Hero Status

by Kristen Brand

  Then came the guy with the knife. He stood in a low, wide stance, holding the weapon like he knew how to use it. I could have knocked it from his grasp, but why bother? He lunged, and I stood still and let him stab me. The blade broke on my skin.

  The man stared, wide-eyed, then turned and dashed away.

  Trick tried to get up, and I kicked him back down. Treat slid backward across the floor until her back hit the wall, never taking her eyes off me. I did a quick sweep of the room. Lindsay had retreated to the snack bar but was watching rather than running. A man was still cuffed to the opposite wall, pulling futilely at his chains in an attempt to get away. Two of my attackers were sprawled on the floor; the others had evidently run for it. I made a note of them in case they got up, then turned my attention back to Trick and Treat.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” I told them. “The police should be here in less than ten minutes. If you want them to find you alive, you’ll answer my questions.”

  Val would have been proud of my bluff. The two of them exchanged fearful glances from their spots on the floor, telepathic conversations no longer an option. I didn’t waste any time.

  “Where’s the Black Valentine?”

  Treat shook her head mutely. Trick grabbed a fistful of his styled hair in frustration.

  “The hell?” he choked out. “How should we know? What the fuck kind of question is that?”

  “Think very carefully,” I growled.

  “We don’t know!” Treat cried. “I swear.” Her heavy mascara was running as tears leaked from her eyes. A pretty girl crying—my shallow male instincts almost got the better of me until I remembered she was probably a murderer and a sexual predator.

  “Then let’s start with what you do know,” I said. “Ruby Baxter. You psy-assaulted her. Rewrote her memories. Why?”

  They exchanged glances again. Trick shook his head microscopically, as if I couldn’t see him, and Treat squared her shoulders and set her jaw.

  I didn’t have time for this. I could have threatened them with the Berettas, but I didn’t believe in pointing a gun at someone if you weren’t prepared to pull the trigger.

  New strategy. I drove the foot of my cane down on Trick’s leg. His bones broke with a crack, and he screamed.

  Treat screamed. The guy chained to the wall behind me screamed. I waited for them to quiet, for Trick to stop swearing and writhing, and kept my face blank and my breathing steady. When the only sounds left were his broken sobs, I spoke.

  “Do you know how many bones are in the human leg?”

  They stared at me, shaking and pale.

  “Neither do I,” I said. “Think of all the fun we could have finding out.” I held their gazes. “Ruby Baxter. Why?”

  “It wasn’t our idea,” said Treat weakly. “We were paid to do it.”

  “By whom?”

  “Starla Strauss—that woman always on the news for chasing superheroes.”

  I stared, waiting for her to say “Just kidding!” or “Gotcha!” This had to be someone’s idea of a joke. Starla Strauss? My stomach felt heavy, but I couldn’t afford to wait for the information to truly sink in.

  “And Harris Holt?” I said. “Supersonic. She paid you to kill him, too?”

  “That was an accident,” said Trick.

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

  “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Quickly.”

  “She came to us.” Treat was curled up in a ball against the wall, her gaze on a spot half a foot below my eyes. “We have a reputation. She wanted us to mind-control Supersonic, make him love her, do whatever she said, that kind of thing. She gave us a lot of money.”

  “But it didn’t work,” I said.

  “It did,” Trick grunted through the pain, and almost managed a smirk instead of a grimace. “We could have made him think he was an eighty-year-old woman if we wanted to.”

  “Even when it wore off, he didn’t realize anything had been done to him,” Treat added.

  If the two of them had actually had a clue what they were doing, they would’ve known forcing a person’s thoughts into something so opposite from their usual beliefs took constant fine-tuning to maintain. The human mind was resilient. On some level, Harris must have sensed he was living a lie. He would have gone through a mess of anxiety and depression as he gradually worked his way out of it. I could only imagine what a nightmare that must have been, but he’d broken himself free. Then he’d called things off with Starla and canceled Ruby’s services…

  “And Starla called you again,” I said.

  “We were just going to do the same thing,” Treat said. “But he caught us this time. He fought it… and then he just died. I don’t know what happened.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Trick said. “If he hadn’t gone ape shit on us, he’d be fine right now.”

  I gritted my teeth. I wanted to scream at them for playing around in people’s heads when they didn’t know the first thing about it, and then give a long lecture on personal responsibility.But there wasn’t time, and it wouldn’t have penetrated their thick skulls, anyway.

  “So you painted a heart on his cheek in black lipstick?”

  “That was Strauss’s idea,” said Treat. “To throw off the cops.”

  “Why the Black Valentine in particular?”

  “I dunno. Like I said, it was Starla’s idea.”

  Had Starla had a reason, or had the Black Valentine just been the first supervillain that popped into her head?

  “And Benita Herrera,” I said. “His ex-wife. That wasn’t your fault, either?”

  Treat lowered her gaze even farther. I was surprised she could still feel shame.

  “She got into some bitch fight with Strauss,” she almost whispered. “Said she knew Starla had murdered her ex and was going to the police. We had to kill her.”

  “But why go after Ruby? She didn’t know anything.”

  “Supersonic had talked to her right beforehand. Strauss said it could give the police a clue. I thought she was being paranoid, but she paid us, so…” She shrugged.

  I wasn’t sure anything Ruby knew would have pointed to Starla, but then again, we had already established I was an idiot. Someone in the DSA might have made the connection.

  “What about Moreen Lee?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The director of the DSA.”

  “We didn’t touch her,” said Trick. “That dumb bitch Strauss wanted us to rewrite her memories, but who the hell does she think we are? The Invisible Man couldn’t get past that kind of security.”

  “What did Starla want with her in the first place?”

  “She said the director was on to us,” said Treat. “That she knew the Black Valentine had been framed.”

  I felt something cold and slimy crawl down my throat and die in my stomach. I’d told Starla that the director of the DSA believed me. Back when she’d been saying all that stuff about Val, I’d done it just to shut her up.

  I’d gotten Moreen attacked.

  I was staring at them open-mouthed. I had to say something, ask another question, but my train of thought had crashed. What had I been going to say?

  “How did you contact Starla?” I asked at last.

  “Phone.”

  “Call her.”

  Treat pulled a cell phone out of a black, studded purse and shakily dialed a number. I held out my hand, and she passed it to me.

  The phone rang, and rang, and rang.

  I hung up and pocketed it. Maybe I’d have time to try again later.

  “When you told Starla you couldn’t get to the director, what did she do?”

  “Cussed us out,” Trick said.

  “And what did you do?”

  “Called the boss. Strauss has a shit-ton of cash to waste. He found someone else to handle the director for her, and we got a commission.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  Trick went still.

  “Don’t,” Treat growled
at him.

  “This asshole is gonna kill us!”

  “That’s not as bad as what he’ll do, and you know it.”

  “Fuck him. I’m not gonna die to keep his name out of it.” Trick looked back to me. “He’s—”

  The word died in a gurgled choke. Trick’s eyes rolled up, and he convulsed. I swore and dove to the floor beside him, trying to steady his flailing limbs, but there was nothing I could do. It was some kind of seizure. Before I could even think to call an ambulance, he went still.

  It was already over.

  I put a finger to his wrist, searching for a pulse, and found one. He was alive, but it would take hospital equipment to figure out if he had any brain activity. This was exactly what I’d feared had happened to Ruby. I’d say it was a fitting fate for her attacker, but no, nobody deserved this, not even him.

  I stared at Trick’s pale features, struck by how young he was. The seizure had hit right when he was about to tell me who was behind all this. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But who could do such a thing? It would take an incredibly powerful, incredibly skilled telepath to install that kind of safeguard in someone’s mind. Even Val would have trouble managing it.

  I’d seen Dr. Sweet do something similar.

  No. Dr. Sweet was dead for sure this time. I was only considering him as a suspect because he’d been on my mind lately. Could someone else have gotten a hold of his research? It was worth considering, but not right now. The police would be here any second.

  I struggled to my feet, though every inch of my body wanted to remain on the floor. Treat hadn’t moved since her brother’s sudden attack. She stared at him with bulging eyes, her mind having retreated far away.

  “On your feet,” I said softly.

  She didn’t move. I took her arm as gently as I could and pulled her up, and she didn’t resist. There were plenty of convenient shackles on the wall, and I chained her up next to the poor guy who’d gotten stuck in the room. I took pity on him and reached to break his metal cuffs, and he flinched and screamed like I was going to murder him. When I yanked his chains from their mount on the wall, he backed slowly away, eyes glued to me, then turned and sprinted out the door.

  “Lindsay.”

  She jumped at the sound of her name and looked at me in rapt attention.

  “When the police get here,” I said, “make sure they know these two are telepaths and to call in the DSA.”

  She nodded mutely. I considered the front and back doors and started toward the back.

  “Hey,” said Lindsay.

  I stopped and looked at her questioningly.

  “You and your wife,” she said. “Is it an open relationship?”

  I blinked. “Uh… no.”

  “Damn.”

  Her shoulders drooped. I hovered there awkwardly trying to figure out what to say, then gave up and escaped out the back door.

  Chapter 14

  Getaways were not my strong suit, not with the knee, which was why I’d parked the car illegally only a block away. But a block was still a long distance at my slow pace, and the police were out in full force tonight, if spread thin. Talk and laughter filled the crowded street, but I could still hear the commotion the BDSM clubbers were causing where they’d poured out of Purgatory a ways behind me. When someone shouted, I tensed, preparing—well, not to run, but to try to hobble faster.

  But it wasn’t the police or anyone from the club. It was Giordano, shouldering people aside as he caught up with me. I abandoned my plan to run and got ready to unscrew the sword from my cane. Stabbing him might make him stronger, but not if he passed out from blood loss first.

  “Still stalking me?” I asked.

  “Keep moving,” he said. “The cops back there have your description.”

  After a second’s hesitation, I judged the police the greater threat. The two of us walked side by side down the pavement, just briskly enough not to look like we were fleeing the scene.

  “How do you keep finding me?” I asked. “Did I swallow a tracking chip without realizing it?”

  He didn’t look at me, his eyes instead scanning our surroundings. Between his designer suit and my leather jacket, we must have seemed like a couple of rich, sleazy older men trolling the scene for drunken college girls.

  “Irma told me where your safe house was,” he said. “The club’s website was up on the computer.”

  I scowled. “What are you even doing here? Don’t you have a crime lord you should be delivering my teenage daughter to?”

  “Elisa’s on a plane headed safely home,” he said. “I’m off work. Where’s Valentina?”

  I nearly tripped. That’s why he was here? His expression was guarded, as usual; I didn’t know why I bothered trying to read him. I didn’t trust the guy. There was no way of knowing what secret agenda he may have, or whether he was acting on his own or under Lucio’s orders. And even when he did have relatively good intentions, it tended to end with him beating me up. He was in love with my wife and had stolen my daughter—

  Which made me biased against accepting his help. There were risks, but he was in much better shape than I currently was. He could be the difference between saving Val and getting her killed. I couldn’t let my pride keep me from considering that. But I didn’t want to open myself up to getting double-crossed, either.

  Not that I had much of a choice. If I didn’t cooperate, he’d probably rough me up like Eddy until I did. And I didn’t have time for that.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I know someone who does.”

  • • •

  We took my car to Starla’s house. I tried calling her on Treat’s phone a few more times, but she didn’t pick up. What if she wasn’t home? She was probably in the same place as Val, working on her evil plot. Starla Strauss. I still had trouble believing it. I mean, I’d always known she was unbalanced. She deliberately put herself in life-threatening situations so a superhero would rescue her, for crying out loud. But I hadn’t thought her capable of masterminding something like this.

  I wasn’t even sure what “this” was. Trick and Treat had filled in a lot of the blanks, but the picture still wasn’t complete. I understood why Harris was dead and Val framed for the murder, Benita killed, and Ruby psy-assaulted. And I understood why Moreen had been attacked, if not how. But then someone had kidnapped Val. The game had changed, and Trick and Treat’s mysterious boss was responsible.

  I could only hope Starla knew the identity of the supervillain she’d hired. I pulled up to her glitzy glass house, and Giordano jumped out of the car before I’d even removed the keys from the ignition.

  “Hold up,” I said, climbing out after him. We didn’t know what could be waiting inside, and recklessness could get a guy killed. A man of Giordano’s experience should know better.

  I followed him up the stone path to the front door. The glass walls revealed dark, empty rooms, but there was a light on somewhere in the back, coming from inside one of the bedrooms that wasn’t see-through. Either Starla had forgotten to turn it off, or someone was still home.

  “Just… follow my lead,” I said.

  His eyebrows rose microscopically. This was going to end badly; I could already tell.

  I rang the doorbell. We waited. Cars drove past on the main road and a light wind rustled through the palm trees, but no sound or movement came from inside the house.

  “Just break in,” said Giordano.

  “Not yet.”

  I raised my voice. “Starla? It’s White Knight. Are you home?”

  No answer. Giordano shifted his weight impatiently from leg to leg.

  “Starla?” I tried again. “Open up!”

  “This is ridiculous. It’s made of glass.”

  He raised his fist to smash down the door, and I grabbed him. “Just wait.”

  I peered into the apparently vacant house, its rooms like photographs from a catalog. There wasn’t a bit of clutter, not a single pillow out of place. The chairs were all pushed in, the ta
bletops free of coffee cups and papers. No one had tossed keys onto the counter or lost the TV remote. The main purpose of the rooms was to be put on display, not lived in. Starla’s house was a metaphor for her life: pretty but empty, and desperate to make people look. I didn’t envy the person who called it home.

  “Treasure?” I kept my voice gentle but still loud enough to carry. “It’s David Del Toro. You and I need to talk.”

  I held my breath. I didn’t know if I could convince her to come out, didn’t even know if she was really in there. Would Starla have taken her daughter with her, wherever she’d gone? She was controlling; she probably didn’t let the girl out of her sight for long. But then, she’d been quick enough to dismiss her when having dinner with me. I couldn’t predict the way Starla would think—obviously, or I could have prevented all this. Her thought process was just too different. I couldn’t even begin to put myself in her shoes.

  The hallway light flipped on, and a small figure hesitantly approached the door. Treasure wore a pink robe with a matching pair of pajama pants peeking out from underneath it. The ensemble looked like something a Barbie would wear, not something your average teenager would pick out for herself. Her feet were bare and made no noise as she came down the hall, trying to peek up at us while keeping her gaze on the floor. She undid the locks, still keeping her eyes from our faces, and slowly opened the door.

  “I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice squeaked. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told somebody. I didn’t—I couldn’t—”

  The poor girl was about to hyperventilate. I put a hand on her shoulder. She shrank back, then looked up at me in despair.

  “It’s all right,” I said soothingly. “I’m going to stop her. But I need to know what’s going on first. Can you help me?”

  Treasure nodded and whispered, “She killed Supersonic.”

  “I know,” I said. “Come on. Let’s sit down.”

  Time was precious. I just wanted to ask where Val was, get back in the car, and go to my wife, but it wasn’t that simple. I needed to fully understand the situation before rushing off, and this wasn’t like questioning Trick and Treat. The frail girl in front of me had been bullied and abused enough; I wouldn’t add to it.