“I didn’t know you had agoraphobia.”
He shrugged and tried to look frightened, which he guessed did not look all that different from apprehension. He didn’t care if Olivia thought he had a phobia, as long as it kept her from pulling him into a crowd of people, many of who would certainly get on a plane and fly to all ends of the earth.
“Do you want to leave?” she asked, her eyebrows knitted together.
“No.” He shook his head. If he didn’t tell her now, he may never find the courage again.
Still clinging to her hand, he made a beeline for a secluded corner of the red-bricked deck and, with his heart pounding in his ears, steeled his nerves and faced her.
“Liv, I have something to tell you.”
Olivia’s stomach lurched at the weight of his words. The look on Daniel’s face was unsettling; the firm line of his lips a sure sign that his news might not be altogether pleasant.
Still, a girl could hope.
“I have one more power that I haven’t told you about,” he said.
Olivia held her breath, hoping that Daniel would reveal that he could fly, and then scoop her up and soar off the edge of the tower, fly past the Chrysler Building and perhaps alight on the uppermost flame of the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t her most original idea, but sounded exciting nonetheless.
But Daniel’s news was not something she could have even dreamed up. “If I touch someone, I can accidentally infect them with powers, too. I’m contagious,” he said so quickly, the words took a few seconds to coagulate in her mind.
She released her breath in one jolted gasp. “What? How? How do you know?”
“A psychic told me.”
“A psychic?”
“Remember that woman you saw me with at the diner?”
She nodded, remembering the fleeting feeling of familiarity upon seeing her face in the window.
“When I shook her hand, I infected her with the power to read minds.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came forth as she tried to sort through the information he was offering. Daniel had the ability to give powers with his touch. He had touched a psychic’s hand and had inadvertently infected her with the ability to read minds. But what if the contact lasted longer than a handshake?
She opened her mouth to speak, but Daniel beat her to the punch.
“I think I’ve done it to you,” he said, confirming her suspicion. “Unless you’ve always had the ability to make people do what you say?” he added with a hopeful lilt in his voice.
As she shook her head, she thought back to the first time that people complied with whatever she asked, and could go no further than the day she met Daniel at the bank. Before spotting him across the lobby, she had, in fact, just tried to convince the bank manager to allow her access to her mother’s account with no amount of success.
“I think I’ve infected many people.” He stared at her steadily, though his breathing was anything but. “This is serious.”
She said nothing, struck with the horrifying idea that Daniel had only agreed to dinner with her because she had ordered him to, followed by the realization that she had told him to reveal his secret abilities also; he’d said so himself. Of their entire relationship, she’d assumed he was acting on his own free will. Now she was left wondering just how much of his actions could be attributed to genuine feelings, and just how much was the direct result of her silver tongue.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t bring herself to ask, lest she reveal the insecure girl under her veneer of confidence.
“I have to leave New York.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. So here it was, the answer to her unasked question, the beginning to the inevitable end.
Daniel grasped both of her hands and said the most surprising thing of all: “I want you to come with me.”
Her mouth went dry as she stared. He wanted her to come with him; and she might have said yes had she known unequivocally that his feelings were sincere, that they were truly born of genuine affection and not from some false sense of intimacy.
“But, my life is here.” She offered the weak reason hoping he would find an easy rebuttal.
But Daniel’s face turned stony, and though he held her hands, she felt him pulling away, receding into himself once more.
She shook her head, wishing she could speak her mind without turning her words into a directive. “I can’t leave, Daniel. Not yet.”
I want you to stay.
“And I can’t stay, Liv.”
Tell me you love me. I’ll believe you.
But he said nothing of the sort and they stared at each other for a long time, violet eyes on grey. Finally, she said, carefully phrasing it into a question, “Will you stay… for me?”
Daniel’s eyebrows knitted, as if he had expected to hear something different. “I can’t. For a million reasons, one of which is that the police are close on my trail. I have to leave the city, Liv.”
Her chest hurt. “When?”
“Soon.”
“Where will you go?”
He looked away and she followed his gaze, through the glass wall of the deck, past the cluster of concrete buildings, along the green expanse of Central Park, and beyond the hazy horizon. “Somewhere remote, someplace I don’t have to constantly worry about infecting people,” he said under his breath.
“It’s not an infection, Daniel. It’s a gift,” she said, pulling on his chin so that he once again faced her. “And it saved my life.”
His mouth remained set in a bleak line as he looked at her with scorn. “Then why aren’t you using your gift to make me stay?”
Keeping the tears at bay, she said, “I can’t make you stay if you don’t want to.”
Please, just tell me you want to.
“I’m not staying,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I want you to come with me. We can raise the baby together.”
She frowned and gasped. “What… what baby?” His eyes flicked down to her stomach, and she understood. “I’m not going to get pregnant, Daniel. I’m on the pill.”
His shoulders hunched over as he exhaled in visible relief.
“Is that the only reason why you want me to come with you?” she asked, telling herself that it was the cold wind that was stinging her eyes and burning the insides of her lungs.
He straightened as he shook his head. “No.” His hand grasped hers and squeezed. “I care about you.”
“Let’s face it, Daniel, you only care about me because I ordered you to.”
“That’s not true.”
“No?” she challenged. “You didn’t want to have dinner with me, but I made you do it. And afterward, even after you tried to avoid me, I still managed to talk you into seeing me. And you only told me your secret because I made you.” She pulled her hand away as she shook her head. “You’re only here because I took the choice away from you.”
He looked at her for a long while in frustration. Finally, he took a step forward and grasped the sides of her head. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I choose to be here. I choose to be with you. You might have made me approach but it wasn’t your silver tongue that made me stay.”
Her lips trembled into the shape of a smile, wanting to believe Daniel’s impassioned words. She searched his eyes and decided to take a leap of faith. “Then, yes. I’ll come with you.”
A smile spread out over his face and she knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that she had fallen in love. The realization filled her with excitement and despair, her heart palpitating with its swiftness and certainty.
“Okay,” he said, raining kisses on her face at a dizzying speed. Finally, he stopped and wrapped her in his embrace, the warmth of his presence reaching her to the core.
“Where are we going to go?” she said with a nervous laugh.
“Wherever the hell we want!”
She felt lightheaded as a laugh escaped her throat, but the moment was gone too soon.
“Help!” a voice calle
d out.
Olivia turned to the sound, and a moment later, felt the cold air seeping through her coat as Daniel dashed off. She followed and fought through the crowd that had gathered, finding an older lady sitting on the ground, cradling an unconscious boy in her arms.
“My grandson slipped on the ice and hit his head,” she said and, with lips trembling, turned to the child in her arms. “Luke, wake up. Please wake up.”
It was then that Olivia spotted Daniel at the edge of the crowd, his eyebrows furrowed deeply. Their eyes met. “Help them,” she mouthed, but to her surprise, he shook his head. With remorse-filled eyes, he held up his hands covered in worn leather gloves to remind her of his affliction.
Olivia glanced down at the unmoving child and the panic-stricken grandmother. She had to do something. She crept closer and dropped to one knee beside them. “Luke,” Olivia said, glancing up at the white-haired woman for approval. She ran a hand through the boy’s light brown hair and bent close to his ear. “Luke, honey, listen to me. You will wake up right now.”
The little boy’s eyes fluttered open, but remained glassy as he looked around.
“Oh, thank God!” the woman exclaimed, grasping the boy closer. She looked up at Olivia with a grateful smile then turned back to the boy.
Getting back to her feet, Olivia pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911. When next she looked up, Daniel was gone.
34 | CONNECTING THE DOTS
“Detective, I think you need to take a look at this.”
Lingle looked up from his computer as the twenty-something lab tech literally bounded into his office. “Can you make it fast? I’m busy here,” he said warily, wishing he could find a way to siphon just a little of her energy for himself.
“Oh, you’ll have time for this.” Lindsey placed two sheets of paper on his desk with an excited little smile. He raised an eyebrow and waited patiently for the explanation. When none came, he picked up the top sheet and tried to make sense of the tables full of numbers and letters. “DNA results for the blood found for the King Kidnapping case,” he murmured while reading. “It still says Identity Unknown.”
“Just look at the next page, will you?”
With an impatient groan, he turned to the next page, then, noticing something strange, flipped back to the first page to confirm. Sure enough, the results on every single allele category were identical to those on the first page. The only difference lay at the top of the sheet where it cited the name of the source. “You found DNA on the mask?” He looked up at Lindsey and swallowed deeply. He studied both pages again, in case his eyes were deceiving him. “No…”
“Yes. There were traces of blood near the mouth area of the mask.” Lindsey nodded excitedly, her heavily-lined eyes practically glowing. “The Black Hero and–”
“The Black Vigilante,” he corrected vaguely out of habit.
She rolled her eyes. “Correction, the Black Vigilante and the mystery guy from Olivia King’s kidnapping are one and the same.”
Lingle tried to temper his rising excitement. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I ran the tests three times! I’m so sure, I’d bet on myself if I were a horse.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she continued: “And, yes, I already ran it through the database.” She made a slashing motion across her neck. “Nada.”
“Of course not. That would be too easy,” he said, his chair squeaking in protest as he leaned back. He looked at the papers in his hands one more time and handed them over. “I would normally say, ‘Good work, Lindsey,’ but I’m betting you’ve already told yourself that same thing.”
She grinned and shrugged one shoulder. “More or less.”
“Make me a copy of those, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
He turned back to his computer but was unable to focus on the report he had been working on moments ago. He reached for the Black Vigilante file folder – the one that always taunted him from the top of the case piles – and pulled out the ridiculous police sketch of a man in a black balaclava. He stared a long while at the drawing’s only human feature, those charcoal eyes, and tried to make sense of this new development.
The obvious conclusion was that the Black Hero was injured in some way when he came to Olivia King’s aid; from a gunshot wound, if the blood spatter pattern was anything to go by. Lingle put down the sketch and looked through the photographs of the crimson hallway carpet, finding it hard to believe that anybody could survive that kind of blood loss. Was the mask’s sender actually telling the truth? Could the Black Vigilante actually be dead?
“Then where the hell is the body?” he said, studying the large photographs carefully for any clues that might have been overlooked. There were no indications that the body had been dragged through the carpet, nor blood droplets indicating that it had been carried out. And what was his watered-down blood doing on the bathroom floor? Moreover, what was his connection to Olivia King? None of it made any sense.
The questions niggled at him until a memory emerged from the back of his mind of a certain woman’s expression as she caught sight of the mask on his desk. His ears began to ring as he felt that familiar excitement that came with a lead. He pulled out the King file and picked up the phone, determined to wring answers out of one prima ballerina.
* * * * *
Daniel paced on the busy sidewalk of the Chrysler Building as he waited for Olivia to descend from the rooftop. He kept telling himself that he would not have hesitated to help had it been anyone other than a child, but as he repeated the mantra in his head, he knew it was nothing but a lie, a mask to hide behind so as not to scare her away. Because, Olivia notwithstanding, his true intention was never to touch anyone else ever again. She was his last link to physical intimacy, and in turn, to humanity. And he could not, would not, risk that for anything.
“What the hell, Daniel?”
He spun on his heel and came face to face with an incensed Olivia, her hands crossed at her chest. From a distance, he could hear the wail of ambulance sirens approaching and breathed a sigh of relief. “He’ll be alright.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even stay to see if he was okay!” She was near tears, her eyes sparkling even as she fought to control the muscles on her face.
“What could I have done that an ambulance couldn’t?”
She wiped at her eyes furiously. “You could have taken him to the hospital faster.”
“You know I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t risk infecting him!” he said, throwing his hands up.
“But he was just a kid!”
“Exactly! I can’t do that to a kid. I won’t.” He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets when he realized they were shaking.
“So you’d rather he had brain trauma? Be a vegetable all his life instead of having some fantastic power?”
He held her gaze. “Finding out that you’re different from everyone else, that you’re a freak of nature, is far from fantastic,” he said with steely reserve. “I won’t sentence a kid to my fate.”
“Because your life right now is just so goddamn difficult, isn’t it? Being a superhuman is just such a burden,” she said, the sarcasm dripping from her tongue unbecomingly. She tightened the red scarf around her neck, her eyes searching his, for what he didn’t know. “I have to go, Daniel.” She extended her arm and a taxi pulled in to the curb.
She began to limp off, but he grabbed her sleeve. “I’ll just carry you home.”
“No, thanks. I’m going to go see a doctor. For my ankle,” she said, unable to look at his face as she headed for the taxi. Just as she was reaching for the door handle, he felt a wave of urgency wash over him. Without hesitation, he darted in front of her, cradled her face with his hands and kissed her desperately, wanting to say with his actions what his words could not.
She was first to break the kiss, pulling his hands away.
“Please don’t change your mind,” he said in a rasping voice, keeping hold of her wrist.
“I
’m not changing my mind,” she said. “I just… need to catch my breath. And think.”
He nodded. “Okay.” And, after pressing a soft kiss on her forehead, he stepped aside, unwrapped his anxious fingers from her wrist, and let her pass.
* * * * *
Smith tried to call Olivia’s cell phone again, but like the times before, it went straight to voice mail. Through the BMW’s tinted windows, he tried to read the Detective’s expression as he stood outside Olivia’s apartment building, his hands on his waist as he stared up at the seventh floor in the waning daylight. Detective Lingle rang the buzzer again, letting his finger rest on the button longer than necessary.
Fifteen minutes and a few phone calls later, the cop finally hopped back into his car and left. Smith pulled the back of his seat up a little higher now that the danger of being spotted was gone. He crossed the street just as a taxi came to a half in front of the building and a moment later, Olivia emerged, her face looking more tired than he’d ever seen.
He plastered his go-to pleasant smile and approached. “How are you?” he said, noticing her slight limp immediately. “What happened to your leg? You weren’t hurt yesterday.”
She waved him away as she gingerly made her way up the stairs. “It’s nothing. I just sprained an ankle.”
“Did you see a podiatrist?”
She turned to him, one hand gripping the metal railing. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“And?”
She sighed impatiently. “Mild sprain. No torn ligaments. R.I.C.E. method. No dancing for a few weeks.”
He eyed her carefully and found the answer he was looking for, there in the slight droop of her shoulders. “You won’t be able to dance the rest of Swan Lake.”
“Like hell I won’t,” she said through gritted teeth and continued up the steps awkwardly.
He followed her into the building and into the elevator.
“Listen, I appreciate all the time off you’ve been giving me, but I still have a job to do. I’m here to keep you safe.”
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