I didn’t have the strength I usually did, but his skull was a different shape now, so I’d probably done an all right job. I tossed the bat aside and caught my breath, coughing as I inhaled more smoke than air. When had the fire gotten so close? It was burning the walls, the shelves, the computer screens. It was all over the ceiling. The floor above us would probably collapse any second now.
“Val, listen to me.” Dave coughed again, his voice raspy. “Go out the window. Now. Leave me.”
Oh, for God’s sake, Dave. Spare me the heroic selflessness for once.
I yanked the pick out of Dr. Sweet’s leg and ignored the blood. Judging by the shape of the lock, this one was the right size to get it open. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have risked breaking it by using it to stab someone. I had to crawl to reach the table, and I put my hands on the surface to heave myself into a standing position over Dave. More smoke. Coughs wracked my body for a moment, inflaming every single injury I had. My hand was shaking as I reached for the manacle around Dave’s left wrist, but I forced it steady and got to work. The metal might be strong enough to hold White Knight, but a lock was a lock. A few seconds later, the restraint popped open.
The wall closest to the hallway collapsed. Not good. That was probably supporting the ceiling. I leaned across Dave, crawling partially atop the table to get to his right hand. Better to free both his arms before moving to his legs. If something happened before I finished, he might be able to tear off the rest of his restraints himself. I blinked away the tears blurring my vision thanks to the smoke and tried to shut out all sensation except the feel of the lock. The manacle snapped open like the last one had, and I slid slowly off the table.
When my feet hit the floor, the weight was too much. I fell to my knees with a hiss. The bullet, the bat, the beating—they were all conspiring together to take me down. Well, screw them. I grabbed the table’s surface again and pulled myself back up.
“Val…” Dave was sitting up now. “Just go. Please.”
Screw him, too. I jammed the bloody pick into the restraint around his left ankle. The smoke made it hard to see, but I didn’t need to see; I just needed to feel. More coughs hit me, and I had to stop until they passed. My hands were sweaty. Sweat dripped down the side of my face and soaked the back of my shirt. The flames were everywhere now. The heat felt the worst against my scar, the skin there more sensitive. I really wasn’t looking forward to feeling the same agony that had given me that scar on the rest of my skin.
The manacle opened. I dragged myself to the other side of the table to unlock the final one. As I reached for it, the pick slipped from my sweaty grasp. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor.
Son of a bitch.
I crouched down. Where was it? The smoke clouded everything. The pick was small and thin, and the flickering orange light wasn’t the most helpful. Where the hell was it? It couldn’t have gone far. This was ridiculous. My head hurt. My ribs hurt. My legs hurt. The fire was getting hotter and closer, and I was going to die because I’d dropped a stupid—
There it was. I grabbed it and stood—too quickly. Dizziness overtook me, and my head pounded. I put both hands on the table to steady myself, careful not to drop the pick again. When the dizziness abated, I inserted the pick into the very last lock. Come on. Come on. Bits of wood were dropping from the ceiling, and the fire was almost upon us. Come on.
The manacle snapped open, and Dave exploded into motion. He leapt off the table and limped to the wall. He didn’t bother with the window, probably fearing that the broken glass would hurt me. He punched a hole straight through the wall then tore out the wood framing. Five seconds later, there was a hole big enough for a person to get through.
He limped back toward me, and this was the part where you could tell he was a hero. Because even though Dr. Sweet was a murderous psychopath who was probably already dead, Dave grabbed him by the back collar of his lab coat and threw him through the hole to safety. Or maybe he just wanted to preserve the body. The way the good doctor hit the ground and bounced certainly wasn’t going to improve the head wound I’d given him.
Dave put his arm around me, ready to shield me from any falling debris, and together we hobbled out of the house, the heat at our backs. We emerged into the storm, and even though the rain was warm, it felt wonderful. Dave and I staggered across the grass, passed Dr. Sweet’s body, and once we were far enough away from the inferno, collapsed by mutual agreement.
Thunder and sirens filled the night, and for a moment, I just enjoyed the soft, wet grass beneath me and the feeling of rain on my face.
“I love you,” Dave said, out of breath.
I just smiled.
Damn right he did.
Chapter 19
The DSA arrested me as soon as they arrived, of course. It was a matter of principle. There was a house burning down and a former supervillain lying outside it; arresting the supervillain was simply standard protocol. They cuffed Irma and Eddy, too, though Dave and Julio remained free. At the moment, it didn’t make much difference, since all of us were going to get a ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital together. Smoke inhalation treatment for everyone, a whole lot worse stuff for me, and oh, did I mention Julio had gotten a bit shot? Apparently, sometime between setting off a bomb in the house and coming back to try and beat me to death, Dr. Sweet had attempted to make a getaway in the boat docked on the river. He and Julio had gotten into a fight that had ended with Julio getting shot in the shoulder and a big chunk of the river freezing solid. It was still like that, actually, the boat stuck in the ice.
“I’m just wondering how many fish you killed,” Dave said.
He was sitting on the edge of my cot inside the ambulance, and Julio was resting in the seat. The EMTs were talking with some agents for the moment, and Dave was holding my hand and using the same teasing tone he often did with Elisa.
“They’ll thaw,” Julio said defensively.
“Yeah, but they won’t be alive, will they?”
“They could be. Rivers freeze up north all the time, and there are still fish up there.”
“I don’t think those are the same types of fish we have in Florida.”
“They could be.” Julio crossed his arms, winced, and looked petulantly at the ceiling.
Outside, it was still raining lightly, but the water wasn’t enough to wash the smell of smoke from the air. Or maybe that smell was me. I needed to take a long, long shower.
“They were probably endangered fish,” Dave said.
“Okay, no. No. They were not endangered fish.”
“We’re five minutes away from Big Cypress National Preserve. You probably killed at least one endangered fish.”
Julio groaned and put a hand over his face.
I smiled. “Ask him about the…the…” I was too tired to be angry at my inability to communicate. Dave squeezed my hand, which considering how much he’d freaked out thirty minutes ago when he’d first learned about my speech problem, was a major improvement. “…the tiger,” I finished.
Dave straightened up. Julio took notice.
“What tiger?” Julio asked.
Dave hesitated for a moment. “I plead the fifth.”
“Well, now I have to know.” Julio looked past Dave to me. “What tiger? Did he punch a tiger? He punched an endangered animal, didn’t he?”
Someone outside the ambulance cleared her throat. Judging by the way the fun was instantly sucked out of the room, it was probably Agent Lagarde. I lifted up my head to look. Yep. Got it on my first guess.
“I authorized you to go with her,” she told Julio.
“Huh?” he replied.
“I authorized you to accompany Ms. Belmonte to keep an eye on her. When you encountered Dr. Sweet, the situation escalated, and you were forced to engage to prevent casualties. That’s what happened.”
“But you didn’t.” Julio tried to sit up straight but cringed. “I went against orders to—”
“That’s
what happened.” Agent Lagarde’s normally calm tone had an edge to it. “That’s the only way this plays out that doesn’t involve you getting suspended.”
“But you’ll get in trouble for—”
“I’ll be fine.”
Julio’s forehead wrinkled, making him look young. But then, he was young, as young as Mary had been…
“Thank you, Nicole,” he said, “But no. I did what I thought was right, but it was against protocol, and I should get suspended for that.”
Agent Lagarde’s expression remained as unchanging as a mountainside. “Your choice.”
She turned to leave, and I called out, “S-Sweet?”
She stopped, turned back around, but didn’t immediately say anything. That meant she was debating how much to tell us, or whether to tell us anything at all.
“I called the Inferno,” she said. “The warden went to check on Dr. Sweet’s cell personally.”
I raised myself up onto my elbows to get a better look at her. And? The warden went to Dr. Sweet’s cell and what? Found a tunnel he’d dug with spoons? Found no evidence of how he’d managed to escape? Realized she was an idiot for not noticing he was missing for over a day and smacked herself on the forehead?
“He’s still in there,” Agent Lagarde finished.
“I— What?” Dave summed up my feelings exactly.
“They’re ordering the standard DNA tests to make sure he’s not a shape-shifter in disguise,” she said. “But as of now, everything down to his fingerprints points to his being Dr. Sweet.”
I looked at Dave and saw my own bewilderment mirrored on his face. If Dr. Sweet was still in his cell…
Then who the hell had I just beaten to death with a baseball bat?
• • •
The theory I eventually settled on was clones. I used to think Dr. Sweet had regenerative powers, that he’d come back from the dead so many times because his body had some kind of enhanced healing ability. Now I was thinking that he’d never come back from the dead, that each time we’d killed him, we’d killed a different clone. Maybe he had the power to spawn copies of himself, or maybe he’d perfected human cloning at some point during his career as a mad scientist. I may never know, and that was insanely frustrating. The DSA was questioning him, of course, (the one in the Inferno, not the dead one) but he’d readopted his policy of silence and hadn’t said a single word. The odds of them getting anything from him were lower than the odds of the warden buying me a friendship bracelet.
Anyway, how Dr. Sweet copied himself wasn’t really important. What mattered was if there were any copies of him left out there, and if so, how many.
I had a lot of time to brood about it, first in my hospital room and later in a jail cell. Oh, don’t worry, I wasn’t actually convicted of anything. They accused me of the murders of Dr. Sweet and She-Devil, but Charles got me off through a claim of self-defense. It’s just that no judge in the country will let a supervillain out on bail, so I had to do my waiting in prison. Which was fine, because better me than Dave. I’d given the DSA the two supervillains responsible for the psyc ring (granted, they’d probably have preferred their suspects to be alive, but a deal’s a deal), so Dave was clear. I’d accomplished something. You can mail my gold medal to my address on Star Island.
The whole being in jail thing meant I’d missed Mary’s funeral, which… Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little relieved. Mary wouldn’t have wanted me there. My sister Sonia swore she’d punch me in the face the next time she saw me, and she wouldn’t have let a solemn ceremony in a church stop her. Even Bianca had seemed frosty when she’d called, and we usually got along. I’d have to explain it to both of them, explain that Mary had threatened my husband and daughter and left me with no choice. That would be first item on my to-do list after I learned how to talk again.
I was going to a therapist, by the way. She thought I’d make a significant if not complete recovery, though it would take time. Surprisingly, my telepathy had recovered faster. Now, at least, if I couldn’t spit out the words, I could think them at the person instead. It would have been nice if my mind-control had come back when I’d been fighting for my life in a burning building, but hey, better late than never. (Yes, fine, my flippant attitude was a ruse to cover how relieved I was to have my powers again. You saw through that, did you?)
“Are you sure?” Dave asked me, nearly a month after I’d killed Mary.
I’m sure, I replied. I’ve been putting this off for too long.
It was a bright, sunny day, and we were back at South Pointe Park Pier. The air actually felt somewhat autumn-like, or at least it wasn’t so hot and muggy that I was sweating. There were boats on the water, people taking pictures of the view, and seagulls pulling scraps from the trashcans. Dave pushed me forward, wheelchair rattling over the wooden boards, because fate had dealt us a role reversal. Dave had recovered from his injuries enough to walk with the aid of a cane again, while the bullet and bat I’d taken to the legs meant the doctor wanted me to stay off my feet for a couple more weeks yet. Hilarious, right? I was laughing up a storm.
My father came into view ahead, looking out over the water in the same way he had last time. His men were around, too, sitting on benches, pretending to be reading books or newspapers, or leaning against the railing pretending to be enjoying the view. Only this time, Joey Giordano was with them, standing about three yards down from my father with his arms crossed. Dad must not be planning to offer me the organization a second time, then.
“David,” my father greeted coldly.
“Lucio,” Dave replied. He paused to engage in a short alpha-male glaring contest with Joey then walked a few yards away to give my father and me space.
“You had to bring him?” Dad asked.
“He worries,” I replied.
This was the first time we’d met since Mary’s death. Under any other circumstances, it should have been heartwarming: a father and daughter sitting side by side in wheelchairs, watching the waves of the sea. All we needed was a score of soft piano music.
“He makes you weak,” Dad spat.
“Maybe. But he’s worth it.” I studied my father’s gaunt face. “Was Mary not worth it? Was whatever test you wanted to put your heirs through really more important than her life?”
“Do you want me to say no?” His voice remained almost toneless. “Do you expect me to say that I don’t care that she’s gone? I regret her death, Valentina. I regret that she wasn’t strong enough to survive.”
“She didn’t die because she was weak. She died because you made me kill her.”
“A choice you were strong enough to make.”
I made a disgusted noise. “It’s not impressive, Dad. Do you know how many people would kill someone to save their own life? Pretty much everyone.”
“If it were easy? Yes. If it were up close and personal and nasty? No, that takes resolve. I wonder if Sonia or Bianca could have brought themselves to do it.”
“Leave them out of this. They don’t need you getting them killed any more than Mary did.”
He sighed in annoyance and rested his chin in his hand. “Why did you want to see me, Valentina?”
As I chose my next words, I was very much aware of his men all around us, of their weapons and powers. Dad didn’t like Dave being here, but had he prepared for him? Joey was one of the few people in the world who could fight my husband at full strength. This could get very bad very fast.
“I just wanted to repeat my answer to your offer, since I’m not sure you took it to heart last time.” I tried to look him in the eye, but he still hadn’t done me the courtesy of turning from the water to face me. “I’m not coming back,” I said. “I’m not taking over the family business. I’m done. Deal with it. And don’t manipulate anyone else into coming after me.”
My words had as much an emotional impact on him as a weather report. “That last part sounded almost like a threat.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I shoul
d hope not. I indulged your threats last time, but I’m not putting up with disrespect like that again.” His lips twisted, deepening the wrinkles on his face. “Now let me do the talking. I built this organization from the ground up. I dedicated my life to it. It’s my legacy. You may think you can—”
I never got to hear his actual threat, because a bullet struck his chest and cut him off. The sound of the shot followed a split-second later, echoing off the water, and I froze. The next shot grazed my arm, and I dove to the floor.
The pier burst into chaos. People screamed, ran, and dove for cover. Dave threw himself on top of me, shielding me from any more potential bullets. Dad’s men pulled out their guns and swarmed him, shouting.
“Did it hit the bone?” Dave asked.
“Don’t think so.” I moved my arm experimentally. “Just feels like a scratch.”
“Good.”
I turned my head to look at my father. He was still in the chair, head lolling back as though he was taking a nap in the sun, except his eyes were open and a bloodstain was spreading across his white button-down shirt beneath his tie. Joey knelt in front of him, his face colorless and twisted in horror. He clutched his hand to his own chest and lurched forward dizzily. I hadn’t anticipated his reaction being so strong, but considering he’d worked for Dad since he was a teenager, I probably should have. He had a much better relationship with my father than I did.
One of the other men placed his fingers on Dad’s neck. He looked at Joey and shook his head.
I laid my head back on the hard wood and waited to feel something—grief, happiness, regret, anything—but there was only numbness. The sniper would be gone by now if he’d done his job properly. There was nothing for me to do but wait for the rounds of hospitalization and police interrogation to start again.
So I waited, listening to the sound of waves and screaming.
Chapter 20
This time, I didn’t have the convenient excuse of prison to skip out on the funeral. Which is why four days later, Dave was pushing me up the handicap ramp to a cathedral, with Elisa, Irma, and Eddy following close behind. Other mourners trailed up the steps, talking in low, hushed tones. It wasn’t just grief or condolences they were whispering, but questions. Who’d killed him? Who’d finally offed Mr. Lucifer?
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