the press hadn’t so much as whispered the word “gentrification” when Cavanagh announced that he was opening a new, clean, ultra-modern factory right in the middle of a heavily minority area. Weldon was City Council, a big wheel in the community, in tight with all the right pastors, in deep with the community leaders—the man was revered. He’d delivered more for people in the area than the USPS. (No, really, our service was terrible. Like they couldn’t read street names or something, I don’t know.)
    “Man, the three full rings of the circus are moving this way,” Lawton said, his voice in a drawl. “You think we’re about to get a photo opportunity?”
    I could see the camera flashes going off around Edward Cavanagh and Cordell Weldon. There wasn’t any paper, news blog, website or Twitter feed in the city that wouldn’t love to have an interview with pictures from those two titans of Atlanta. If the mayor had been present, I think the political universe of Hotlanta would have imploded right there from all the damned gravity in the room. Like the trifecta between money, influence and … uhh … more money and influence. I guess it’s like a difecta.
    And it’s not like those guys were bad! They were good guys, who did good things. Cavanagh had scholarships all through the community now. (I missed them by six months when I was in school. But it’s all good! He was going to pay for my college anyhow, now.) Honestly, I kinda wanted to be Cavanagh. Except for being white. Not really a trade-off I was prepared to make—home, family, all that. Not worth giving up, especially when I was convinced that I could make my own money. Maybe not billions like him, but enough that I’d be happy. That my family would be happy.
    Yes, Mary, I was gonna make it after all.
    What? TV Land played reruns at night, and when I couldn’t sleep, I’d watch them. Mary Tyler Moore was cute, okay?
    Cavanagh walked with a swagger, like you’d expect a billionaire to. I’ll admit it: I watched YouTube videos, and sometimes, I might have practiced walking like he did. Maybe a little bit. Cordell Weldon walked slower, more measured. He was older than Cavanagh by a little, dark skin and all serious. Dude had a bald head, too, and rocked it like Samuel L. Jackson. He smiled for the cameras, but it was a serious smile. Cordell Weldon was all business, man with a mission.
    And I just about crapped myself when they made their way to my line.
    “Right this way,” Lawton said under his breath. The whole line was watching. “They’re coming right over here.”
    “Then you ought to be working,” I said, surprising