A New Day (StrikeForce #1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Published by Peitho Press

  Detroit, Michigan, 2015

  © 2015 Colleen Vanderlinden

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at email@colleenvanderlinden.com.

  Contents

  Books by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Letter from the Author

  About the Author

  Books by

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  The StrikeForce Series

  A New Day

  The Copper Falls Series

  Shadow Witch Rising

  Shadow Sworn

  The Hidden: Soulhunter Series

  Guardian

  Betrayer

  The Hidden Series

  Book One: Lost Girl

  Book Two: Broken

  Book Three: Home

  Book Four: Strife

  Book Five: Nether

  Hidden Series Novellas

  Forever Night

  Earth Bound

  * * *

  Never Miss an Update!

  Sign Up for Colleen’s Newsletter.

  http://bit.ly/colleensnewsletter

  Dedication

  To my husband, Roger, who introduced me to comics.

  Just one more way you changed my life forever.

  Part One

  Thieves and Liars

  Chapter One

  I slouched as I walked, phone held to my ear, looking to anyone who happened to see me as if I was deep in conversation with someone. I spoke in a low voice, despite the fact that there was no one on the line. To anyone who passed, I looked like your typical college-age chick, probably arguing with her boyfriend over something stupid. The large trees flanking the narrow street rained leaves down onto the pavement and perfectly manicured lawns. Large red maple leaves, along with the occasional bright yellow birch leaf, were plastered to the wet concrete beneath my feet. Porch lights cast a cold, eerie glow in the misty darkness, and a biting wind whipped my hair into my face.

  I kept walking, talking. I barely glanced at the mansion as I walked past it, even though it felt like every cell in my body was aware of it. It’s like being a junkie and knowing, just goddamn knowing, that there’s a fix nearby. The adrenaline was already flowing, my heart pumping. I bounced a little on the balls of my feet as I paused, still playing the role of “girl on the phone.”

  There. I bit back a grin. My little jammer, the tiny device I’d made from parts I’d snatched from Radio Shack, had done its job yet again. The security system in the McMansion behind its emerald hedges and pristine ultra-green lawn was as useless as the locks they’d undoubtedly installed on the doors and windows.

  There wasn’t much that could keep me out.

  I probably had about half an hour, tops, before anyone came around. I’d been casing the place for a couple of weeks now, primarily with the two tiny cameras I’d installed in the shrubbery. I could monitor the comings and goings, figure out their routine. These people weren’t home a whole lot, some finance jackhole and his vapid little redheaded girlfriend. They had a security guy who came by regularly, but he wasn’t nearly as regular when the redhead wasn’t around.

  I did grin to myself then. It was the uniform. The finance guy had paid for the chick’s boobs, but I’d caught her dragging the security guard into the house at least twice.

  Anyone watching would see the blonde girl take the phone away from her ear and look at it in dismay, then walk quickly away, as if, maybe, she just wanted to get home. I was so damn good at this by now, it was second nature. I could pretend to be anybody, anything, knowing that a payday was around the corner.

  Mama had bills to pay. Tuition was due in two weeks, and I knew a few people who could use a favor. I looked at the mansion out of the corner of my eye as I turned the corner. These bitches wouldn’t miss whatever I managed to take from them. Not the way any of my people would.

  I strolled a few blocks, turned a corner, and ducked into a little diner where I’d stowed some essentials. A couple of minutes later, I walked out the alley exit wearing a dark gray, over-sized hoodie, a black scarf covering my hair. Gloves on my hands.

  No one even gave me a second look as I jogged through the neighborhood. The house behind the mansion, one of them anyway, was empty and had been for the past month. I pulled the hood up over my head, pulled the black scarf I had around my neck up over my mouth and nose, so only my eyes were visible. After checking around, I went up the driveway as if I had every damn right to be there, then quickly pulled myself up onto the wall that separated the neighbor’s yard from the mansion’s sprawling grounds.

  No dogs. The redhead was not an animal person, and I was grateful. Always made my job easier.

  I smiled under the scarf. They had glass back doors. It was practically like being invited to rob them.

  I glanced around the edges of the patio, which were lined with large stones. I guess it was supposed to look rustic, or natural, or something. I bent and picked up one of them, hefted it in my palm. I double-cheked to make sure that my jammers were still in effect, then used the rock to bash in the pane of glass closest to the door knob. Once it was broken, all I had to do was reach in, turn the lock, and let myself in.

  I smirked as I made my way through the kitchen. Typical rich people bullshit. Espresso maker that cost more than my mother made in a year, refrigerator that would hold enough food to feed my whole damn neighborhood. Marble floors and counters. And where there wasn’t marble, there was stainless steel. Cold-ass rich people, I thought.

  I passed by the electronics and other crap in the living room. I couldn’t carry it and it wasn’t enough of a moneymaker.

  I made my way up the stairs, to the bedrooms. It was easy to find the master, its double doors open at the end of the hallway, overlooking the lake.

  Of course.

  I quickly rifled through the dressers and through the boxes on the dressing table and closets. By the time I was done, my pockets bulged comfortingly with gold, diamonds, and other gems. They’d even left a folded wad of cash in a dresser drawer.

  I estimated what I’d managed to grab already. Couple thousand worth, probably. I glanced at the dressing table. Pictures in crystal frames, of the redhead and the finance guy, his hair dyed an unnatural shade of black for a man his age. Behind them, a necklace hung on a silver jewelry tree, diamonds and rubies twinkling in the meager light coming from outside. I snatched it and headed out. Time was running out. I jogged out of the room, down the hallway, and back down the stairs.

  My foot had just hit the bottom step when I saw bright headlights sweeping across the front
of the house. A quick glance out the large front window showed the last thing I wanted to see: three black and white squad cars, doors opening, officers making their way toward the house.

  My life had been so much easier at the beginning of my burgling career. With everyone so worried about superpowered people, the occasional burglary here and there seemed like nothing.

  But do it often enough, and soon everybody’s out to make an example of you.

  Goddamnit.

  I crept low, keeping out of the sight of anyone who happened to be looking in the front windows. I slunk toward the back of the house, back to the kitchen. Flashlights bobbed near the back door, likely exposing my handiwork.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  My heart pounded, and I forced myself to calm down. This wasn’t the first time I’d screwed up like this. They were still outside. I was inside, and I knew the house.

  I knew about the passage underneath that connected it to the gatehouse of the mansion across the street. A gatehouse that was never used. It was just a storage building, now. Two houses, built by old Detroit Mafia family members, the tunnel made to connect the houses without anyone having to go out in the open. Still there. Still functional. They’d had tours through it, when the local historical society did their “rumrunning weekend” thing. It had been in the news.

  I do my goddamn homework.

  Even if they realized which house this was, that it had the tunnel, I’d be long gone.

  I heard the sounds of radios outside, the low timbre of male voices, and I crept to the basement door and slipped down the stairs. There. To the left was a heavy-looking oak door. I glanced around. I could make it even easier on myself, maybe. There was a recliner nearby. If I moved it in front of the door, I might buy myself a few seconds. I pulled it in front of the door, as if it was meant to be there, then I flipped the lock on the door and stepped through. When I closed it, the dark swallowed me whole.

  I stood there for a second, sucking air into my lungs. Not fear, though. Exhilaration, excitement. The rush was almost as rewarding as the money itself.

  I grinned, then jogged down the tunnel, my hands out ahead of me so I wouldn’t crash face-first into the door at the other end of the tunnel. When I reached it, it opened easily, just as I knew it would.

  I’d ensured that it would be unlocked. Escape routes. It’s why I’d been at this for over four years and was still in business. It was why metro Detroit’s rich and twisted feared me. I was a ghost.

  A ghost who made off with all of their good shit.

  I popped into the gatehouse, crouched, and glanced across the street. Five police cars were lined up in the winding driveway. Searchlights flooded the front of the house, and all around it, flashlights bobbed as they searched for the burglar who had eluded police time and time again. I would have loved to stay and watch longer. I always loved that moment when they realized they’d lost me somehow. This was too close, though. Time to move, now, before they thought to look around. As far as they knew, I was still in the house.

  I took the hoodie off and folded it neatly over my arm, pulled the scarf off of my face and hair. I glanced at my phone, then down the street.

  There. Right on time.

  The bus slowed as it neared the stop at the corner. I held my hand up as I walked casually down the driveway, not drawing the attention of anyone across the street. I stepped onto the bus, paid my fare, and smiled at the driver.

  “What’s goin’ on over there?” the elderly driver asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They all just pulled up over there a few minutes ago.”

  “Probably that burglar,” he said with a grunt.

  I made a look of wide-eyed horror. “You think so?”

  He nodded, pulled the door closed. “Big house like that? It was him. More damn power to him, too,” he muttered as he pulled away from the curb.

  I settled into a seat near the center of the bus. I barely gave all of the police cars a glance as we drove past. Instead, I looked at my phone without seeing it and relished the feel of Mama’s rent and medical bill payments in my pockets. I glanced up, and the advertisement right in front of where I was sitting was one of those reminders you see on billboards and on telephone poles all over the city. A photo of StrikeForce, our local superhero team, standing in some dumbass comic book “hero” pose, looking like absolute morons. Their leader, Alpha, stands at the front, and the text below helpfully reminds us that StrikeForce is here to help. The fact that StrikeForce loses pretty much every fight they get into with our local supervillains doesn’t seem to have made the advertising copy. Imagine that.

  Two bus changes later, and I got off at a stop a couple of miles away from my house. I never wanted to get too close, just in case anyone somehow figured out what I was up to. My stomach turned, my hands shook. The adrenaline was wearing off, and it was hitting me, how goddamn close that had been.

  I took a deep breath, and walked, and put my hand around the pepper spray in my pocket. The last thing I needed now was some asshole trying to mug me. It had only happened once before. My neighbors watched out for me. Not that they knew anything. They knew that when they needed help, they could come to me. If I was in a few-block vicinity of my house, I was generally safe. I was the neighborhood sweetheart, the quiet young woman who was finally going to get out, the sweetie who always lent a hand if they needed it, the pretty girl who needed to find a nice man. I was known as someone you could come to if you needed a couple of bucks, because unlike just about everyone in my neighborhood, I had a job, and a decent one. I was college educated, and my Mama had raised me right.

  That was what they thought. And I was more than fine with that.

  “Hey, Jolene,” Robbie Davis called from his driveway, where he and three of his friends were gathered around Robbie’s Harley.

  “Hey,” I called.

  “You see this baby?” he asked, gesturing to the bike.

  “Nice, man.”

  “You wanna go for a ride?”

  His friends whistled and made motions with their hands, and I stuck my middle finger up.

  “I didn’t mean like that,” he said.

  “Sure you didn’t,” his friend Lamar said with a laugh. We went to the same gym. Lamar was one of the few guys who still agreed to spar with me. “Don’t mess with her, man. Jolene could bench press any one of us.”

  “Right,” Robbie said with an eye roll.

  “Do you even lift, bro?” I asked with a smirk. “Seriously, nice bike, though. Tell Nicole I said hey.”

  “Will do.”

  “She doing all right?”

  “She is. Thanks again for… uh. You know,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

  I waved it off. “No biggie. She was really nice to me in high school. I remember that.”

  “We’ll pay you back.”

  I shook my head. “If you want, when you want. I’m not waiting around for it. Okay?”

  He nodded again, a look of relief crossing his face. “Thanks.”

  I nodded and walked on, glancing around. It was impossible not to compare the squalor in my neighborhood with the perfect, manicured place I’d just been. There were no emerald green lawns here, no stone walls. Sure the hell weren’t any mansions. Cars on cinder blocks, single-wides with cheap plastic chairs on the lawns. The gravel roads were lined with old, rusty cars. Friday nights, you could count on at least one visit from the Warren PD. I stuck my hands back in my pockets, hunched my shoulders and headed for our trailer, at the end of Perdition Lane.

  Whoever had designed the park had had a fucking hilarious sense of humor. Perdition, Salvation, Purgatory Lanes wound their way between the trailers. Most likely, it was the same types of assholes who lived in the neighborhoods I robbed. Slumlords, making their money off of desperation.

  I clenched my jaw and walked the curve, and our trailer came into view. My Mama had done the best she could. We’d lived in a decent little house before my dad had died. Heart attack, and I stil
l prayed my thanks for it. He’d been at his place on the assembly line and just keeled over. It had been both a relief and a heartbreak for Mama. Relief, because she didn’t have to fear his fists anymore. Heartbreak, because sometimes smart women do stupid things, like love someone who’s nothing but bitterness and anger.

  That’s not saying that she didn’t keep going, for me. We’d lost the house, despite the fact that she’d taken on two jobs. She still worked both of them, wouldn’t quit no matter how much I told her she could cut back, that I would help.

  “Finish college, Jolene. Make a life for yourself. That’s all I want,” she told me, every time I told her to count on me. She’d only just recently started letting me pay for groceries, especially after I told her that I’d found a nice job near campus. The medical bills, I intercepted and paid before she even saw them. Diabetes was a bitch. Dialysis was another bitch. The car accident she’d been in, the surgeries afterward, had just been the icing on the cake. She refused to take it easy, no matter what I said. Someday, she’d retire, and she’d live the way she should finally be able to.

  Our little yellow and white trailer was well kept. Nice little garden beds in front, everything neat and clean. Mama always had tried to make sure we took pride in our home, no matter where we lived. Our house was spotless, neat, and comfortable. I was raised with manners, no matter how often I forgot them. I knew how to act when I needed to behave.

  I unlocked the front door and clicked on the lamp just inside. The living room, kitchen, and little banquette seating area were all visible from the front door. Toward the back, there were two bedrooms and a little bathroom. That was it. Five hundred square feet for my mom and me. We’d done okay. I wanted so much more.

  I pulled shades, glanced at the note on the refrigerator.

  “Mac and cheese in the oven,” it said. “Love, Mama.” I shook my head. No matter how many times I told her not to cook for me, she did it.