Hero Stalker

Part Forty-Eight

The long white NSWAT boat docked on the west side of the island and unleashed a group of PCD and Harbor Control officers. EMTs rushed to attend to the henchmen Peregrine had pulled out of the lighthouse, both of whom were suffering from smoke inhalation and one who had a broken collarbone. Slasher lead a group of officers to the cargo containers where he'd captured five henchmen. Three officers restrained the unconscious Venom while another pulled out an electronic razor.

"Is that really necessary?" I asked the short brunette woman overseeing the operation. Her badge identified her as Sergeant Spring, Psi-Crime Division.

"Standard operating procedures. Venom's already broken out of three holding cells in the last five years. He's earned a one-way ticket to Barrelmore, and I'm not having him garrote the transferring officers."

"Yeah, but what if he's a Rastafarian or something?" It just seemed so degrading.

"Don't worry. Met him last week at the Society for Secular Humanists. He gave a brilliant speech on interpreting Nietzsche in the twenty-first century." She paused. "I didn't know who he was, of course, or I would have arrested him."

"Was there an outstanding warrant?"

She looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "What kind of cop do you think I am? He's wanted for three assaults, two armed robberies, and one charge of possession of stolen watercraft. What, is he your boyfriend or something?"

"Hailey! What's up?" Dan's boots crunched as he pushed through the bracken, flashlight in hand. The woman I'd been speaking to turned around.

This is his stepsister?

"Sergeant Spring, Detective. This is a professional environment."

"Sorry, Sarge. Anyhow, we've loaded the rest of the henchmen on the boat." Dan had pulled his PCD jacket on over his tux. The hems of his dress pants were covered in mud. I hoped he hadn't rented it. "We've secured the scene. Benson and I were going through some of the documents that didn't burn, and—"

Slasher blurred up out of nowhere. "I want copies of those documents sent to the Tower by tomorrow morning." He wiggled his blades. "Don't make me come down to Cable Street and work the copier. Won't be pretty."

I stared at Dan. The dark shadows swimming under his eyes made him look almost as old as Slasher. Why couldn't he recognize me? Maybe my lower jaw lacked a defining feature. Maybe my mask had a built-in voice changer no one had old me about. Sure, he'd gone through a lot tonight. But what kind of relationship could we have if he didn't recognize me half the time?

"Shadowcat." Slasher jerked his thumb towards a copse of overgrown trees. "Over here."

"I—"

"Now." He took off. Reluctantly, I followed.

"What?" I asked when we stopped on the far side of the clearing. No cops were in earshot, though their chatter hummed in my headset. Peregrine hovered atop the ruined lighthouse like a ghost. I hoped it hadn't been a historic landmark. The Daughters of Historic Bayton would make worse enemies than half the villains the Centurions had faced.

"I saw the way you looked at that man. He a friend of yours?"

Oh, no. Blood rushed to my face. "He's my . . . was it that obvious?"

"You live long enough and it all becomes obvious." He pulled a throwing star from his left bracer and tossed it from hand to hand. "Me, I try not to date outside my kind. It never works out."

I put my hands on my hips. "You grew up in the fifties—"

"I'm talking about Centurions and psi-negatives, princess. Ask Femme about her divorce if you don't believe me. Sooner or later, your arch nemesis kills 'em. Or they find out you've been lying 'bout who you really are for years. Can he handle the truth."

"I will tell him. Eventually. If we keep dating." It would be dumb of me to drop that bombshell at this point. We'd gone on two dates and I'd technically been at work during one of them. Sharing my secret identity called for whole new levels of commitment.

"Just don't do something you'll regret." Slasher reached up under his mask and scratched his temple. The Harbor Control officers had set up spotlights that beamed through the trees, casting a crisp web of thorny shadows on his face. "Now, about that drawing of Cypher's Peregrine recovered . . ."

That. "Did Harpy hack into Cypher's computers?"

He sucked in his cheeks. That made his head look like a skull. "Could be. Could be something else. You let me handle this one, kid."

My stomach dropped. Could he be implying . . . "Why?"

"Don't worry about it." He met my eyes. His grey irises looked like they'd been carved from stone. "Go home. You've done all you can for the night."

But I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to deal with Mom's speeches. Besides, home needed to be safe and normal. I couldn't take this there.

Had Cypher really given Harpy his schematics? His technopathy might mean he and Harpy had something in common, what with the robot suit. But Cypher was a Centurion. He'd earned credit for the capture of dozens of criminals, including several major supervillains. I'd learned all his statistics by heart when composing my ten page 'In Defense of Cypher . . .' post on The Worldley Fewe.

He doesn't physically risk himself, whispered some treacherous part of my brain. He only sits behind his computer.

I passed the NSWAT boat on my way back to shore and nearly swamped it with my wake. A burst of cursing flashed across my radio. I flipped it off the PCD frequency and onto ours. Not a single Centurion was speaking.

The three-story-tall Harbor Control building rose above the docks. I leapt from the water to its roof.