Hero Status

by Kristen Brand

  The sound of the engine changed from a low humming to a roar, and I felt my temper do the same. The van must have finally broken free of traffic for us to be speeding up. My arms were sore from being shackled behind my back, but I was careful not to move a muscle.

  “You’re an idiot, Walter,” I said. “And if you really think I’m one of the bad guys, then you should’ve given me a lot more than this crappy excuse for security.”

  Before I’d even finished the sentence, I threw my head sideways and struck Time-Out in the side of the jaw. It was just a careful tap, but my taps were like a boxer’s knockout punch, and Time-Out went down for the count. Before the others could react, I slammed down my feet.

  The force punched a hole through the bottom of the van, and I slid and stomped on the asphalt. The van jerked violently, and Shield Maiden and Walter hit the wall. With my legs locked tight, I tore a trail through the concrete for several yards until something in my knee ripped, and I pulled back with a scream.

  The van swung sideways, and the brakes screeched. My legs still weren’t completely inside, and I whipped about wildly, unable to steady myself with my hands. We slowed, rocked back and forth a few times, and then fell still. My knee felt like it had exploded, but I didn’t have time to check, because Shield Maiden was on me instantly.

  She swung her shield in a downward swipe, and I tried to dodge it. I was partly successful; it bashed into my shoulder instead of my head. For a moment, my whole arm went numb. I was still on the floor (partway through the floor, excuse me), and I didn’t try to stand. I drove my injured shoulder into her ankle and took her down with me.

  I pulled my legs all the way into the van and bent my knees. The pain shot up my spine and all through my body, causing tears to leak out of my eyes. My bad knee still didn’t flex fully, but it was enough for me to slide my chained arms over my feet. I brought them to the front of my body just in time to block Shield Maiden’s next attack. Her shield hit my handcuffs with a metal clang.

  The van’s interior was small, but that was good. I was cuffed and could barely move one of my legs, but the small space meant Shield Maiden didn’t have much room to maneuver, either. We grappled on the floor, and I managed to knock her shield out of her hands through instinct and pure dumb luck. She switched to fists and socked me in the face. My head slammed into the floor and left a dent.

  My sight blurred, and it felt like my skull was a cymbal in a drum set. While I was still dazed, she got in more blows. I tried to punch back but, well… Handcuffs, remember? I barely managed to block a few of her hits. Our struggle was shaking the entire van. It must have looked funny from the outside, like someone in the back seat was having absolutely phenomenal sex.

  I kneed her in the stomach (with my good knee) and managed to loop my arms over her head and around her neck. Before she could move, I had her in a sleeper hold. I squeezed lightly, and she grabbed my arm, trying to pry me off. Then a burst of white hot energy shot out from her body and hit me. I reeled, the heat and force feeling like I’d been on the wrong end of a small bomb, but I held on. A second followed, much weaker than the first. Then she went limp.

  I released her, and Lord Almighty, everything hurt. It felt like my brain was vibrating against the inside of my skull, and my knee—it didn’t even feel like a knee, just an agonizing ball of mangled tendons, barely maintaining its connection to my lower leg. My right eye wouldn’t open completely; I couldn’t even remember Shield Maiden hitting me there. And I… Had her energy blast burned me? It had been years since the last time I’d been burned.

  “You just made the biggest mistake of your life,” Walter said. He was half-crouched in the corner, a hand clutched to a growing knot on his head, but he didn’t move to attack. After all, what could he do to me?

  I was pretty sure my mind was mush, but I managed to form one coherent thought: get out. Shield Maiden and Time-Out wouldn’t stay down for long, and the driver was probably already calling for backup.

  I crawled to the van’s back door and pried it open like a tuna can. We’d stopped in the middle of a city street, and the crowd on the sidewalk was staring. Crowds were good; I could get lost in a crowd. It also meant there was less of a chance someone would interfere, whether to help me because I’d just been in a car accident or to stop me because I was a man in handcuffs fleeing the scene. If this were a back road with only one other person around, they’d know it was their responsibility to do something. But with a huge crowd, everyone was waiting for someone else to be the first to step forward.

  My hands were still cuffed together, and I tried to remember whether I’d seen Walter with the key, but I didn’t want to risk taking the time to pat him down to find it. Sitting on the van’s floor, I swung my legs out and put my feet on the ground. Stopping the vehicle had obliterated my shoes and left my pants shredded from the knees down. The road was rough beneath my bare feet, though it was a miracle I even noticed it with the rest of my body crying out in pain. Then the moment of truth came, and I tried to stand.

  My knee was swollen and shaking. I tested it with my weight, and it gave out. I almost crashed to the pavement before catching myself. Damn it all, this wasn’t going to work. I needed my cane. I needed a wheelchair. How was I supposed to flee the scene if I couldn’t walk, let alone run?

  “Do you hear me, Del Toro?!” Walter bellowed.

  I started forward with a sliding, lop-sided walk, like a kid’s impression of a zombie. Between my shredded clothes and bruised body, I must have looked like I’d just crawled out of my own grave. I couldn’t stand to put more than a fraction of my weight on my bad knee for anything more than a second. The distance to the sidewalk might as well have been miles, but I would just have to take it in baby steps—though at this point, a baby’s steps would cover more ground than mine.

  Just get into the crowd before the cops get here, I told myself. Then you can catch a cab or—

  Crap. The DSA had confiscated everything when they locked me up. I had no wallet, no cell phone. I didn’t even have any shoes. And I was still handcuffed.

  Just get into the crowd before the cops get here, I repeated. No use worrying about steps two and three until you’re sure you can get past step one.

  A traffic jam was growing behind the van, and the air filled with cars’ angry honking. People were shouting somewhere, too. Someone was bound to step up and stop me soon. I reached the edge of the crowd, and they parted, staring and murmuring.

  “Hey, man, are you okay?”

  “Call 9-11. Is someone calling 9-11?”

  “What’s going on? Is this part of the parade or something?”

  I got lucky, and none of them tried to stop me. Half of them were probably drunk. Heck, once I got away from the immediate area, maybe I could pass for a particularly messed up drunk. The festival had plenty of them, and lots were dressed up in costumes for the occasion.

  Drunk or not, everyone could certainly point in the direction I’d gone once the police and the DSA showed up, and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t have gotten even a block away by then. I’d have to find a cab. True, I had no cash, but if I got the driver to drop me off at one of Val’s safe houses, I could grab some from inside. There would be drawers full of cash in dozens of different currencies ready and waiting.

  I staggered along the sidewalk at the pace of a dying snail, and when someone bumped into me, I nearly ate asphalt. Super-strength or not, my balance was shot. Every step I took was like driving rusted knives further into my knee. The van wasn’t far behind me, and I had a sudden vision of Shield Maiden running out and tackling me to the ground.

  I saw a yellow cab in the distance and knew I couldn’t move fast enough to wave it down in time. Then a familiar black Maserati pulled up to the curb, and the back door popped open.

  “In,” Giordano grunted.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I threw myself into the back seat and somehow managed to get the door closed behind me as the car took off. The roads were
too packed for a true high-speed getaway, and I looked worriedly out the windows for signs of pursuit. But after a few minutes, several blocks, and a couple of roundabout turns, I relaxed. I’d escaped DSA custody relatively intact. Now it was time to see whether I’d made it into even more trouble.

  The Maserati smelled of new leather and whatever motor oil Giordano called cologne. The car was pretty well soundproofed, insulating us from the din of the partiers outside, and it made for a smooth ride. I could almost close my eyes and fall asleep. I was so tired; I just wanted to rest and not hurt when I woke up. There were so many things I needed to do that I didn’t even know where to start.

  Well, first things first.

  “You got a lock-pick?” I held up my wrists and looked at Giordano.

  “You can keep them on,” he said.

  “What? You think I’m going to attack you? The worst I could do right now is pass out and drool on you.”

  He ignored me.

  “Fine,” I said. “You can do me another favor. Tell me the DSA was wrong and you guys were the ones who grabbed Val.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and mourned the death of my last sliver of hope. Then I put aside my usual attitude toward Giordano and looked him in the eye.

  “You need to get these handcuffs off me and tell your driver to head downtown.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can track down the only two people who might know where Val’s been taken.”

  I waited for him to be shocked—to yell at me, demand answers—anything. But he didn’t react. Not so much as a muscle on his face even twitched.

  “I can’t do that.”

  I wanted to slug him. “Why not?”

  “Valentina isn’t my concern. I’m here about the matter of your daughter.”

  It was like Freezefire had just turned my stomach to ice. No, not this—not now. The urge to run overcame me, to take Elisa and get out. The message didn’t make it from my brain to my body, and I sat there stock-still, gaping like an idiot. When I spoke, my mouth was dry.

  “We don’t have time for this. Val needs our help.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Bullshit.”

  His stony expression didn’t change, but I plowed on anyway.

  “You didn’t beat the crap out of me at Starla’s because you don’t care. Val’s not just the boss’s daughter you wanted for a trophy wife. You’re in love with her.”

  He socked me in the jaw.

  It doesn’t happen often, but when I’m right, I’m right. Not that it was any comfort as I bent over and wondered if I’d need superglue to reattach my jawbone to my skull. The pounding in my head spiked from a hammer to a power drill, and the rest of my injuries flared up to compete for my attention.

  Giordano leaned back, cool and collected once more. “Mr. Belmonte wants Elisa on a plane by the end of the day. I have a job to do.”

  Which meant I had no chance of changing his mind. Giordano didn’t get to where he was by only following Lucio’s orders selectively.

  My heart raced, and I wanted to scream and curse, but I had a lifetime of practice at being calm. I took a deep breath and willed myself to be still. I could only wait for the situation to develop and then make my move—and pray my next move didn’t leave me as beat up as the last one had.

  But just where were we going? Giordano had to know the DSA would be watching my house, and I hoped Eddy and Irma would have moved Elisa out of there hours ago. And if Giordano was here to take Elisa, why had he saved my ass back there? I’d do everything in my power to stop him from stealing my daughter, and he knew that. He should have left me back on the street to be caught by the first police officer who could walk faster than a three-legged turtle.

  I had no clue what was going on, and it would be useless to try and guess before I had more information. But putting off this problem just reminded me that Val was gone and I had no idea who’d taken her. Just the thought made my pulse quicken and my breaths go shallow, and I had to force myself to calm down again and think. Trick and Treat’s job on Ruby had been sloppy and unprofessional. Whoever they were, I didn’t think they had what it took to break a prisoner out of DSA custody by themselves. But if not them, who? They were my only lead.

  One thing at a time, Del Toro. Val would skin me alive if I neglected our daughter in favor of her.

  The Maserati escaped the crowded, tourist-trap part of town, and in twenty or so minutes we were pulling up to a fenced-in lot of rented storage units. The driver had to stop and get out to manually open the chain-link gate, and soon we disappeared into rows of buildings with numbered, rusted metal doors. The Maserati’s headlights briefly illuminated water stains on the walls and weeds growing through cracks in the old pavement of the empty parking lot, but when the driver stopped in front of a storage unit and turned off the car, everything went dark. There were no streetlights of any kind, though there might as well have been a blinking neon sign that read, “Don’t walk here alone at night.”

  Giordano and the driver got out, and when I didn’t follow, he bent down to glare at me. Most of the time, my pride would insist I limp out under my own power, but this wasn’t one of those times.

  “Either get me a cane or help,” I said. “I can barely move.”

  Giordano nodded at the driver, who walked around the car and helped me out. It would have been much easier if someone had taken off my handcuffs so I could put my arm on the man’s shoulders, but the driver grabbed me awkwardly and supported enough of my weight that I could half hop, half limp forward. By the time we made it to the door, Giordano had unlocked it and rolled it up with a noisy metal rattle.

  The storage room was small, and there was some indication it was being used for its intended purpose. About a dozen crates were stacked along the walls, lacking any sort of label to indicate their contents. But those were just scenery, not the reason we were here. Two mobsters sat in chairs, and the air was thick with smoke from their cigarettes. Irma was also in a chair, but she was handcuffed to hers. So was Eddy. His chair was in the middle of the room, and the dirty floor beneath it was splattered with blood.

  They’d really worked him over. The skin above one of his eyes had split, leaving a trail of sticky blood down his face. His other eye had swollen shut, puffy and purple. His mouth was bleeding, too, and his cheeks… Well, it would be easier to list the places that weren’t cut, bruised, and swelling. His face was barely recognizable. Blood had seeped through his white shirt, and I was sure I couldn’t even see the worst of his injuries. Each of his breaths sounded pained.

  This was the man who’d cooked my meals for the past three years, and the only one in my household who’d watch football with me. I should have gone into a rage over what they’d done to him, but the first words out of my mouth were, “Where’s Elisa?”

  “That’s what we wanted to ask you,” Giordano said.

  The two mobsters had vacated their seats. I was pushed down into one of them, and Giordano sat across from me in the other.

  “These two say she was kidnapped,” he said. “Maybe they’re lying. We’ll find out eventually. In the meantime, I’d like to ask you: who’d want to kidnap your daughter?”

  I looked at Irma, praying she and Eddy had just made that up and Elisa was really in hiding somewhere. The woman was a good liar, but there was a numb horror in her expression that I didn’t think she was faking.

  “It was a psychic attack,” she said. “We couldn’t defend ourselves. I’m sorry.”

  Giordano said something, but the words didn’t penetrate the storm of panic around my brain. The room seemed to sway like I was on a boat. First my wife, and now my daughter. I pictured Elisa alone and afraid in some dark cell. Or had they put her in the same cell as Val? Maybe that would bring her comfort, or maybe one of them was being tortured in front of the other at this very moment. Or they could both already be dead, their bodies dumped in the sea, where the current woul
d carry mother from daughter and fish were already taking bites off their corpses.

  I tore myself back to the dark smoky room and what was happening around me. I tried to speak, but my tongue was like a dead piece of meat in my mouth. The words didn’t come. I swallowed and tried again.

  “Did you see who took her?” My voice was a croak, and I didn’t know why I even made the effort. Of course they hadn’t seen anything.

  But Irma surprised me.

  “Yes,” she said. “He made sure we got a good look at him.”

  I couldn’t form a follow-up question. I hadn’t expected the need to ask one. Fortunately, Irma didn’t need to be asked.

  “White male, late fifties, early sixties,” she said as if it was a list she’d memorized. “Maybe five-foot-five at the most, and tubby. Gray hair, balding. He had on gray slacks and a white button-down shirt, both ironed and starched. He was ridiculously neat.”

  I blinked, unable to keep up with how many times I’d been shocked in the past minute. “Did he smell like cleaning solution?”

  Irma’s eyes widened in hope. “Yes.”

  “Who is he?” asked Giordano.

  “Mental,” I said. “The old supervillain. Help me back into the car. I’ll take you to where he lives.”

  “You’ll give me directions, and we’ll take care of it.”

  I wanted to say, “She’s my daughter. Like hell you’ll leave me behind,” but that wouldn’t get me anywhere. Instead, I said, “Mental kidnapped Elisa to get to me. If he’s stupid enough to take her to his apartment, I should be able to draw him out and distract him long enough for you to save her. And if he’s taken her somewhere else, I might spot a clue in his rooms that you’ll miss.”

  Giordano looked like he wanted to argue, but he was too professional to let a grudge interfere with his work.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10