Super Heroes (The New Super Humans #4)

by T. M. Franklin

  “Yeah.”

  “I just want to make sure we don't lose anyone else in the attempt,” Beck said. Especially you.

  “I know.” She leaned in to him, placing her palms on his chest as she kissed him. It was quick, but it still sent a rush of heat through him. He slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her closer.

  “How about you and me take another round through the Fun House,” he suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

  Wren laughed. “You have a one track mind!”

  “You bring out the worst in me.” He tugged her a little closer until they were pressed together. “I used to have excellent multi-tasking skills, and now . . .”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling flirtatiously. “And now?”

  “I'm absolutely useless.” He tipped his head down until he could feel her breath on his lips.

  “I can think of something you're good for,” Wren whispered.

  “Hey, get a room, you shameless hussies!” a familiar voice shouted, and they turned to find Dylan and Miranda approaching.

  Beck let out a frustrated groan, and Wren laughed, stepping back from him.

  Miranda shook her head disapprovingly. “Here we all are, working hard and combing the area. And you two take the opportunity to make out.”

  Wren blushed. “We weren't . . . We didn't . . .”

  Beck jumped in. “You guys find anything?”

  “Nah,” Dylan replied, shoving his glasses up his nose. “No sign of Eve. You?”

  “Just a fortune teller in the tent,” he replied, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “But she says she doesn't know Eve and has no idea where she might have gone.”

  “Dead ends. All dead ends,” Miranda said as they turned to walk toward the food booths. “We better go meet Chloe and Tru.”

  “What happened to Tru's date?” Wren asked.

  “Not sure,” Miranda replied as they sat down around a picnic table. “She made up some excuse and got him to leave.”

  “Good,” Beck said sullenly. “I don't like that guy.”

  Wren laughed. “Would you like anyone Tru dated?”

  “The answer to that, would be no.” Tru appeared to their left, Chloe a few steps behind her. The two joined them at the table, the colored lights from the rides and booths casting flickering shadows around them.

  “Any luck?” Chloe asked. Her shoulders fell at the negative response from the others.

  Wren told her about their conversation with the fortune teller and Chloe perked up. “Maybe we should go back and talk to her.”

  “I don't think that's a good idea,” Beck replied. “She was already threatening to call security on us.”

  “But—”

  “I really don't think she knows anything,” Wren said soothingly. “Eve must have popped in while she was on her dinner break. I don't think the other woman had any idea.”

  “The question is why,” Miranda said, pursing her lips as she pondered it.

  “That's what we were just talking about,” Beck replied. “The only thing that makes sense is that Eve wanted to warn Chloe away. Keep her from trying to find Ethan.”

  “Which means she knows where he is.” Chloe ran her fingers through her hair, tugging it in frustration.

  “Maybe,” Wren said. “But she also said you can't get to him.” She winced at Chloe's responding glare. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, I'm sorry.” Chloe shook her head. “I just feel so useless. If Ethan is alive—and the evidence is mounting that he is—there has to be a way to bring him back.”

  “But then what happens to the Chaos?” Tru asked. “I mean, something—someone—has to be the vessel, right?” She looked around the group, which was studiously not watching Chloe.

  “She's right,” Dylan said. “I'm sorry, Chloe, but we have to think about that. If we do find him, we have yet to find a way to free him without releasing the Chaos again.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “I just have to believe there's a way.”

  Chloe kept her eyes on the top of the table, and Beck thought it may have been a conscious decision to avoid the worried looks between the rest of the group.

  “Well, I don't think we're going to figure it out tonight,” he said. “And they're about to shut this place down, so we better go.”

  They got up from the table and headed toward the exit, the light mood from earlier in the day long gone. Miranda threw an arm over Chloe's shoulders.

  “We'll figure it out,” she said.

  Chloe nodded, but said nothing.

  They were just passing the entrance gates when a man rounded the ticket booth. He caught sight of Chloe and Miranda and smiled.

  “Well, hello there,” he said.

  “Oh! Hi, Gavin,” Miranda replied. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks.” He took off his ball cap, raked a hand over his head, then replaced it. “You guys enjoy the fair?”

  “Yeah, it was great,” Miranda said.

  “We ran into Eve,” Chloe blurted out. She lifted her chin stubbornly, almost challenging.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Chloe shook her head and didn't reply.

  Beck eyed the landlord carefully. He still couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity he'd had when he first met the man. And he still couldn't figure it out.

  “Okay, then,” Gavin said slowly. “Glad you had a good time. I should be going.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and began to back away. “Chloe, that job’s still open if you’re interested.”

  She looked like she was about to tell him to stick it, but Miranda intervened.

  “She’ll call you,” Miranda said, guiding Chloe in the other direction. “See you later, Gavin!”

  He turned to leave and Wren hissed, “What was that all about?”

  “I think he knows something,” Chloe replied.

  “Why do you think that?” Wren asked.

  “I don't know.” She wiped her hands over her face, exhaustion evident on her features. “I just have a feeling.”

  “Eve did mention Gavin when we first met her,” Miranda said, defending her friend. “Then he denied knowing her. It's all very weird.”

  “Everything about this is weird,” Tru said.

  Beck only half paid attention to the discussion as he watched Gavin walk away. The man crossed the street, disappearing in the shadow of a building, only to reappear in the glow from another streetlamp.

  Then, it hit him. And he suddenly knew exactly why Gavin looked familiar.

  “I think Chloe's right,” he said, interrupting whoever had been talking.

  “About what?” Wren asked.

  “About Gavin James,” he replied, watching as the man turned a corner and disappeared. “There's more to that guy than meets the eye.”

  “Why do you say that?” Dylan asked.

  They started down the street, and Beck took Wren's hand, tucking it into his coat pocket. “When I first met him, I had this feeling that I'd met him before, but I couldn't figure out why. Eventually, I kind of wrote it off, figuring I'd seen him around town or something. But just now, I remembered where I saw him, and it wasn't just around town.”

  “Where?” Chloe asked, reaching out to grab his forearm.

  They stopped on the sidewalk. “At my dad's house,” he replied. “It was the night Gina—” He shot a glance at Tru, who stiffened slightly.

  “The night she attacked me,” she said dully.

  Beck winced, but nodded. “There was a fire next door, and I saw Gavin across the street.”

  “Well, that's kind of weird, but doesn't necessarily mean he knows anything,” Wren said. “Lots of people stop and watch when there's a fire.”

  Beck shook his head. “No, that's the thing,” he said. “That's what was so strange. He was standing there on the corner, but I could swear—I'm almost positive now—that he wasn't watching the fire.”

  Beck looked straight at Chloe, and could feel her fingers digging into his arm as she waited for h
is next words.

  “He was watching me,” he said.

  On a rare sunny day, Chloe sat on a folding chair on the back patio of the Victorian, sipping a cup of tea and gazing at the clouds through leaves of a rather anemic cherry tree in the yard. Summer was coming, but the temperature hadn't caught up just yet, and she pulled an afghan tighter around her shoulders. It had been a little over a week since the Spring Fair, finals week had begun, and the Order would arrive soon for a study session.

  Chloe knew it was a ruse. These study sessions and team meetings were really just an excuse for them all to keep an eye on her. Miranda was the worst, of course, being her best friend. But the others worried, too, and Chloe was equally grateful and annoyed by it all.

  She was fine.

  Well, she was better, anyway.

  She'd given up on the talismans and the drugs, unsure what she'd been thinking to consider pills in the first place. The truth was, she hadn't been thinking. Only feeling. Guilt and desperation. Fear and near hysteria.

  Not that she'd given up on finding Ethan. Not by a long shot.

  Because she was now convinced there was more to Ethan's disappearance than any of them realized.

  Chloe yawned, a reflection of another sleepless night. The visions and nightmares hadn't abated. If anything, they'd only increased in frequency. And she couldn't help but think that she still wasn't getting it. There were more to the visions than she understood—and with Eve's warnings still clear in her mind, Chloe had a feeling she wasn't the only one who thought so.

  And she was beginning to suspect that there was more to her landlord than met the eye.

  It was all too coincidental—finding the house just when they needed a place to live, a house that called to every member of the Order. Eve saying she knew Gavin, then him denying it. Gavin showing up at the career fair, as well as Maia, long before they knew she was in the Order. Eve disappearing. Eve reappearing, only to warn her against trying to find Ethan. The strange coincidences that brought the Order to live under the same roof.

  And now, finding out Gavin had showed up at the fire all those months ago.

  She didn't know why, but Chloe's gut told her that Beck was right when he said Gavin had been watching him. None of it made sense, really—a puzzle with too many pieces missing to figure out the big picture.

  But there was something there. She could feel it.

  Her tea cooled, and she stared unseeingly at the backyard as her mind worked, trying to put it all together. The sound of laughter jolted her out of her thoughts and she got to her feet, taking a deep breath before she headed inside.

  Chloe was surprised to find everyone already seated around the living room, and wondered how lost in thought she'd been to not hear them all arrive. Beck sat reading a book propped on the arm of the couch, with Wren laying sideways, her head in his lap as she flipped through a notebook. Miranda curled up in the armchair, working on her laptop, with Dylan at her feet, madly highlighting in a textbook. Tru didn't have finals, but she was there anyway, perched on the windowsill as she chewed on her lip and tapped quickly on her phone, and Maia lay sprawled on the floor behind the sofa, papers, books, and laptop scattered around her.

  “Hi, guys,” Chloe said, retrieving her backpack before she took a seat on the floor in front of the coffee table. “How's it going?”

  They mumbled responses and Chloe shrugged with a smile. It was hard not to be touched when they all had things to do, but chose to do it where they could keep an eye on her. Chloe pulled out her laptop and was just booting it up when Beck's phone rang. He grabbed it off the coffee table, frowning at the caller I.D

  “It's Dad,” he told Tru before he answered the phone. “Hello?”

  Beck's expression sobered, and he had a brief, terse conversation before he hung up and tossed the phone back onto the table.

  “What's wrong?” Tru asked.

  He rubbed both hands over his face. “It's Gina,” he said with a heavy sigh. “She's gone.”

  “What?” Wren sat up and faced him, one leg tucked under the other. “Gone? What does that mean?”

  Chloe noticed Tru had gone silent, a stricken look on her face.

  “She was out on bail,” Beck replied. “She was supposed to appear in court for some preliminary stuff, and never showed. They sent cops to her apartment and she wasn't there. No sign of her, and nobody knows where she went.”

  “Oh, God,” Tru breathed, and Miranda crossed to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “It's okay,” Beck said, and Chloe wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure Tru or himself. “She's no threat to us now. If she's on the run, she'll get out of town. She won't stick around waiting to be caught.”

  Tru huffed. “Since when has Gina ever been logical about anything?”

  “She has no power, not anymore,” he replied. He got up and approached his sister, ducking to meet her gaze. “She's just an angry woman, and she can't hurt us. She can't.”

  Tru looked back at him, silent for a moment before she nodded. Beck pulled her into a hug, rubbing her back soothingly until she shoved him away, embarrassed as only a teenager can be when being hugged by her big brother.

  “It'll be fine,” she said, trying to inconspicuously wipe away tears. “You're right. She can't hurt us now.”

  They settled back into work, and after a while, Dylan ordered pizza. But for all the normalcy of the day, Chloe could sense that the peace had been disrupted.

  And she could only hope that it was an ordinary feeling . . . and not a portent of something terrible, lurking just around the corner.

  Despite Chloe's fears, the next couple weeks were relatively uneventful, supernaturally speaking. Finals came and went, and she did pretty well, considering the distractions she was dealing with.

  Most people would consider it coincidental that all of Chloe’s friends would be staying in Gatesburg for the summer. Chloe, of course, knew better. The Order had work to do, and it wasn’t only making coffee and running errands. Still, they did need to pay the rent. Even Professor Kennedy had a summer job at the sister university in London. He’d tried to get out of it, determined to help his son where he could, but the extended time he’d taken off for his recent sabbatical left him with little ammunition.

  In the end, Dylan had told him to go. The professor relented and promised to keep in touch, and continue his research from there.

  That left Chloe as the only one at loose ends when it came to an actual paying job.

  Then, one day as Chloe was going through some papers, she came across the pamphlet Gavin had given her for Warden Security. Not mentioning it to anyone, out of fear they would try to talk her out of it, she called him and asked if there was any chance she could still have that summer job.

  Perhaps she should have been surprised that he didn’t seem mad at all that she’d waited so long to contact him, and that he’d invited her in for an interview, but she wasn't. With every passing day, hour, minute, she became more convinced that Gavin played a part in the bizarre plot of her life lately. She scheduled the interview before even knowing what she'd be doing, with the goal of making rent . . . but also keeping an eye on her enigmatic landlord. And on a Thursday morning in mid-June, she found herself standing in front of a large but nondescript building, the pamphlet from Warden Security clutched in her hand.

  She checked the address she'd scribbled down on the back one more time before examining the building. The blocky, concrete structure stood four stories high and filled two-thirds of the block, a fenced parking area taking up the remaining space. Tender saplings lined the sidewalk in front of the building, tied off to stakes to keep them from breaking in the slight breeze. Narrow strips of tinted window glass glinted in the sunlight, too dark to reveal anything inside, and the only identifying mark on the building was a small sign over an intercom speaker with the Warden Security logo.

  Chloe's arms broke out in goosebumps, and she wasn't sure if it was nervousness about the interview, or
something else. Something more.

  Something saying she was on the right track.

  Uncertain but committed, she took a deep breath, climbed the concrete steps, and approached the front door. She pressed the button on the intercom, and after a brief moment, it crackled to life.

  “May I help you?”

  “Yes. Hello? I have—I have an appointment with Gavin James?”

  “Name please?”

  “Chloe Blake.”

  One of the doors clicked open, and Chloe entered the building, a second set of doors opening automatically. The lobby, like the exterior of the building, was unremarkable. Commercial grade carpeting, a couple beige chairs, and a wilting plant in the corner. A bald, beefy security guard sat behind a high desk and nodded at her, pointing down a dimly lit hall.

  “Elevators are on the left. Third floor,” he said.

  “Thank you.” Chloe adjusted her bag and brushed some lint off her nice, black pants before heading down the hall.

  While she waited for the elevator, she could feel the security guard's eyes on her, but she didn't look back. Instead, she stood stiffly facing the glowing up arrow button, only letting her eyes slide to the right to try and examine her surroundings. There wasn't much to see—some unlabeled office doors, and at the far end of the hall, what appeared to be a metal security door with a keypad beside it.

  She wondered what lay behind it.

  The elevator doors opened and she pressed three, noticing there were four floors labeled, as well as a B she assumed stood for basement with a keycard reader next to it. Chloe didn't have much time to consider that before the doors opened again to reveal a large, white room divided by gray cubicles. Fluorescents flickered overhead, making the room bright, but artificially so, and Chloe could make out the tinted windows across the way, looking out over the front of the building.

  A receptionist sat at a raised desk to the left, speaking rapidly on a headset as she tapped simultaneously on her computer. She held up a finger when Chloe approached, and after a moment, finished the call and stood up, pulling off the headset.