Got To Be A Hero (The Accidental Hero Series Book 1)

by Paul Duffau

  The military, of course, had a whole series of less benign uses for thermite.

  “Yeah, I was hoping you could handle that, too. Electronic, though, not chemical. Plus I need to borrow the bot and make a few modifications.”

  His eyes strayed to the paper bag containing the Faradays. How to get control of the communications?

  Hunter did not answer. Mitch glanced up to find Hunter regarding him with curiosity.

  “Sounds like you’re planning for a war, bro, and if you’re going to drag me into it, I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Remember when you said I was screwed?” Mitch asked. “That too many people knew? I thought you meant you and Kenzie—”

  “That’s her name? Kenzie?” asked Hunter.

  Mitch mentally cursed his verbal slip. The near-exhaustion was making him stupid. He had no choice now but to answer truthfully or he’d lose the help he needed.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding.

  “Do I get to meet her?”

  The subtle anxiousness in Hunter’s voice caused a suspicion to form in Mitch.

  “Why?” he asked. Immediately, he regretted the question.

  “You got major trust issues,” said Hunter. He snorted in amusement. “You think I’m going to steal your girl?”

  Didn’t until a second ago, thought Mitch.

  “Another guy showed up last night,” he said, deflecting away from the subject. Quickly, he recounted the events of the previous evening, highlighting the threat to him, but keeping Jackson out of it. He also skipped over Mercury’s presence in the whole affair. He finished by explaining his suspicions about his and Kenzie’s tainted cell phones.

  “Hell, you need a couple of burner phones. No problem.”

  “Two problems. First, the cost, and second, more importantly, the second I buy phones this Lassiter dude’s going to know. He’d be stupid to not keep me under some sort of electronic surveillance. He might even have somebody watching the house, for all I know.”

  Hunter flashed a broad smile. “But he’s not going to be watching me, is he? I can buy the phones for you through a shell account and drop one off for you and another at this Kenzie chick’s house.”

  The worrisome feeling about Hunter and Kenzie strengthened.

  “No,” Mitch said. “If they’re watching her house, they’ll see you. Right now, you’re in the shadows.”

  “I can take care of myself,” said Hunter, with a meaningful motion of his hand.

  “Yeah, no,” said Mitch. “Forgot to tell you that they can detect whatever the energy is that you use, and I doubt that you can stop a thirty ought six slug mid-flight.”

  Hunter blanched at the mention of Lassiter’s ability to know when magic was in use.

  “Meat can tell when magic is applied? No way—”

  “I watched it happen, dude.” Mitch said it in a flat voice, with no emotion. Let Hunter believe what he wanted, but Mitch was there. “And stop with the ‘Meat’ comments already.”

  “I want to know how he can tell when one of us summons. You don’t know what he really wants?”

  “Just that it’s some kind of data storage. I’d guess that it’ll be encrypted, but I don’t know what the physical form is, or what the heck is on it. It’s almost certainly related to tech,” he said, not offering the information about Kenzie’s mother.

  Hunter fell silent. He paced away two steps, turned, and paced back. “I’ll pass this on to my father, but I think you have an ally.”

  Chapter 37

  Kenzie dismissed Jackson—she’d catch hell for that when her mother discovered it—and searched the house while her parents were out.

  She started in her mother’s study. Before entering, she scanned for alarm or capture spells. Eyes half closed, and without quite knowing how she did it, she let her sense of magic wander along the frame of the French doors. The desk, set under the window, dominated the room with its broad and Spartan work area and trio of drawers on each side, forming a stout box. A touch of vertigo swirled around her as she “saw” both the dust particles coating the top of the white trim and, through the door, a computer passively occupying the center of the handcrafted mahogany desk. The sensation passed as she closed her eyes entirely and finished her exploration.

  Nothing.

  If her mother had constructed a protection system, like the supernatural wards her father built around the house, her abilities proved incapable of discovering it. She reached for the knob—and halted before touching it. A tech CEO would feel comfortable with a more mundane security system. She peered through the rectangular panes of glass. No wires or minuscule sensors were visible. A twinge of guilt hit her as she grasped the handle with a shaky hand. Kenzie took a deep breath, twisted her wrist, and invaded her mother’s private sanctum.

  She stood inside the threshold and let her gaze travel left to right over the bookshelves and credenza, with their lustrously dark wood to match the desk, past the leather executive chair to the well-polished gleam of the desktop, and over to a bank of custom-made filing cabinets. In the middle of the floor, an intricately wrought carpet displayed white and red ornamental flowers arranged in the rough shape of a pentagram. The woven black background absorbed the light from the window and lent it to the petals so that they seemed to radiate the patina of life.

  Where first? Kenzie thought with a frown. She contemplated the filing cabinets. That would be the logical spot, which made it likely the wrong location, but it gave her a place to start. She angled to her right, leaving the door open behind her. Her path took her to the edge of the rug. With one foot already lifted into the air, it dawned on her that her mother might well have concealed her spells inside, not outside, the office.

  In the rug, for example.

  Kenzie leaned and recovered her balance.

  Quit being paranoid, she thought, but she tried to see if the rug carried an imbued power. Again, she did not find any, but she sidled along the edge anyway to reach the drawers. She tugged on the top drawer of the first cabinet she reached and raised an eyebrow when it silently glided open. She had expected locks. Only by standing to one side could she fully open the drawer and avoid stepping on the flowers.

  Hands shaking, Kenzie rifled through the folders, paper and more paper, but there was nothing that looked like the kind of electronics that a snake like Lassiter would be interested in. She closed the drawer. Methodically, Kenzie inspected each of the others in turn. She shut the twelfth and last with a hard push, punctuated by a frustrated puff of breath. She glanced at the other side of the room, at the credenza.

  Thirty minutes later, Kenzie had swept through the bookcases, the cabinets in the credenza, and the nearest desk drawers. A mental timer ticked away the minutes that her parents would be absent as she calculated the effort needed to get to the far set of drawers. Short of climbing onto the furniture, she could not get into position to open them, and it would be impossible to explain why she lay sprawled over the desk. Besides, the study so far held the most innocuous of possessions and boring business briefs. She gave up.

  She retraced her steps to the glass-paned doors and pulled them closed behind her as she vacated the room. She chewed on the inside of her lower lip. The next logical location was her parents’ bedroom. Or her father’s office. Both ratcheted up her heart rate. She picked the bedroom and headed upstairs.

  The hallway lay in perpetual darkness, with closed doors lining the walls. Feet silent on the thick ivory-colored carpet, Kenzie padded to the farthest door, where she repeated her inspection for traps and tricks. As she expected, the door held no secrets.

  With less trepidation at getting caught, but more embarrassment at voyeuristically peeking into her parents’ most private room, Kenzie slipped into the master bedroom. The curtains were open, and the view to the lake made the large room even more expansive. She left the door open behind her.

  Hiding places were limited. Kenzie went to the bedside table on her mother’s side. Two hardback novels sa
t neatly stacked next to the reading lamp. It had a small drawer and single cabinet below. Heart thudding, she pulled the drawer open, hoping against surprises. Tissues, a collection of letters, a couple of pens, a small scratchpad with a pair of dates written in blue ink, and a pile of envelopes that appeared to hold photographs. Curiosity drew her to the pictures, and she picked up one of the packets and lifted the flap.

  The edges of the photos were curled and yellow. She slid the top image out. She recognized the faces that smiled back, her parents and Harold, others from the Family. Some faces seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place them. She shuffled through three more pictures. The last showed a graying man with captivating emerald eyes standing with his arm over Harold’s shoulders. The two could have passed for brothers, down to the sad lines of their smiles. Maybe she could ask Harold who he was, if she could figure out how to bring it up without admitting she was sneaking around. She stuffed the pictures in the envelope and returned them to the drawer. She tested the cabinet doors and found them unlocked. With a sigh, Kenzie opened the lower cabinet. She discovered a stash of chocolates and another couple of books.

  Her father’s table bore teetering stacks of historical and technical books. She skipped his end table.

  The master closet, the size of a small bedroom, had a window to let in natural light and a small padded bench to sit on when dressing. To the left were her mother’s smartly tailored suits, dresses hung next to them, and then her casual clothes. Her father’s suits occupied three linear feet of space, the rest given over to slacks and sports shirts.

  Shoe boxes and plastic storage containers filled the floor space under the hanging rack. The shelf above was filled to overflowing with more boxes and a spare pillow that brushed against the textured ceiling near the scuttle for the attic. The sheer number of boxes argued against searching them. She’d be here all day.

  She eyed the scuttle. It was the least obvious place she could think of for hiding anything, but it made more sense than the end tables, and she was running out of time. Kenzie clambered onto the bench seat and, hanging onto the clothing rod, leaned out and simultaneously reached for the inset cover. With her fingertips, she pushed the lid and felt it skitter up. As it cleared the lip, she saw wood forming a box around the opening. She went to her tippy-toes at the edge of the bench. Even at full extension, she couldn’t quite nudge the cover over the framing.

  The vibration of her phone in her back pocket startled her. She twitched, and her toes slipped off the edge of the bench. The bottom dropped out of her stomach as Kenzie plummeted to the floor. She stumbled on impact and fell against the wall with a loud crash, the shoes at the floor scattering as she kicked them. She came to a rest, panting heavily, half-crouched with her shoulder jammed into the wall and hangers swinging above her.

  The phone vibrated again, and she yanked it from her pocket. She glanced at the screen, ready to yell at Mitch for scaring the hell out of her, when she read a number that she didn't recognize. Her thumb hovered over the screen. The phone vibrated three more times while she suffered through indecision. Before she made up her mind, the phone sent whoever it was to voice mail. She stuffed it back into her pocket and surveyed the damage.

  Her father’s slacks lay in disarray. Working with urgency, Kenzie put them back into proper alignment, careful to match the spacing. She stepped back to check her work, and her calf hit something. She teetered but avoided falling again. Glancing down, she saw the bench seat out of kilter. She must have broken it on the way down, though she had no idea how.

  An odd angle at the edge of her vision momentarily distracted her. Glancing up, she saw the lid to the attic space jammed into the opening, with one corner hanging.

  Great, she thought. A quick glance at her watch showed the time closing on noon, about the time she could expect her parents home. Not time to panic, not yet.

  She made the expedient decision to fix the bench first. Without it, she couldn’t reach the hatch.

  Kenzie grasped the cushioned seat. To her surprise, the whole thing moved smoothly. Kenzie stooped over the wooden frame of the bench, resting the cushion against the edge. As the space below the seat was exposed, she gasped.

  A safe, built into the floor, was visible through the opening. The door sat round like a face with a single eye at the dial and a handle as an offset line of a mouth. Her eyes darted from the minutely numbered dial, to the silver handle, to the wood frame that protected it from accidental discovery.

  Satisfaction welled up in Kenzie’s chest as she knew she had found the hiding place, even if the presence of the safe introduced another problem, namely that the combination could be anything. She balanced the lid with her knees and checked the time again. She was cutting it close.

  Rotating the bench seat exposed a plywood bottom, with the outside edge thinner so that the whole thing would sit into the box frame like a cork. Carefully, she maneuvered it into position and nudged it until it dropped down with a solid thunk.

  Hurrying, she remounted the bench. This time she didn’t go right to the edge. Extending a lithe arm, she pushed at the rectangle of drywall wedged into the attic opening.

  Drat. It was stuck.

  Kenzie analyzed the angles. She’d need to lift the hatch cover up and straighten it before it would drop properly. Doing so required two hands. She needed a ladder. Which was in the garage, of course. With her mother due home any minute, the last question she wanted to answer was why she had the ladder out. Her mother wouldn’t buy the suggestion that it was time to hang Christmas lights.

  Double drat.

  She stood, staring up, looking for a way to apply steady pressure.

  Anemosa.

  The air spell that Harold had taught her came back to her. If she could apply the force of the wind against the panel evenly, she could lift it, and then taper the flow to let it drop into place. If that didn’t work, she’d fetch the ladder.

  Kenzie closed her eyes to help her focus. She inscribed the spell in the air in front of her. As she completed the motion, she slowed the wind and directed it upward with a gradual lifting of her palm. As she did, she imagined the air spreading to cover the entire surface area of the hatch. She tilted her hand to match the angles and apply more pressure to the lower corner.

  She opened her eyes, seeking the ceiling.

  The hatch cover vibrated, a dry rattle. A hint of white powder fell from the edges, only to get caught in the updraft. Kenzie gave a push with her hand, and the drywall responded with a scraping sound as it slid up. The corner wrenched free. Kenzie dampened the air flow at once to balance it above the opening.

  Through her feet, she felt the vibration of the garage door going up.

  No time, she thought, never breaking eye contact with the levitating lid. A nervous excitement made her teeth chatter. She clamped her teeth together to quell the reaction.

  The lid wafted on the air but oriented at fifteen degrees off the maw of the opening. She tried adjusting the pressures. The white rectangle darted like a kite in an awkward wind.

  Can you do two spells at once?

  Her gaze rock-steady above her, she sought another thread of magic with her other hand detailing the spell. Kenzie crafted a delicate air spell, whispered, “Anemosa.” A baby’s breath of air struck the edge, turned it. Estimating the point at which the rotating panel would line up, she released the second spell.

  Hah!

  Her lips pulled back into a grim smile at the pleasure of discovery, though the clatter of her teeth had become a vibration throughout her torso. Her hand lowered the panel and closed to cut the wind pressure. A corner hung up, and she tapped it with the air. The hatch dropped soundlessly into the ceiling.

  Kenzie scrambled off the bench. On tiptoes, she ran from the closet back through the master bedroom, checking to make sure she’d put everything back, and down the hall to her room, closing the door behind her.

  Breathless, she stayed by her door, the earlier tremors transforming into a knot of anx
iety. She’d know soon enough if she’d gotten away clean or not.

  Chapter 38

  Breaking into the school turned out to be anticlimactic. The doors were unlocked. The nerds and geeks operated on their own schedules, even on the weekend that started spring break.

  Hunter strode next to Mitch through the dim hallways as they headed for the lab.

  “It’s not something we talk about,” said Hunter.

  “I mean, you all are like wizards or witches or whatever you call yourselves, but you don’t know each other. There can’t be that many of you,” said Mitch, reframing his original question.

  Hunter glanced around the vacant building. The antiseptic smell of floor cleaner masked the spring weather outside.

  “Wizards,” said Hunter, distaste crossing his features. “The so-called witches are a neopagan religion, bound up with dogma like any other sect. Wizards can actually manipulate the energy around them in a physical manifestation that can be readily discerned.”

  Their shoes squeaked in time when they hit the vinyl floor at the lunch room. They turned left at the first hall, and the carpet swallowed the sound of their footfalls.

  “Sounds like a dogma to me on your end, too.”

  “Observable fact is not dogma. You’re thinking like a mush-head. We have generations of experience analyzing our Family. Magic is simply evidence that the human race is evolving into new abilities to interpret and interact with the universe. A feature of that is that each wizard is typically much healthier and more intelligent than Meat. We tend to succeed to high levels, and all the members of my Family are solidly in positions of power or leaders in their field. It is nature at work, like Homo sapiens meeting Neanderthal. Only one branch of the species will survive, completely supplanting the others.” Hunter shrugged. “Of course, that won’t happen until we either achieve sufficient numbers or our power becomes unstoppable.”