The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

  Sark and Smith exchanged a look. I waited, but it was as if they were holding a discussion without us.

  “You have the authority to let her go?” I prodded.

  Sark nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Don’t tell her I’m not pressing charges, though. That will make her suspicious.”

  “Wait here.” He came back a moment later with a pile of paperwork. While Conn gave Smith his official statement to back up our presence here, I signed what Sark needed me to sign and we figured out the details. Then we left and positioned our car to see the door where she’d come out. We’d left Conn’s truck at Simon’s house and taken Julie’s car, because it was the one Olive was least likely to recognize.

  “Do you think she’ll take us to him?” Conn asked skeptically while we waited. “I’m not sure she’s that dumb.”

  “She’s been in jail overnight. That wasn’t part of the plan, and I’m counting on her instinct being to go find out what her reward is for her commitment.” I slid upward in my seat as the door opened, then slumped when Olive came out. She was wearing the cargo pants and T-shirt of the night before, sans jacket that they were still holding as evidence. Her braid was all fuzzy, and even from here she looked paler. She looked left and right before starting down the street, cell phone in her hand but not being used as far as I could tell.

  Conn’s phone chimed. He glanced at the screen. “Trace is active.”

  A thrill skittered across the backs of my shoulders. Sark had allowed Conn to add an app to Olive’s phone so we could follow her without being spotted. She was on foot now, probably walking home, which was less than a mile away. We watched the dot travel sloooowwwly across the screen.

  “This might kill me,” I admitted. “My patience has limits.”

  He smiled. “You sat on that fence in the alley far longer than this.”

  It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “That night you helped me keep the drug dealer from getting away?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You were watching me? That’s so creepy!”

  His tiny smirk disappeared, and he turned away from the phone to face me. “I’m sorry. That’s not really how it was. I was out walking—”

  “That late at night. Behind the grocery store.”

  He huffed. “Yeah. That late, that spot. I’d told myself I was retiring, but it’s hard to just put it all away. Going for a walk to get rid of my restlessness was an excuse I didn’t even admit to myself, for looking for trouble that I could stop. I thought I found some, but then I realized the shadow in the alley was the Eclipse I’d heard about a couple of days before. I was curious, so I watched you. And you—” He broke off to shake his head with an admiring sound. “You crouched there like a cat, literally. Unmoving, just waiting for your prey. It was impressive. I watched you spin those balls around that guy’s face after he’d leveled you. And the calm way you wrapped them up, after I revealed what I was. You took everything with aplomb. And I—” His pale hazel eyes met mine, sincere and chagrined at the same time. “I couldn’t wait to meet you.”

  I swallowed. “Did you know? When you came to the library?”

  He shook his head and glanced at the phone to check Olive’s progress. It looked like she was almost home. “The spark between us surprised me, and I didn’t want to act on it, well, for a lot of reasons. One, because I’d just come to town and needed to get my head straight. No one deserves to start something up in the middle of that. But I had this buzz for the local superhero, which was unfair to someone else I might be interested in, and also a problem because I was trying to get some distance from superheroes.”

  My head spun. “So . . . you didn’t want to do more than flirt with me because you liked the other version of me?”

  “If you want to nutshell it.” He grinned that startlingly brilliant grin again. “Good thing you turned out to be the same person, huh? It’s like it was meant to be.”

  But then the impact of his own words must have hit him, because all the happiness shut off like I’d sucked the light out of it. He cleared his throat and went back to watching the infinitesimal progress of the tiny red dot. I didn’t bother wondering what that was about. He’d said as much in his story. He wanted distance from superheroes. I thought this morning had changed things, but clearly he was still undecided on the matter.

  “She’s home. Aaaand . . . now she’s not.” The dot moved much faster all of a sudden, and Conn handed me the phone so he could drive. I directed him as Olive hit the highway, turning off it a few minutes later to head into Delaware, a small college town with a lot of commercial buildup on the outskirts—more Columbus sprawl. When Olive stopped, Conn pulled over on a side street a few blocks away.

  “Do you know where that is?”

  I studied the map. “Out behind the fairgrounds. I think there’s construction going on back there.” I found a satellite shot, but even though it was copyright this year, it could have been months old. “I don’t know how many of these houses are completed.”

  “Well, let’s go check it out.” He opened his door. We got out of the car and began walking. I’d given Conn back the phone, and he checked it every half block to make sure she was still there.

  It felt odd to be doing this in broad daylight. I was Eclipse, yet not Eclipse. I was on a mission, but out in the open. Instead of my catsuit, mask, and hood, I wore leggings and a loose, knit tunic that gave me freedom of movement but looked kind of soccer mom from the outside. Inside, I burned with energy. It had been easy to ignore while we were sitting outside the police station and then following Olive, but I’d collected light from all the sources in the cottage, leaving Simon to replace bulbs as we left. Bless him, he’d even thought of that, knowing that if we went out during the day, I’d need to take light with me, unable to count on any being available wherever we went. My arms and hands tingled, at the ready.

  We made our way through the woods behind the fairgrounds and stopped to study the lone building in the area where Olive’s tracker said she was. It was a construction trailer, rickety and rusted in spots, its roof half-caved on one side. The ground between us and the trailer had been cleared, but weeds and grass had sprouted around building materials. Someone hadn’t gotten very far with developing this plot, and TC had apparently decided to hide in the abandoned trailer. Bleeping coward.

  “Gotta say,” Conn murmured. “I pictured something a lot sleeker for this guy.”

  I knew what he meant. According to Evan, TC was skilled enough to stay hidden via computer as well as in real life. That evoked images of high-tech luxury. This kind of dragged him down to our level. Lower, maybe.

  Don’t get carried away. He’s still a powerful telekinetic. And you’re down one superhero. I didn’t need to look at Conn’s wound to remember what we were up against.

  “Are you ready?” he asked me, another surprise. Without realizing it, I’d braced for him to argue that I should stay back, or work from outside, or maybe even that we shouldn’t do this at all, since he wasn’t at full strength. Or he’d want more time to study the situation. Of course, I didn’t have any experience working with him except our one night on patrol, and that was nothing like this. I flashed him a grin.

  “Let’s go.”

  He stepped back into the woods to make his way around, unseen, while I dashed across the clearing. There was no way to sneak up to the single point of entry, but the blinds were closed on the two tiny windows, and Olive couldn’t have known she was being followed. Light glowed around my hands, faint in the sunshine, and I prepared to throw up a shield at the first sign of movement. But there was no need for one. I made it to the door and took a breath, quietly testing the latch. Unlocked. This was it. One. Two. THREE!

  I yanked open the door. With no spring, it flew back and slammed against the outside of the trailer. In half
a second, I’d identified Olive perched on a desk a few feet to my left, a beer in one hand. Directly in front of me, a young man slouched on a rolling chair, the back reclined halfway to horizontal. I whipped out a sheet of light, surrounding him, brightening it enough to blind him for a few crucial seconds.

  Olive sucked in air, preparing, I was sure, to scream or make some other debilitating sound. I slapped a patch of light over her mouth. The beer bottle dropped and bounced, beer foaming over the neck and drenching the floor as she choked and scrabbled at the light. I went back to TC, who kicked and flailed as if tangled in a blanket. I wrapped my light tight around his ankles and head, drawing it back from one arm. Behind me, Conn leaped over the steps into the trailer, landing next to TC and grabbing his arm, a syringe ready in his right hand.

  Olive screamed, the sound muffled, and lunged for Conn’s back. I buried a ball of light in her gut to knock her back and focused on holding TC down, disorienting and scaring him so he couldn’t concentrate enough to use his powers against us.

  It didn’t last long.

  An invisible hand lifted me off the floor and flung me backward. I didn’t have far to go in the tiny trailer and slammed against a shelf next to the door, my head snapping back and knocking binders and other stuff to the floor. Papers scattered. Conn stepped on a few pages, his foot skidding and knocking him off balance. I landed on my hands and knees, pain blazing in a line across the center of my back where the shelf had bent me, cramps seizing in a range of muscles. I kept TC trapped, but the light slipped down his face. Through the haze of pain, I saw a wild, furious grin on his face. He said something to Conn, who reared back as if jabbed with a cattle prod. TC laughed as Conn stepped in front of me. We were losing the advantage in a big way. I could see red inside the syringe in Conn’s hand. He’d collected what we needed. Time to get out of there.

  “Let’s go!” I tried to shout, but it came out a gurgle. I staggered to my feet and grabbed Conn’s shoulder for half a second before I had to duck a flying tool aimed at my head. It clattered against the desk, but a second, heavy piece of metal connected with my skull. Everything blurred, and my grip on the light loosened. Olive shrieked, the sound filling the trailer, pressing against my eardrums. Both Conn and TC shouted, Conn doubling over with his hands over his ears, TC getting loose of my light. I pulled it back, then spread it in a curving wall to separate TC and Olive from me and Conn. We got to our feet and stumbled outside, me almost falling off the steps as I finally drew a full breath, the pain in my back easing.

  “Come on.” Conn capped the syringe, stuck it in his pocket, and grabbed my arm. We ran as fast as we could for the woods, through the trees, and down the road to the car, startling an old woman walking a huge dog and a middle-aged man trimming some hedges. I was so glad TC had hidden in Delaware, where people didn’t know me by sight.

  “How long before the light dissipates?” Conn asked as we tumbled into the car and he cranked the engine.

  “It’s gone by now.” I shook out my hands and drew the remaining light deeper inside me. My whole body seemed to be shaking. Adrenaline, no doubt, but it was stronger than anything I’d ever felt while doing this job. “Are you okay?” I checked him over while I put on my seatbelt and helped him secure his, the metal clicking against plastic until I managed to shove it into place. “I don’t see any fresh blood.”

  He shrugged and clenched his left hand, then stretched it out. “Bruises heal.”

  “He got a couple of licks in, huh?” I rubbed the side of my head, wincing at the tender spot where the wrench or whatever it was had hit me.

  “Yeah, but he seemed to be concentrating on you. You okay?”

  “Bruises heal.” I smiled. “Conn, we did it.” I reached for his pocket, and he shifted to let me get the syringe out. There wasn’t much blood in it, but Julie had said she didn’t need much. Preferably more than the few drops they’d had access to for my serum, since she didn’t have all their research and trials, but hopefully we’d collected enough to do what she needed. We’d gotten the job done, but I knew I’d never have prevailed in a longer fight where the object was to neutralize TC.

  “Sark.” I abruptly grabbed my phone and called the cell number he’d given me. When he answered, I gave him The Chaser’s location. “They’re not going to stay long,” I warned him. “They might already be out of the trailer. We need eyes on them until we can get our plan in motion and get the task force here to take custody once we have him.”

  “On it. We still have Olive’s trace. She’s on the move. A patrol was authorized. Don’t even,” he warned when I took a breath. “We know how to do our job, Harmony.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  I hung up and let Conn drive in silence until we’d gotten on the highway. And then I asked the heavy question. “Who is he?” I asked. “And what did he say to you?

  He didn’t try to deflect. He knew I’d seen his reaction to The Chaser’s face. “You know how Olive has this grudge against you from childhood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we’ve discovered her common ground with The Chaser.”

  “You knew him as a kid?” That made a lot of sense. It wasn’t about death chasing the one who got away. It was just this guy going after someone he thought wronged him. Now the question was . . . had he actually been wronged? Or was he placing unfair blame the same way Olive was?

  “A little older. Our parents worked together in Europe. We weren’t exactly friends, but had to hang together out of circumstance. There was a lot of pressure from all our parents to follow in their footsteps. But Harris wanted nothing to do with it. I never even knew what his powers were. I assumed it was something embarrassing or stupid.”

  “And why is he after you?”

  He shook his head, gaze distant. “I have to call Evan.”

  “We’ll do that back at the house. He’s got to be part of our strategy.” I checked my side mirror, then twisted to look out the back window. It was midday, so traffic was busy enough that someone following us wouldn’t be easy to spot. Conn didn’t tell me we were fine, which made me tense up, which sent streaks of pain across my back. I watched as we took the Pilton exit that would take us into town, instead of the one closer to the safe house. We couldn’t lead them back to the cottage, back to Simon and Julie. Not to mention Delphi, the poor horse. And even if the police were watching Olive and Harris, they could have other people helping them, people we wouldn’t see.

  But no one followed us down the ramp. I kept watching until Conn had turned a few corners. When there was still no one behind us, I turned around in my seat and relaxed a little bit. Phase One-A was complete, but we still had a long way to go.

  Conn parked in the clearing next to Simon’s car and turned off the engine, but didn’t get out. He unbuckled and reached out to stroke my cheek. “Are you all right? He threw you pretty hard against the wall.”

  “I’m fine.” I would be, probably in an hour or two, judging by how I’d healed before.

  “I’m sorry.” His hand slid down to the side of my neck. “I was caught up in my shock and wasn’t thinking about what he’d done to you.”

  Which wasn’t the truth. I’d noticed how he put himself between me and Harris. “Because you trust me to do my job and take care of myself,” I joked, and his eyes lightened a bit at my attempt to give him credit.

  “Okay, we’ll go with that. But I’m sorry. You are okay?”

  “Yes. I promise, I’ll tell you if I’m not. I won’t compromise the job or anyone’s safety because I’m hiding something, okay?”

  His brow tightened, then smoothed out. “Okay.”

  “What did he say to you?” I wasn’t sure he’d want to tell me in front of the others, and I had to know how deep this went between the two of them. Evan said The Chaser hadn’t orchestrated the big incidents for CASE, but w
as involved in quieter ones. Was he willing to cause as much collateral damage, or more, as Olive clearly was?

  Conn lowered his hand to where mine lay in my lap and interlaced our fingers. Reaching out instead of pulling away. We’d come far since I first asked him to help me. But I could feel in his grip, sense in the line of his shoulders, that the instinct to run wasn’t gone. He still believed, at least in part, that his presence here put people in danger. I wouldn’t be surprised when he suggested the best strategy was for him to take the battle someplace else.

  I wasn’t going to let it happen.

  “It doesn’t matter. Villainous trash talk.”

  “Conn.”

  He sighed. “He thanked me for bringing you to his attention. He said he hadn’t realized how insidious the superhero infection was, even invading small towns.”

  Crap. That was worse than I thought. “He really knows how to push your buttons, huh?” I kept my tone light.

  “Yeah.”

  Well, at least he admitted it. I leaned to kiss him, then leaned away to open my door. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

  Julie squealed when we went inside and handed over the blood. “That’s amazing! I can’t believe you did it!”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I looked around. “Where’s Angie?”

  Simon answered. “She got called to the tearoom. Something about flooding.”

  Well, crap. She’d been a big part of the planning. I wanted her to share the results, especially since she hadn’t let up on the digs about leaving her out. “She’s coming back when she’s done?”

  “I guess. Haven’t heard from her.”

  My stomach cramped, then growled hard. So hungry. I headed into the kitchen. “How’s your progress?” I asked Julie.

  “We’re ready.” Julie waved Conn back when he saw me getting out sandwich fixings and headed for the food. “You’re going to want to do this before you eat.”