Darkest Day (StrikeForce #3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  At nine, I made my way to the parking garage dressed in jeans and a black top. Normal people clothes. It just felt weird. Jenson, David, Dani, and Ryan were already there waiting for me. Jenson, as usual, looked like she just stepped off of some high end catalog. David wore typical guy stuff, jeans and a t-shirt. Dani wore a floaty dress that fit her personality. And Ryan wore khakis and a black t-shirt.

  “It is always weird seeing you people out of uniform,” I said in greeting. “I’m starving.”

  “Hello to you, too,” Jenson said with a smirk. “You overslept, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t oversleep. It just takes a lot longer to mess around with hair and makeup when you can’t move your arms,” I said.

  “Do you have any idea how much those Zambonis weigh?” Jenson said as she unlocked the doors to her Jeep.

  “Well, I do now,” I said, and she laughed. Jenson and David climbed in front and I squeezed in back between Dani and Ryan.

  “We can take two cars, you know,” I said.

  “Why? This is so cozy,” Jenson said, meeting my eyes in the rear view mirror. “And it’ll be easier to find a place to park.”

  “So practical, Jenson,” I muttered.

  “One of us has to be, Zamboni Girl.”

  “Can we go now?” Ryan cut in. “Maybe you two can do your comedy routine on the way, huh?”

  Jenson laughed and pulled out of her parking spot. There was a tunnel that led out of the garage beneath Command. It twined around a bit, connecting up with another garage nearby via a secret entrance. It was very secure for us, and I did have to marvel at the fact that Alpha had thought of stuff like that when he’d been working on the design for Command.

  I sat smushed between Ryan and Dani, listening to Jenson and David in the front seat debating over some superhero comic series they were apparently reading. The radio was on NPR, because this was Jenson and why not multitask and learn something even while she was driving and talking and who knew what else? She and David kept yammering in the front seat, and I glanced over at Ryan, catching his eye, and he gave a little shake of his head.

  “Just be glad they’re not talking in Elvish,” I whispered. “I bet they do. All. The. Time.”

  He bit back a laugh, and I turned to talk to Dani. She’d been very quiet since Monica’s death, spending a lot of her time alone, other than the few times our little secret team got together.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “Some days, I almost feel normal. Others, I still kind of forget it happened and feel like I need to tell her something, and then remember that she’s not there,” she said. “It’s still all pretty raw.”

  I nodded.

  “You?” she asked.

  “About the same. Every Saturday since it happened, I start getting ready to go see Mama because I always visited on Saturdays after I started here. And then I’ll remember and it’s a little bit like losing her all over again.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Exactly that. Those little slips make it so that you feel it all a bit sharper when you’re forced to remember.” She pushed her long red hair behind her ear and shook her head. “I’m either numb or just completely enraged. I’m not sure if that’s better than the crushing sadness. At least that felt like a more normal response to losing her.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty much where I am, too. That, and lots of nightmares.”

  “I don’t have that. I can’t sleep. And then when I finally do, it’s like I don’t feel anything. Kinda wish I could sleep more often,” she said. I was aware that the car had gone mostly silent around us, but I didn’t care. The people in the car with us would know a lot worse about me by the time this was all over.

  Dani continued,”in a weird way, though, she’ll be with me forever. Not just memories, which is what everyone tells you,” she said. “She was my first… uh. I never let myself have who I wanted before. I tried to be like everybody else, and then I just stopped getting involved when it wasn’t what I wanted. And then I met her and it gave me the courage to come out, to fully be what I always have been. That sounds stupid,” she said.

  I shook my head. “No it doesn’t. I think that if love works, that’s kind of the way it’s supposed to be. You don’t change for it, but it helps you fully be yourself. Not that I have any experience with that. But I’d like to think it’s true.”

  “It was true for us,” she said softly. “I’m pissed that that was taken from me.”

  “We’ll make them pay,” I promised, and she nodded.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, and a few minutes later, Jenson pulled into a parking spot in front of a cozy little Italian restaurant in Eastpointe, not too far from where Ryan and I had picked up the red leather twins earlier that day. Ryan stepped out of the car and held his hand out for me, and I let him help me out, my muscles protesting at the movement after being squished in the car. We walked into the restaurant, and, once we were settled in at a table in one of the back corners of the restaurant, we sat and drank, ordered, and bided our time until we knew we could talk a little more freely.

  “Okay,” Jenson said quietly, leaning forward a little. “We’ve been grasping at straws trying to find something. Caine told me what you found out from that guy you brought in earlier, and it confirms what we were thinking was going on. I feel better knowing that we were on the right track,” she said, and I nodded. “We kept running into walls. And then we thought, well, what if we can get DNA samples from the people we think are associated with Killjoy somehow? Run them through the system, see if we can find a match and go from there.”

  “Did we collect samples when we had them?” I asked.

  Jenson shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well. Remember when you beat the hell out of Daemon trying to figure out where to find Death?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I kept one of the swabs they cleaned him up with afterward.”

  My jaw dropped, and she shrugged.

  “What in the hell made you think to do that?”

  “I wondered if it would ever come in handy. If we could trace it somehow, or work on some kind of antidote to his powers so we’d be taking less of a risk when we faced him. I forgot I had it with everything going on, but then David and I were getting frustrated, and I remembered it. And we went from there.”

  I stared at her. “Okay. And?”

  She smiled. “We found some things.”

  “Such as?”

  “A name. Which in and of itself wasn’t exceptionally useful because he seems to live his entire life without leaving much of a trail. Fortunately for us, whoever is or was helping him hide his tracks tends to get a little sloppy with the details. Name led to more names. Aliases,” she added, and I nodded.

  “Long story short, in addition to lots of stocks and partial shares in tech based companies and other smart stuff like that, Daemon has a house here in Detroit.”

  I watched her.

  “I wonder what we’d find if we were to go to his house,” I said quietly, and she grinned.

  “Exactly what I was wondering,” she said.

  “Could be nothing,” David said. “A guy who’s that careful about covering his tracks isn’t likely to leave anything lying around that’s going to help us. He’d be smart enough to figure that the odds were that we’d track him down at some point.”

  “Unless he was getting cocky,” I said. “And yeah, you’re right. This might do nothing. But we might actually find something useful. I mean, I doubt he’s writing his deeds and Killjoy’s plans down anywhere.”

  “Dear Diary, tomorrow we are planning to blow up a hockey stadium,” David said, pantomiming scribbling, and we laughed.

  “Yeah, I don’t think we’ll be that lucky. But people get stupid. Especially if they’re sentimental about something,” I said, my mind immediately going to Mama. “Maybe a quick visit will give us an idea or two abou
t where to find what he cares about, other than being a villain and destroying shit.”

  “What good is that going to do us, though?” Dani asked.

  “You find what someone cares about, you find their Achilles heel,” I said softly. “If you know what cut will make them bleed out fastest there’s a good chance of getting them to spill their secrets before you go for the final cut.”

  Dani swallowed, then nodded. “Like they did with you.”

  “In a way.” I wondered, sometimes when my brain just wouldn’t shut the hell up, if they’d outright threatened Mama, would I have just given them what they wanted? It would have saved her but he never asked, and I’d spent way too much time thinking about why Killjoy had done it that way. “They might have gotten what they wanted if they’d used her against me before rather than after.”

  “Yeah. But Killjoy had his little extra crazy belief that it was your mother keeping you from being an outright villain,” Ryan said in a low voice. “And no matter what the guy says, I think you were the ultimate prize. Not your blood.”

  It made me sick. It made me hate Killjoy a little more every time I thought about it. Because Ryan wasn’t wrong. There had been a whole lot of crazy mixed in there, that if I could just “see the light,” I’d be his and we’d, what? Go on to cause chaos and destruction like some super-powered Bonnie and Clyde?

  More than the hate, though, was the guilt and self-loathing. How had I missed it? How had I been so gullible? So stupid? How had I let myself get involved in any way with a guy I knew nothing about?

  How had I let myself be so easy to manipulate? How weak was I, that a few kind words and the whole “baby I’m here for you” act had actually worked?

  I took a breath and pushed it away. It wasn’t a mistake I’d make again. “So, it looks like I’m going to pay someone a visit.”

  “Not alone,” Dani said.

  “Yes, alone,” I said. “I’ll get in, do some digging, and get out. Preferably without him even knowing I’ve been there. I want to catch him, but I want answers about Killjoy’s bullshit more. We can grab Daemon another time.”

  “We need intel now,” Jenson said in agreement.

  “So what this job comes down to is breaking and entering without getting caught. Which means, me,” I said with a smile.

  “I don’t like the idea of you going in alone. Who knows what he’s got in there.”

  “I won’t be completely alone. Not really,” I said, tilting my head toward Ryan. “David created this environmental monitoring system thing for me to wear—“

  “Because you’re too damn stubborn to just let us go in with you all the time,” Ryan grumbled.

  “Because I need to be fast and focused sometimes. Which we’ve been over before,” I said. “So I’ll wear this thing David made. It monitors my body conditions, but there’s also a cam that will ‘see’ what I’m seeing, as well as temperature and chemical sensors. Basically, it displays in real-time what I’m experiencing, as well as what’s going on at every other angle. Three-sixty camera.”

  “Great, so we can watch video after?” Dani asked.

  “No. It’s as close as we’re gonna get to me being there with her. I can pick up any faint sounds, things in the shadows via the live feed and let her know if someone’s trying to sneak up on her or anything like that,” Ryan said.

  “So you’re monitoring it,” Dani said, nodding. “Okay, I feel a little better now.”

  “Glad someone does,” Ryan said.

  “When I need help with asskicking, you guys are the first ones who’ll be there with me. I couldn’t have handled the lab the way I did if you’d been with me. Sometimes, things are a one-woman job.”

  Ryan didn’t answer, but the set of his shoulders was rigid, just like every time we’d discussed how we’d handle missions like this. This would be our first time actually using the stuff David had made for us. I’d heard every argument against my desire to go in alone, and he’d finally realized that I could out-stubborn him, even on his best day. Didn’t mean he was happy about it.

  “What’s the neighborhood like? Expensive, I’m guessing?” I asked Jenson. Ryan cleared his throat, and we all shut up while the waitress set two pizzas in the middle of the table. We busied ourselves filling our plates and we ate for a bit.

  “Actually, it’s just kind of a normal neighborhood. Not what we were expecting,” David said after a while. “Mostly two-bedroom houses, small yards. If he’s getting rich, which we know he is because we’ve dug into some of his records already, he’s definitely not spending it on his house.”

  “Probably a lot of it is going to Killjoy,” I said. I took another bite of my pizza and thought. “Any way you can trace where his money goes?”

  Jenson shook her head. “We’ve tried. The only stuff we found was several years old and just kind of died off. Nothing at all from the last few years. So if he’s making money now, he’s doing it strictly under the table.”

  This was what I was slowly learning about this whole superhero thing. You start out thinking, based on comic books and movies and crap like that, that it’s all going to be fighting and heroics. And yeah, sometimes it is. Some days, you carry a Zamboni bomb and knock the shit out of some villains. But a lot of it, what happens behind the scenes, is detective work and following trails. Usually, following the money. Because just like any criminal enterprise, super villain teams need funding. Sometimes, they steal it. Sometimes, they start out with deep pockets. And sometimes, they get to the people who can control the flow of funds. You cut off the money, you slow them down. And once they’re slowed down, they’re a lot easier to take down. An organization like Killjoy’s was much more than our average group of villainous thugs. They weren’t after a quick score, or revenge, or any of the baser level shit. No, they wanted more. World domination. A world made the way they think it should be.

  Complete control, with nobody to answer to.

  “What’s the name you have on him?”

  “Salvatore Giannotti. From what we can gather, he’s somewhere in his mid thirties. Any social security info on him has been scrubbed. We only got the name because it was an inheritance when he turned twenty-one and we tracked it from that via county records. Also no records on his parents or anyone else. Hopefully we can track more down by paying the house a visit.” Jenson paused. “He’s got security on it. Nothing much more complicated than you used to break in your B&E days. We tried to scan the inside for anything extra, but we couldn’t pick anything up. You’ll want to be careful when you go in,” she added.

  “I seriously don’t like this,” Ryan said.

  “Duly noted,” I told him. “But it needs to get done, and only one of us has the unique skill set to get into the place unnoticed and then be sneaky enough to do what needs to be done without getting caught. So there we go.”

  He didn’t answer, and after a few moments, he just gave a terse nod.

  “So we’re go, then,” I said. “I’ll hit it and we’ll see what we find. And then we’ll decide where to go from there.”

  “From what we’ve gathered watching the house, he hasn’t been there in over a week,” David said. “My guess is he’s sticking close to Killjoy and his pals. Anything you can find… records, bills, anything like that would be a help. Specifically, anything of a personal nature. Family, friends, partners. Anything we can use against him. And once we have intel on him, our next move will be bringing him in and making him talk.”

  “Uh, question?” Dani said, glancing around. “I just had a thought and it’s creeping me the hell out. We have Caine here, who has super senses. We know Killjoy can turn invisible from our last fight against him. How do we know someone’s not listening in right now?” she whispered.

  “I’d know. I’ve been tuned into everything since we walked in. No familiar scents, no increased heart rates, nothing like that,” Ryan answered.

  “You’re a little creepy sometimes,” I said, and he gave me one of his usual deadpan look
s.

  We finished eating and made our way back out to Jenson’s car. Ryan held his hand up and walked around it. Smelling, listening. Mama’s death had seemed to awaken some extra paranoia in him. He seemed like he was always waiting for the ax to fall now, and on one hand, I appreciated that at least one of us seemed to have their shit together enough to get ahead of stuff like this. On the other, I hated that this was my life now. Wondering when some bastard would try to blow us up or poison us or who knew what else. I hated it, and I thought all the time about what my life would have been like if I’d just done a few things differently. If I hadn’t agreed to team up with Damian. If I hadn’t flown in to save him when I thought StrikeForce had him. If I’d been a whole lot smarter about who I trusted. If I’d done things differently, my life would be a lot simpler now.

  My mother would still be alive.

  I shook myself out of my thoughts when Ryan opened the door and waved me in. I sat between him and Dani on the ride back to Command, listening to Jenson and David murmuring quietly in the front seat about tweaks David wanted to make to my equipment for the mission. I looked out the window, at the streetlights we passed, and it lulled me into an almost hypnotic half-sleep. I blinked my eyes hard.

  “Tired?” Ryan asked, and I nodded.

  “Slept like crap last night. Too sore, couldn’t stop thinking.”

  He nodded. “You can probably take tomorrow off. I can see if David’ll patrol with me or something.”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather work. Otherwise I’ll just sit in my room obsessing.”

  Once we got back to Command, we all went to my suite and planned for our little ops mission, then sat around watching hockey and talking. They did a good job of taking my mind off of my guilt and anger over Mama for a little while, and I laughed more with the four of them than I did around anyone else. In the back of my mind, I wondered which one of them would betray me eventually, and hated myself for thinking it. It was one more thing to hate Killjoy for. My trust in everyone and everything was shaken, and I hated that he’d managed to do that to me, that I let him do it.