The Bigtime Series (Bigtime superhero series, e-bundle)

by Jennifer Estep

  I stepped inside and made my way through the enormous halls. More antiques and paintings and statues clustered in the rooms than in all of the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. Every nook, every cranny, held another treasure. It was a wonder Debonair hadn’t broken in here already. Then again, Sam’s security system was extra tight—and supposedly included rockets buried in the lawn. Although the billionaire did let ordinary folks and even some school groups tour Sublime a couple of times a year. Closely supervised, of course.

  I called out, but no one answered me. Again, not surprising. For all the finery and bells and whistles in his house, Sam and the others spent most of their time underground. Superheroes. They were so silly sometimes.

  I made my way to the wine cellar, striding past the racks of bottled spirits. In the back corner, hidden behind a panel, was an elevator that went deep beneath Sublime. Fiona had shown me the entrance to the Fearless Five’s secret headquarters a few months ago, just in case of an emergency. I’d never thought I’d use the knowledge, though. Superheroes weren’t my favorite people in the world, and most of the time, I was perfectly happy pretending I didn’t know any of them.

  But desperate, confused people did desperate, confusing things. Like me falling for Debonair. And now asking superheroes for help in confirming his real identity.

  Five minutes and a couple hundred feet later, I pulled open the door to the library. Carmen Cole and Lulu Lo waited for me inside, just as I’d asked them to when I’d called from the car. They looked like they had been or were going to be busy. Carmen wore a black crepe dress with a modest neckline and flat, ballet-style shoes. She bent over her desk in the corner, working on an enormous jigsaw puzzle—the one I’d spilled all over the place.

  Lulu sat at the round table and typed away on her high-powered laptop. A cobalt-blue pullover—one of my designs—covered her slim body. The fabric matched the bright streaks in her ebony hair.

  Both of them looked up as I stepped inside.

  Carmen smiled. “You slept with him again, didn’t you?”

  How did she do that? And what could I do to make her stop?

  “Not exactly,” I mumbled.

  It was the truth, more or less. We hadn’t slept together. Debonair had just wreaked wicked, wanton havoc upon my willing, eager body.

  “Uh-oh, Bella got lucky again.” Lulu snickered.

  For once, I was in total agreement with Fiona. Somebody really needed to set Lulu’s hair on fire so she’d quit making those awful puns. Fiona kept threatening to use her fiery superpowers to do just that to the computer hacker.

  “Spill it,” Carmen said.

  I sat down at the massive wooden table and told them everything that had happened—editing the scene in the bathroom—and who I thought Debonair really was under all that leather.

  “You’re telling me that Devlin Dash, who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she drew him a picture and climbed onto his lap to demonstrate, is actually Debonair, one of the most sought-after men in Bigtime?” Lulu asked. “The Romeo of Romeos? The Casanova of Casanovas?”

  “You don’t believe me?” I asked. “I brought a copy of the check and the drawing along as proof.”

  I laid the two items out on the table. Carmen and Lulu clustered around for a closer look.

  “Well, they certainly look the same,” Carmen admitted. “Lulu?”

  She took the drawing and the check and put them both in a large scanner tucked away in a corner of the library. She hit a few buttons, and the machine sputtered to life. A white light appeared between the cracks on the cover.

  Lulu punched more buttons, bringing up images of the signatures on the check and drawing on her computer. Then, she overlapped them.

  A perfect match. Just like I’d thought.

  “Bella’s right. The signatures confirm it. Devlin Dash is in fact Debonair.” Lulu shook her head. “I don’t know what this town is coming to.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “First, I find out who the Fearless Five really are, then Johnny Angel, now Debonair. Pretty soon I’ll know who everybody is. And what’s the fun in that?” Lulu asked, her dark eyes serious. “Half the mystique of superheroes is the whole secret-identity thing.”

  “Well, get Henry to put on his mask the next time the two of you are together,” I sniped. “Right now, we’ve got work to do. I need your help, both of you. I want to know everything there is to know about Devlin Dash and Debonair.”

  Carmen arched an eyebrow. “Why the sudden interest, Bella? Or do I even have to ask?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you must know, I have a date with Devlin tomorrow night.”

  “Let me guess. You’re going to confront him about his real identity.” Lulu shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Why not? It will be so much simpler once everything’s out in the open.”

  Carmen and Lulu exchanged a look, and the brunette reporter gave me a sad smile.

  “I’m afraid that’s just when it gets that much more complicated,” Carmen said.

  * * *

  But I persisted until they agreed to help me. Carmen and Lulu tried to make me promise not to say anything to Devlin, to let him tell me that he was Debonair in his own time, but I refused. I was going to confront him whether it was the smart thing to do or not. I was tired of being sensible and calm and rational. I wanted Devlin to know I knew about his secret identity—and I wanted to find out if there was something real between us.

  An hour later, Carmen and I pored through reams of paper while Lulu pulled up file after file on her computer. I read through the bio Carmen had compiled. Devlin Dash. Age thirty-five. Hair black, eyes a light blue. Graduated from Bigtime University with an MBA. Lots of academic and business honors. A Friend of the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art—

  Lulu let out a low whistle. “I’m afraid it’s not looking too good for your boy, Bella.”

  “Oh, really? Why’s that?” I asked, distracted by a photo spread of Debonair and his Lair of Seduction. I doubted there was a camera made yet that could do him justice.

  “His company, DCQ Enterprises, is in deep financial trouble. According to a story in the business section of The Exposé, the company’s chief financial officer, Nathan Nichols, was accused of embezzling several million dollars from the company coffers.”

  A photo of Nathan Nichols flashed up on the screen. He was a normal-looking guy with big hands and thinning hair who was confined to a wheelchair. I vaguely recalled seeing him at some of the regular society events. Like Devlin, he didn’t seem to talk much.

  “But nothing was ever proven, and no charges were filed against Nathan,” Lulu continued. “Over the last year, Devlin’s sold cars, yachts, family jewels, just about all the assets he has to keep the company afloat. His total net worth barely tops two million now. Definitely subpar by Bigtime society standards. Poor guy.” Lulu snickered at her bad joke.

  “I remember hearing about that,” I said. “That happened around the time my father died. It was the talk of the society circuit for about a week.”

  Most people had short attention spans in Bigtime.

  “What does Devlin actually do?” Carmen asked. “What does DCQ deal in?”

  Lulu scanned through more information. “Lots of real estate, restaurants, media and PR firms, art restoration—”

  “Wait a minute. Art restoration?” I asked, thinking back to the room of paintings at the Lair of Seduction.

  “That’s what it says. One of DCQ’s companies is called Amazing Art. They specialize in restoring and preserving paintings by the likes of Monet, Picasso, and others. Devlin seems to be the most heavily involved with that company. Grace Caleb runs everything else. Kelly Caleb and Kyle Quicke are the other major stockholders in DCQ, but they’re not really involved in the day-to-day business decisions.”

  “So, Devlin really is an art lover,” I murmured.

  Maybe all his talk about how good my work was hadn’
t been just to get me into bed. The thought made me happier than I could have imagined.

  Carmen flipped through the papers in her hands. “Well, he’s managed to hang on to the family mansion out in Bigtime Bay at least.” She looked at me. “It’s about three miles east of where we picked you up in the boat. But that shouldn’t come as a shock to you.”

  I thought of all the empty rooms I’d seen with their missing furniture. Carmen was right. It didn’t surprise me. I didn’t think I could be any more shocked than I had the moment I’d realized who Debonair really was.

  “There’s more,” Lulu added. “Devlin is currently fending off a hostile takeover bid from Hannah Harmon. He’s hanging on by the width of a spandex suit. And, in another interesting twist, Nathan Nichols now works for Hannah as her chief financial officer.”

  I frowned. Hannah Harmon. That was the second time I’d heard her name today. That in and of itself wasn’t unusual. Hannah loved to take over floundering businesses. If Devlin was having as much trouble as Lulu claimed, it was only natural Hannah would come sniffing around looking to make more millions. Joanne had told me the same thing at the museum benefit. Still, I didn’t like coincidences.

  “You don’t think Hannah could be an ubervillain, do you?” I asked, thinking out loud.

  “Why do you ask?” Carmen said.

  I told her about Hannah’s strange phone call.

  Carmen’s eyes glowed for half a second. They always did that whenever she was feeling psychic vibrations. Or listening to the voices in her head, as Fiona called it. “She’s rich and ambitious, so she meets the basic ubervillain requirements, even if she’s not on my list.”

  Lulu and I looked at the reporter.

  “What list?” I asked.

  A guilty blush spotted Carmen’s cheeks, and she mumbled something.

  “What was that?”

  “My list of all the superheroes and ubervillains in Bigtime,” Carmen said in a defensive tone. “I’ve been trying to figure out who’s who in my spare time. It’s sort of a hobby.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, Sister Carmen,” Lulu accused.

  Carmen fiddled with one of her Rubik’s Cubes. “Yeah, well, I figured the information could be useful someday. But I didn’t want to tell Sam and the others what I was doing. You know they’re all a little touchy about the secret-identity thing.”

  “Well, they did get stuffed into glass tubes and almost died because you inadvertently revealed their secret identities to the Terrible Triad,” Lulu pointed out.

  Carmen slouched farther down into her seat. Before she’d met Sam and become a superhero herself, Carmen used to expose the secret identities of heroes and villains for the newspaper The Exposé—until her boss turned out to be Malefica, the biggest, baddest ubervillain in Bigtime.

  I looked through more files, stopping when I spotted a picture of Devlin standing with Grace Caleb at some society event last year.

  “I want you to check up on Grace Caleb too,” I said, changing the subject.

  Carmen shot me a grateful look.

  “Why?” Lulu asked. “She’s just another old society lady. Sneeze and you’ll hit half a dozen in this town.”

  “She’s Devlin’s grandmother—and she just happened to have a family emergency while we were having dinner last night.”

  Carmen rolled her eyes. “Family emergency? That’s such a dead giveaway.”

  We sifted through the information on Grace Caleb but couldn’t come up with anything conclusive. She seemed far too interested in her afternoon teas and bridge clubs to be a superhero. Then again, I never would have dreamed Devlin Dash was Debonair.

  Two hours later, I stretched my arms over my head. The motion made the charms on my silver bracelet jangle together. The three of us froze. I hadn’t taken off the chain since Jasper had given it to me. I hadn’t needed to use it, so, for the most part, I was able to forget I was wearing something that could obliterate me in twenty seconds. Not now, though. I slowly lowered my arm and set it on the table. Nothing happened. We all let out a breath.

  “How are you liking Jasper’s present?” Lulu asked, eyeing the bracelet.

  “It’s a bit strange knowing I could blow up myself and most of Bigtime with a couple of words, but you get used to it.”

  Carmen nodded. “You get used to a lot of strange things in this town.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  By the time we finished checking up on Devlin and Grace, it was close to midnight. Carmen invited me to stay in one of the hundred or so guest suites upstairs, but I headed home. I’d had enough superheroes for one day, no matter how nice they were. My luck decided to be good for a change, giving me nothing but green lights, and I got home in less than twenty minutes.

  Debonair didn’t pop inside the house to surprise me, though. I didn’t know if it was because he’d gotten what he wanted last night, or if he was out being Devlin Dash. And I didn’t know what I would have done if he had appeared. Probably fallen into bed with him yet again. I had precious little control where the handsome thief was concerned.

  I slept late for a change and didn’t get up until almost noon the next day. My luck kept pulsing around me, as if it knew I had an important day ahead. After I fried two elliptical trainers and a stationary bike, I threw in the towel on my workout and headed upstairs.

  But I didn’t fare any better in the kitchen. I tried to make myself a veggie special sandwich on whole-grain, calcium-fortified bread. First, the bread fell apart in my hands. Then, a tomato flew off the counter and splattered onto one of the kitchen windows. The lettuce exploded, the cheese molded the second I took it out of the refrigerator, and I snapped a knife in two when I dipped it in a jar of low-fat mayonnaise. The jagged blade missed my big toe by less than an inch.

  After destroying just about everything I touched, I went back upstairs and stayed in bed sketching until it was time to get ready for my date with Devlin. I wanted to look good when I confronted my sexy, leather-wearing lover, so I took a long shower and pampered myself with all sorts of lotions and creams and other assorted beauty products. I also put mounds of conditioner in my hair in the hope that, just once, it wouldn’t frizz. My nice, smooth look lasted about two minutes before my hair became sky-high once more.

  Then, it was time to decide what to wear. I’d just settled on a nice, pinstriped skirt and white blouse when a flash of scarlet caught my eye. I reached into the back of my closet and pulled out a crimson dress Fiona had made me for my birthday. The fabric reached the floor, but it had a deep, V-shaped neckline and high slits all around the skirt that showed off my legs. The dress was made of soft, slick, shiny satin and dotted here and there with sequins, glass beads, and bits of feathers. It also happened to be the exact same color as the teddy I’d sported in the Lair of Seduction.

  I’d never worn the dress before. It was a little too loud, a little too bold and daring and revealing for me. But I was in a bold sort of mood tonight. So, I slithered into the dress, put on the reddest lipstick I owned, and grabbed a matching purse and shoes. As a final touch, I fastened my favorite silver-angel charm around my throat. It went nicely with the bracelet Jasper had given me. I was getting rather used to having the bomb maker’s charms dangle off my wrist. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

  I went downstairs around seven thirty to check on Bobby. He relaxed on the couch in the living room, watching a soccer game.

  “You look marvelous.” Bobby whistled. “Is that a new dress?”

  I turned around. “One of Fiona’s creations.”

  “Well, it looks wonderful on you,” he said.

  “Why are you sitting here alone? Shouldn’t you be out with Grace tonight? Or is she dropping by later?”

  “She’s coming over later,” Bobby said. “She had a few errands to do first.”

  “Maybe it will go better than the other night.”

  My grandfather frowned. “We’ll see.”

  “Well, I need to get going. I’ll cal
l you if I’m going to be late,” I promised.

  “Have a good time, darling.” Bobby turned back to his game.

  I clutched my purse, which contained the drawing of Debonair that I’d done, along with the check Devlin had written me. “Oh, it will be very interesting, to say the least.”

  * * *

  Five minutes before eight, I stopped my silver Benz in front of Quicke’s. Despite the fact traffic crawled along and every spot on the street was taken, another vehicle decided to leave at the exact moment I turned onto the block. So, I slid my car into a parking spot with no problem. I’d make a fortune if only I could bottle this little bit of luck.

  Devlin stood on the sidewalk, waiting for me. He came over and held out a hand to help me out of the car. I took it, noticing how sure and capable his hands were. They looked exactly like the same hands that had driven me mad the other night.

  “Here. This is for you.” Devlin held out a single red rose.

  “A rose. How lovely.”

  I sniffed it. It didn’t smell nearly as wonderful as Debonair did. No rose ever could. They didn’t have his faint, smoky, masculine undertones.

  Devlin’s eyes flicked up and down my body. “You look amazing, Bella. That color really looks wonderful on you.”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said, baiting him just a little.

  No reaction. Not even a blink. Maybe Devlin was better at this than I thought. Or maybe I just wasn’t as good.

  “You look nice too. Very handsome.”

  And he did. For once, Devlin wore a dark-blue business suit that seemed to fit just right. He’d forgone a tie, leaving his collar unbuttoned and exposing just the tiniest bit of his chest, including a patch of dark, curly hair. My power flared at the sight of him, and I had to will it to be still and not interfere.

  Devlin held out his arm. “Shall we?”