Hero Stalker

Part Thirty-Four

"Get in." Slasher opened the door. The car's meticulously clean interior still smelled like whiskey.

I slid inside reluctantly. He slammed the door behind me and sat down in the driver's seat. His fingers tapped out the passcode to start the engine.

"Slasher?" I said. "I—"

"Don't," he growled. The engine ignited, humming. Slasher stepped on the gas and the car shot forward.

Metalhead had brought me somewhere beyond Bayton's southern edge. The lights of I.26 glittered in the distance. Dark waters lapped the shore to our right. According to the clock on the dashboard, it was almost four AM. Mom's going to kill me.

"Slasher, I thought—"

"That I give orders because I like hearing my own pretty voice, right? Like I'm a parakeet. Forty-eight years on this job and somehow an inexperienced little princess knows more about handling criminals than I do. You just waltz into danger—"

"Don't act like you care about my safety." I said. "Metalhead said he'd decapitate me if you moved!"

"Metalhead was too high to react fast enough to me. And he's a nineteen-year-old drug dealer, not a killer. He needs to get his ass kicked and grow up. He doesn't need a Centurion gift-wrapping herself as a hostage and making him feel like the real deal."

Flat, dark water flashed by outside the window. "Should we call the PCD?"

"Why? You like the idea of sending him to Barrelmore? I spent three years guarding it. Hell on earth."

"No! Of course not! But isn't it protocol we have to inform them?"

"Sweetheart, the PCD saw him at the bar. They don't care about small fish like him." He paused. "Course, they'd find it funny to hear how you screwed up."

I felt about six inches tall, just like how I felt when Valerie tore into me. But Valerie paid me to put up with her. "Like you never screwed anything up. Gunsmith killed two Centurions because you let him get away."

"How'd you learn about that?" He winced and gripped the wheel tighter.

I stared out at the passing billboards. "Not through my extensive network of criminal contacts."

"My bar provides a neutral space for the people of this city to settle their differences without using force. There's been more treaties signed there than Paris and Geneva combined. I've cut gang-related homicides by twenty percent. My methods work, sweetheart."

"And Detroit?" I'd seen him wince when I brought it up. I couldn't let that go.

Slasher laughed. It sounded like he had broken glass in his throat. "My greatest failure, right? Bullshit. I tracked that bastard halfway to the Mexican border and cornered him. I let him go."

"You what?" That had to be sarcasm. Dark, dark sarcasm. "He killed twenty-seven—"

"Murderers. Rapists. Pedophiles. One asshole he'd caught disemboweling a cat. He was a vigilante. So were we, back when this thing started. My dad used to come home covered in blood. 'Course, it didn't always belong to someone who'd deserved it. But it wasn't until JFK we gained legitimacy. I trust Gunsmith. He has a code. It's not a code that works for Bayton, but he'd die before he broke it. You wanna protect this city? You better be ready to get your hands dirty." Slasher merged smoothly onto I. 26, his eyes on the road. He looked as relaxed as if he'd been explaining how to fix my computer.

"That's not justice you're talking about," I told him. "That's just another crime. Dark Justice would have never—"

"I'm not him."