Silhouette

by Robin Hale

  “Molly,” I groaned against her lips. “God, I want to touch you.”

  My fingers, my palms practically itched with it.

  And then I heard it. The tiniest chirp, the smallest beep. It pierced the lust-fueled fog that had descended over my mind with all the subtlety of an icepick. It was the ping of a locating device.

  I pulled back from her in surprise, barely able to register the world around me as I got lost in the glazed expression in her eyes, the heat in her cheeks.

  A grin pulled at my lips despite my deep regret for the turn events had taken. “You’ve got a panic button.”

  Fawn nodded. “I do. And you need to go.”

  I sank into another kiss — searching and strangely sweet for all that I still wanted to consume her — and then pulled back once more. “You’re right. Until next time, doctor.”

  And then I was gone.

  11

  MOLLY

  Everything happened quickly after the Silhouette slipped out of the loft. It wasn’t until she left that I realized that — of course — she hadn’t brought me to her home. It was a hideout. A safe house. One of maybe a dozen places she kept stocked with supplies so that she could duck out of harm’s way if she needed to. When I looked into ownership of the loft back at the lab, it was registered to someone currently in a nursing home in one of Opal City’s nicer neighborhoods.

  Had the Silhouette committed fraud, or was there a mutually beneficial relationship there? Would all of her hideouts prove to be owned by nice little old ladies in assisted living facilities beyond their insurance and means? And what did it say about me that I felt such a rush of…of fondness, of affection for the Silhouette that despite her laughter, she really was using those ill-gotten gains to take care of the people around her?

  Captain Colossal had burst through the unlocked door of the loft like a freight train through a stack of cardboard boxes. It was comical, the way he stood in the shattered remains of the doorway like he was posing for a photograph, scanning the room and landing his eyes on me with something like surprise. Who did he think had triggered the panic button?

  “Ah, Dr. Fawn. Are you okay?” He asked in a voice that boomed through the fading echo of the intimacy the Silhouette had spun around us.

  I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak just yet.

  “If you’ll allow me, I’ll carry you back to the lab.” He stepped forward, a question in his eyes as he opened his arms. There was a stutter in my steps before I righted myself and moved into his grasp. He swept me up into a bridal carry and, in the next breath, sent both of us out of the destroyed door and into the open sky.

  It was good. It was how things should have gone.

  And once upon a time, it would’ve been the thrill of the month for me to spend those few minutes cradled against the Captain’s broad chest, smelling the familiar aroma of his cologne. But all I could think about was the hungry clutch of the Silhouette’s hands on my hips, the way she dove into my mouth again and again, relentlessly, desperately, leaving me awash on tempest-tossed seas, drowning in the fierce wave of pleasure that her kisses had brought me.

  I’d never been kissed like that.

  And I knew that I never should be, ever again.

  THERE WAS A WEEK OF SILENCE. A week where I went to sleep every night trying not to think of the Silhouette’s clinging leather and bright eyes. A week where I dreamt of her hands and her mouth, the sound of her voice as she’d practically growled against my lips. The way she wanted me. A week where I woke up entirely too soon from the inevitable dreams of her, never quite getting her hands where I wanted them, never quite getting my mouth on her the way I so desperately desired.

  I kept putting Jade off, trying to claim I was just unsettled about the hostage situation at the bank, even though I’d never been overly bothered by them before. And I resolutely did not contact Jenna, despite the way my confusion made me long for something familiar, even if it was just my ex’s contempt.

  I spent every waking moment in my lab running numbers and comparing rap sheets for the people involved in the university job. I pushed myself harder than I had ever worked on the next iteration of the Captain’s healing serum and made an astonishing seven percent efficiency improvement. I added another board to my Dangerous Brains collection: a web of snapshots, maps, and property deeds owned by little old ladies in nursing homes they shouldn’t have been able to afford. Were those buildings all safe houses? Probably not. But I couldn’t keep myself from searching for them.

  There was a space in nearly every neighborhood in Opal City owned by a woman who would never step foot inside. Were they being held for the Silhouette? Had I finally lost it?

  I swept up the coffee cup that had rested on my desk only briefly as I stalked in circles around my office. I was a mess. I felt like I was waiting for something, waiting for the next step in a game I didn’t quite understand.

  I had a pile of incident reports on my desk, demanding my attention. There were the usual spate minor thefts and vandalism that the Captain had interrupted, some with items missing, but most completely intact as he sent the perpetrators either scattering or to jail.

  But how could I focus on those? How could I think about the strange increase in minor crimes when a full two-thirds of my brain was caught in that moment in the Silhouette’s hideout? When, for every second of thought I gave to the work I had dedicated my life to doing, I spent two remembering the feeling of her lips on mine, the light in her eyes as I’d railed against her, the gentle, possessive way she’d stroked over my skin after I tried to bail off of her motorcycle?

  I indulged in a frustrated groan.

  I was pathetic. Completely, utterly pathetic. I pushed a lungful of air out through my mouth in a petulant stream and nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the klaxon on my desk firing.

  Another one? Already? I lunged for the button that would acknowledge the signal and turn off the flashing lights and squalling siren. The cool plastic of my earpiece slid easily into place, even with my clumsy fumbling, and I dropped gracelessly into the wheeled chair behind the desk.

  “What have we got, Captain?” I asked breathlessly, fingers flying over the keyboard as I hooked into the location tracking in his suit and searched for city-owned security cameras that might give me a relevant view. My large monitor flickered and shifted as the screen split into multiple video streams. The largest one was coming from the Captain’s mask itself, piping video of everything he was seeing so that it was like I was riding along inside his head. With my voice coming through his earpiece, I was his very own Jiminy Cricket.

  “An alarm was tripped at the Roscoe vaults,” the Captain’s voice came through my earpiece in a cool, confident wave. “I’m on my way there now.”

  “The Roscoe vaults?” I asked in surprise. Queries passed through my hands and into a host of search and analytical engines as my mind processed the statement. I was familiar with the jeweler, it was one of the largest in the country and they’d gotten their start close to one hundred and fifty years ago right there in Opal City. Their vaults were famously impenetrable: twelve floors of high-tech security and self-contained systems. Breaching one didn’t give you access to anything else. You had to crack each room, each hallway on its own before you could make any progress.

  As far as I was aware, no one had ever successfully stolen something from the Roscoe vaults.

  My news and media queries were finished running, and the information I sought was laid out in plaintext on my glowing screen. There’d been a delivery recently. A convoy of armored trucks had carried truckload after truckload of precious gems and famous jewels into Opal City in preparation for the Roscoe family’s 150-year celebration.

  “There was a delivery there recently, Captain,” I reported.

  Calling in the Captain was a perk that a large number of Opal City’s businesses and residents took full use of, and it came with its own burdens. I swapped the input on the left half of my screen, eschewing
the outdoor, publicly-owned security cameras that would show me absolutely nothing of use, and activated the alarms and sensors inside the Roscoe vaults. If a business wanted the Captain’s most effective help, they were obligated to provide the lab’s tech team with remote access to their security systems. Observation only, naturally. No control from our end. Merely the ability to access their video streams and alarm status so that we could assist without having to get one of the computer techs into the room to hack our way in.

  I surveyed the information laid out in front of me as the Captain’s video feed filled with the Roscoe building. The only actively firing alarm, the one that must have been responsible for summoning the Captain, was the back door.

  “They’ve gone in through the back alley.”

  His feed shifted, and the stately stonework of the building rushed by in a sweep of finely hewn stone and carefully constructed facades.

  I scanned the alarms again and frowned down at the display. Nothing else had been triggered. Dawning comprehension needled at the back of my mind, like the sound of an alarm clock breaking through the mirage of a dream.

  There should’ve been another alarm. The back entrance was just as siloed, just as airlocked as every other part of the Roscoe security system. Unless the intruder was waiting by the back door, it didn’t make any sense for the first alarm to have been the only one.

  Unless it was an invitation. I chewed pensively on my bottom lip. It had to be her. It had to be.

  “Captain…” I began, then trailed off. How would I explain my certainty? How would I justify the way I just knew that it was the Silhouette somewhere in that building, tripping the first alarm only because she thought it would be fun?

  Only because she wanted the Captain’s — and therefore my — attention.

  I tried not to smile, tried not to feel the rush of warmth that was rising in my chest. It wasn’t sweet! It wasn’t romantic! She was committing a crime!

  But scolding myself for it was no use. As I sat at my desk, waiting to help Captain Colossal attempt to thwart his long-time nemesis…I felt finally as though I were standing on solid ground. The unmooring I’d suffered since that kiss in the loft and the Silhouette’s inexplicable silence had relented. She wanted to play.

  “What is it, Fawn?” He asked after a moment. “I’m at the back door now.”

  “I’m almost positive we’re dealing with the Silhouette.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. Not long, not lingering, just enough that I was sure that the statement had registered and that the Captain was considering what to say next.

  “All right. So where is she?” The Captain asked and, from the sounds of things, he’d entered the back door. His voice echoed off of the close walls, and I sat and blinked at the display in surprise.

  He believed me. He didn’t need a justification. He just…accepted that I knew what I was talking about.

  I stumbled back into control of my mouth and tried to find an answer to his question. Where was she. Right. Reasonable request. “Right!” I blurted. “Trying to figure that out now.”

  The sensors in the vault were interesting. They were mostly infrared triggers, pressure plates, and invisible ‘tripwire’ designs. None of then had been disturbed, but I didn’t expect that they would be. Following the alarms would only work if it were not the Silhouette in the building, or if she wanted specifically to lead Captain Colossal on a chase.

  I felt confident that the first alarm was the only invitation we were going to receive.

  All right. There wouldn’t be any further alarms. None of the sensors were likely to pick something up, unless she became unaccountably sloppy in the next five minutes. There were twelve floors of vaults in separate rooms. I couldn’t disable the alarms from my end, so the Captain would have to manually break the locks and check each room on his own if he were going to search methodically. And the Silhouette would certainly have acquired whatever she came to steal and would be on her way before he had the third room open.

  The only thing I could do would be to try to predict what she was there for.

  I swapped windows again and brought up the reports of the armored truck deliveries. It would’ve been something newly delivered. If she’d been interested in something already in the vaults, she’d have taken it before then. Before then, or she would’ve waited until the 150th anniversary celebration. She had a flair for the dramatic and would never be able to resist lifting something right beneath the Roscoes’ noses, if it were that type of game she was after.

  The reports of the deliveries were vague, promising mostly that there were historically significant pieces being brought in, as well as describing some of the broader categories of stone delivered for display.

  There was nothing inherently interesting in diamonds, certainly not for the Silhouette. Not enough to justify the heist she was in the middle of pulling off, at least.

  “Do we have anything?” The Captain asked, no judgment in his voice but I felt the implied disappointment like a bucket of cold water over my head.

  “Not yet, Captain, sorry.” The words were an embarrassed rush as I scanned again and again over the list of imports.

  Wait.

  ‘The Roscoe family has, for the first time, brought in their prized padparadscha sapphires from their private mine in Sri Lanka. They will be displayed from…’ The rest of the article drifted away from me in a haze of unimportance as my brain helpfully replayed every velvety slide of the Silhouette’s voice in my ear.

  ‘Have you ever seen a padparadscha sapphire? They’re the most delicate pink and peach and gold…just exactly the way you look right now.’

  “She’s there for the padparadscha sapphires.” I blurted into the microphone. My fingers flew over the keys, skating over the UI to bring up the vault map that was hidden behind layers of security even we did not have unfiltered access to.

  “Great!” The Captain said, sounding genuinely pleased. “And where are those?”

  “It looks like…the seventh floor, in the northwest corner of the building. Captain, she’s probably there now.” I checked the internal camera feeds and found exactly what I had expected: perfect darkness. The Roscoe vaults were a cool, black chamber when authorized personnel were missing from the floor, and that was exactly the environment the Silhouette thrived in. “I recommend flying so that she doesn’t hear you coming, Captain.”

  At once the heavy, muffled sounds of his footfalls ceased.

  “She’s got something of a head start on us; she’s probably already in the room and halfway through getting the stones out of their cases.” Sensor data flowed over the screen like the background radiation of any lab scientist’s pursuits. Data, so much data, and I was assimilating it just as quickly as I could. “The door opening will give you away,” I continued. “Once it opens you have less than five seconds to get hands on her or she’s going to get past you into the hallway and we’ve lost her.”

  “Can you bring up the lights?”

  “Negative. I don’t have the control from here, and if it’s anything like previous jobs, she’ll have interrupted the circuit from the source. The lights in that room will not come up, don’t rely on them.” I swept the sensor data in the room over and over again, looking for variations, for any pulse or ripple that might imply a physical presence in the room. But there was nothing. I knew she was in there, retrieving the famous sapphires she’d come to steal, wanting to get in one last jab at the Captain before she slipped away and reveled in her own success.

  And I wanted to catch her.

  Even as I relished the memory of her hands on my hips, her mouth on mine, I wanted to win this interaction. And it wasn’t because I felt so strongly about justice or law and order, even though I knew that I should. I just wanted to impress her.

  That was the long and short of it. I had found myself, once again, in the throes of an inconvenient fixation on someone I shouldn’t want, and I wanted to impress her.

  But in or
der to do that, I needed to figure out how I was going to help the Captain catch her.

  I took a slow breath and tried to wipe away all of the background noise that was pulling at my attention. The Silhouette didn’t have powers. She was in peak physical condition, an accomplished climber, remarkably agile and flexible. She was careful, with an awe-inducing attention to detail that meant that her jobs were meticulously planned. Nothing ever surprised her. She used old-fashioned means of breaking locks whenever possible. She used more modern, digital overrides only when they couldn’t be helped.

  She was there for a specific item and had a plan for getting in and out with only as much scrutiny as she wanted.

  I closed my eyes, listening only to the sound of Captain Colossal’s microphone picking up the rush of air as he flew through the halls of the Roscoe vault, toward the room I’d told him the Silhouette waited in.

  Come on, Fawn. Put it together. How does he stop her?

  She’d be able to see, with those goggles she always wore. The Captain would be flying blind.

  The thought drew me up short. What if I could reverse those?

  The clacking of the mechanical keys of my keyboard was a satisfying backdrop to my planning. It would be difficult, and we’d only have the one shot at making it work. And it would only work at all if the Roscoe family had actually been as paranoid in their security systems as I was hoping and...yes! There it was.

  “Captain,” I said, voice low as though I were in that hallway with him rather than running tactical support half a city away. “I think I have an idea.”

  “Let’s hear it then, Molly.” The Captain’s voice is bright, breezy, and utterly unconcerned. What must that be like? To be so confident that you know any situation will turn out all right, no matter what it is? “Your ideas are miles better than any of my actual plans.”

  That surprised half a laugh from my throat, and I was pleased to note that I managed to keep the blush from my face at his careless praise. “It’s a long shot, and you’ll only have one chance. But there’s an electromagnetic sensor in the room that I think we can overload. It’s going to fry every electronic device in there, including your earpiece, so once we’ve done it you’ll be on your own. But it should knock out the Silhouette’s dark vision, and the overload should light up those goggles of hers long enough for you to get your hands on her.”