But Carina needed to move on. Mr. Sloan had spent almost two hours with her the other day, going over her course selections at Alta Vista Community College and reviewing the requirements for transferring to UC Berkeley in a couple of years. The Sloans had also cosigned the lease on an apartment she would be sharing with two other girls, and accompanied Carina to appointments with the attorney handling her uncle’s estate.
As for Tanner … Privacy was in short supply in a family with four boys, especially when the three youngest hooted and pretended to throw up whenever Tanner held Carina’s hand or snuck a kiss. Only once since she had been released from the hospital had they snuck away for an entire evening by themselves. There would be plenty of opportunities later, when they started school.
Meanwhile, they had become masters of the stolen moment.
This morning, Tanner had knocked on her door after Mr. Sloan gave his customary ten-minute warning: standing at the bottom of the stairs and yelling that if anyone wasn’t ready, he was leaving them behind. Carina opened the bedroom door, zipping up the dress she was wearing under her gown.
Tanner handed her a small white box. Inside was her mother’s ring.
“Oh, Tanner … I never thought I’d see this again.”
“The cops sent it over last week, after they got done processing the crime scene. Mom thought … well, we took it to the jewelers. Here, open it.”
Carina slid her finger under the special prong, and the stone lifted.
The rows of numerals were gone, smoothed away in the gold. In their place were initials in flowing script: CM & TS.
This time, she had no hesitation at all. “I love you,” she said, before he could say anything. “I always will. I have since the day we met.”
As Edward Mankowicz finally strutted off the stage and Jill Maurice started across, wobbling on her high heels, Carina twisted the ring on her finger. It was time. She took a deep breath and stood, picking up her crutches. The trip down the aisle and up the steps to the stage was a slow one, and she felt her face flush as she focused on not tripping. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as she walked across the wooden platform, barely aware of shaking the vice principal’s hand or tucking the diploma under her arm. Only when she was back in her seat did she dare look out into the crowd, searching for Tanner and his family.
A flash of red caught her eye. There—in the shadow of the stands—a female figure hesitated for a moment, her thick red hair partially obscuring her face.
It looked a lot like her mother—same lean, angular build; same pronounced cheekbones under the oversize sunglasses—but from this distance, the resemblance could easily have been Carina’s imagination. She forced herself to breathe, and squeezed her hands together in her lap as the vice principal read the next name from her list and the audience clapped politely.
How many times had Carina wished for a miracle? Even though she’d seen her shot, Carina had kept a tiny, secret hope alive that her mother had survived. Everyone involved in Project Venice was either in jail or dead. Major Wynnside was overseeing a massive investigation of every project undertaken by the lab in the last three years. The token generator had survived being stashed in Tanner’s sock, and now Walter’s research was in good hands, protected with every resource at the government’s disposal.
In time, Project Venice would fade from Carina’s thoughts, but she would probably spend the rest of her life wondering, every time she saw a woman who resembled her mother, if it really was her. She doubted she’d ever stop missing her.
Being an orphan was something that took a long time to get used to. There were days she was furious with her mother and Walter, days when she wished they could have been accountants or teachers or janitors—any job at all, as long as it was safe.
But the Monroe legacy did not prepare a person for safe choices. There was something in the bloodline that was attracted to risk and danger and the unknown. Project Venice had been irresistible to her mother and uncle, and now Carina was following in their footsteps. She was taking classes to fulfill her general education requirements this fall at Alta Vista, and with a little luck, in two years she would enter UC Berkeley as a mathematics major focusing on cryptography, studying under many of the most prominent data security experts in the country. Once she graduated, she would find herself in some agency dedicated to keeping the country safe, and that kind of commitment didn’t come without real risk.
The red-haired figure disappeared from view. But there, in the middle of the bleachers, a bright flash of sun caught Carina’s eye, and a small hand waved frantically at her. It was Caleb, Tanner’s youngest brother, wearing the mirrored sunglasses Carina had bought him on a family outing to an amusement park.
And there, wedged between his little brothers, was Tanner. He was too far away for her to see his expression. But she didn’t need special powers to know that his smile was the one he reserved for her alone, that his eyes held the love she had come to depend on.
For a day and a half, Carina and Tanner had been among the most powerful humans the world had ever known, capable of astonishing feats of strength and speed. The antidote had made them ordinary again in nearly every way.
Except for one. The bond between them had been strengthened by their ordeal, and nothing would change that. Long after anyone remembered that Tanner and Carina had once been superhuman, their love would live on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie Littlefield grew up in rural Missouri, the middle child of a professor and an artist. She has been writing stories since childhood. After taking a hiatus to raise her two children, she sold her first book in 2008 and has since written more than a dozen novels in several genres. Sophie makes her home in Northern California.
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