Hero Stalker

Part Sixty-One

The sun had long since set by the time I popped out from under the fake manhole cover behind RandolphTower. It took the bus an hour to weave through the police barricades surrounding Our Lady's Will. I offered my seat to a pregnant woman and stood the rest of the way. Every bump in the road travelled through my swollen knee. My back burned. Cypher had loaned me a stiff black jacket and some matching pants. Underneath, only threads held my costume together.

When I finally limped into my living room, I found Mom working on the couch, a sleeping Vicky snuggled against her side. The stack of papers on her lap desk didn't seem to have her full concentration. Not when she kept looking up at the looped news footage of the hospital attack every five seconds.

I turned the TV off. "It's over, Mom. Harpy is dead."

"This is Bayton. The ships come in, the money follows the ships, and the crime follows the money. It's never over." She adjusted her reading glasses. "I should have sent you kids to live with your father years ago."

Sent us. Like the lives we lead here were nothing. "So you'd send us away if you could, but you wouldn't come with us?"

"People here need me." She put aside her desk and slid a pillow under Vicky's neck. "You know, your father wants to retire sometime in the next few years. He needs someone with a business background to take over the company. He'd be happy to hire and train you."

"Me. Move to Raybury?" I laughed. "Sell air conditioning?"

"Don't laugh at your mother." She rose to her feet. I realized I'd grown taller than her. "You let that Valerie treat you like a pack mule, you don't make a living wage, and this city . . . " She kept her voice low, so as not to wake up Vicky. "Give me one good reason why you should stay here."

"Because it's my life! My choice!"

"That's not a good reason."

I nearly told her the truth. But what good would it do to give her a new stack of nightmares?

"That's the best I've got," I said. Then I turned and limped up the stairs. Vicky stirred behind me.

"Gloria!" she shouted. "You can't just run away from Mom!"

Watch me.

***

When I waded into the pink shag carpet of Valerie's office the next morning, a short Asian man in a police uniform stood on the far side of her desk. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. The PCD badge on his shirt read 'Z. Chou'.

"You're certain a psi-positive did this?" Officer Chou said.

"Are you stupid?" Valerie glared at him. "They chopped off the front of my car. A perfectly straight cut. Are you saying a normal person did that?"

"Ma'am, in our department we prefer the term 'psi-negative'. Not 'normal'. Isn't your own nephew psi-positive?"

"He's not like the rest of them. He's a good kid. Anyway, I think it was one of those Centurions who sprout knives from their fingers. Chad Cornsworthy says they can cut through anything."

"Shadowcat and Slasher." Officer Chou nodded. "They just defeated the worst supervillain we've seen in years. You think one of them took the time to cut up your car?"

She threw out her hands. "Well, what do we know about this Shadowcat . . . woman? She's got to be Slasher's lovechild. Absent father growing up, probably from a poor neighborhood. She could have a record a mile long and we'd know nothing about it, because we let these people run around in masks."

I pictured myself slapping her. The image was so brutal I clutched at my wrist, in case it decided to move on its own. Bad, Gloria. I wasn't that kind of person. And I needed this job.

"Ma'am, the woman in question threw herself in front of a mass shooter yesterday. You really want to bring felony charges against one of the most popular people in the city? Think of the business you'd lose. Especially from Routaille."

"They'd boycott me just for accusing a black woman of a crime?" Her eyebrows shot up. "Racists."

I committed a felony. It had only taken two minutes for the bumper to come off. A felony sounded like something that should take more time. Valerie's car had been worth tens of thousands of dollars, sure, and I'd completely destroyed it. When you thought about it that way, it did sound illegal . . .

But I hadn't thought about it that way. Femme had needed me at Our Lady's Will. Harpy might have killed dozens more if we hadn't been there. Destroying the car hadn't just gotten me out of work. That slash through the bumper had saved lives.

You didn't do it to save lives, whispered a treacherous voice in the back of my head. You wanted to get even.

Valerie stood. "Are you implying I'm wrong? Get out."

"Ma'am?"

"Get out!"

Officer Chou looked only too happy to oblige. He pushed past me on his way out. Then Valerie launched into a rant about how unfairly the world treated her. I nodded in the right places and tried to look upset. That wasn't hard. I just pictured how Mom's face would look if she learned her middle child had committed an honest-to-god felony.

Thankfully, Needles began jumping around, and Valerie ordered me to take him for a walk. Leash in hand, I limped down to the intersection of Cable and Pittman, where the PCD headquarters for Governors, The Vineyard, and Routaille stood. The windows of the old brick building hadn't been painted since the seventies.

Dan waited just outside the doors. Good. He'd gotten my text. A huge smile broke across his face as I walked over, and he threw his arms around me.

The cuts on my back lit up. I pulled away. "What's wrong?" Dan asked. "How'd you get that cut on your face?"

"This?" I rubbed my chin. "I tried to teach myself to rollerblade and skidded halfway down my street. Sorry. Tons of bruises."

"You wore a helmet, right?"

The joys of dating a cop. "Of course! Hey, did you hear about my boss's car?"

"Sure. Zack Chou told my whole floor. Me, I wouldn't put it past Shadowcat to trash a couple Porsches if someone pissed her off, but even she would need a motive. We'll fax the paperwork to CenturionTower. They'll send us her alibi. Standard procedure. The real culprit's probably a disgruntled employee with a chainsaw." He took my hand. His warm brown eyes danced all over my body. "Know anyone?"

"If I listed all the people Valerie's pissed off, I'd be here until midnight." Needles dug his teeth into Dan's sneaker. "And I have to get back to work. Can we do dinner this week?" Without Harpy around, we might even make it to dessert.

Back at the store, Valerie had enacted her fundraising plan to benefit the victims of the hospital attack. We'd sell a new roll on Harbor Day, full of spicy shrimp and chili sauce. The Fireball Roll.

"Mayor Hollis made the most emotional speech last night," she told me as she stomped around Saito's kitchen, looking for a dye to turn the shrimp orange. "We can't cancel Harbor Day. If we let fear rule our lives, the villains win."

We let fear rule our lives, we don't go buy stuff, the economy tanks, and the mayor loses re-election. I couldn't do anything about that, but I might be able to remove the word 'Fireball' from our fundraiser. "I completely agree with you. It's such a shame such gifted healers died so young. Terrible. They had almost developed a drug to heal cancer. I wish I could pay tribute to these healers."

"Screw Fireballs!" Valerie thrust a tray holding fifty shades of orange food coloring back into Brendon's arms. "Healing Hearts Rolls! Much better idea. God, who even thought of calling them 'Fireballs'?"