A New Day (StrikeForce #1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “What the hell are they doing here?” I hissed at him, finally releasing him before I seriously hurt him. Because I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Two vile, psychotic assholes, one jerk I didn’t know, and all three of them had seen my face. Probably knew I was the person who robbed houses. Fuck.

  “I’m looking to bring on some help,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “We talked about this before. And these guys have been lobbying to join up for a while now.”

  “Why?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Why, Jolene? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because you have a really screwed up set of priorities for a thief. I wanted this to be so much bigger. I want to make sure we never have to answer to anyone, ever again. And you keep telling me no on certain jobs, and if I show the slightest sign of getting ready to hurt someone, you get all nuts. Are you a thief, or aren’t you?”

  I stared at him. “How much do you need?”

  “Christ. This again,” he muttered, turning and pacing toward the stove. The lights in the kitchen fizzled, affected by his energy. “Do you not get what thieves do? Or did your fancy Catholic school education not teach you that much?”

  “Oh, fuck off. You should have told me. They saw my face, Damian. How much more did you tell them?”

  He glared at me. “I didn’t tell them anything. I’d never do that.”

  “Right. I’m just some chick who shows up.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re my neighbor or something. They don’t give a shit.”

  I fisted my hands at my sides to keep from hitting him.

  “They saw my face. You don’t think they’ve already figured out who I am, seeing us together there?”

  “They’re here to work with me. For me. They know an easy payday when they see it. You’re being paranoid.”

  I took a few deep breaths, and, proving that he was intelligent if nothing else, Damian kept quiet. “You should have told me not to come,” I finally said.

  “I forgot we planned to meet today,” he said. “I’ve been hammering this out with them for the past three days.” He paused. “I’d ask if you want in, but I kind of know better.”

  I nodded. “It was a short-lived partnership,” I said.

  “Probably for the best. I would have been the one to make you break your ‘no violence’ rule,” he said with a grin, and I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say for a few moments. In the back of my mind, I wondered if this mess was the universe’s way of sending a message. I was free and clear of my partnership with Damian, a partnership I’d never wanted in the first place. I could do whatever I wanted. Go back to robbing houses solo. Or quit completely.

  “Make sure you keep what you know about me to yourself,” I said quietly. “And don’t trust them.”

  “I promised you that you didn’t have to worry about me talking, and it’s still true,” he said. “And I don’t. But I need some muscle in my operation. Didn’t work out with you, so…” he trailed off, shrugging.

  I felt unsettled, unsure. Unsure of everything except the fact that the best thing I could do was walk out the door and be grateful that this stupid arrangement was coming to an end. I gave Damian a nod, told him to take care, and left, tossing his house key on the counter before I left.

  I walked a few blocks, and then rose into the sky. Childish though it was, I went to my mother’s house. I told her the water was off in my apartment, and she was more than happy to let me stay with her.

  Part of me didn’t trust that Damian would keep my secrets. For the right price, I was pretty sure Damian would spill just about any secret. Not because he’s evil, exactly, but because money is the thing he lives and breathes for. I wanted to make sure Mama was okay.

  And, maybe, I just wanted to hear my mother tell me that everything was going to work out okay, even if she didn’t know exactly how much of a mess I’d managed to make of my life.

  Chapter Nine

  Two months later…

  It wasn’t even hard anymore. I could do this crap in my sleep.

  Land near a bank. Bash though a wall. Smash my way into a safe. Grab shit. Fly away.

  Turn the cash over to Luther, who exchanged the bills, took her really, really healthy cut for her “services.”

  All of the doubts I had about whether I even still wanted to be doing this whole burglar thing or not still managed, somehow, to fade away in the thrill of going out and pulling off jobs. I was richer than I’d ever imagined, and I wondered, in my more reflective moments, if I was doing it just to spite the man in the black mask for putting doubts in my mind in the first place.

  I’d added a third drawer with a false bottom. I’d paid all of my mother’s medical bills. Bought myself a bachelor’s degree, and walked across the stage in a cap and gown, giving my mother that moment of feeling like she’d done all right by me if I’d managed to make it this far in life.

  I had everything I could have wanted. Drawers and closets that bulged with both cash and clothing. Enough money to throw at anyone who asked for help. Weekly donations of supplies and clothing to area women’s shelters. Still Jolene from the trailer park. Sweet Jolene, who never turned down anyone who asked for help.

  And every week or so, there was video. Outrage. Demands for StrikeForce to finally get it together and do something about the burglar, the menace. And when I watched that, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had enough. I had enough to help anyone who needed it for a very, very long time. It was empty.

  And still, I couldn’t stop. It made me feel alive. It gave me something to do besides wondering what I was supposed to do with my life.

  I kept tabs on Damian, of course. His activities had slowed, but they hadn’t stopped. He was nowhere near my pace. He also hadn’t said a word to me, hadn’t tried to contact me, since that night in his kitchen. I wondered if he kept tabs on me, watching for my next move, wondering if I was a threat or not the way I wondered about him. When there was a mention of him on the news, it was always bad. While they’d noted that Virus seemed to have parted ways with “the burglar” (I still couldn’t get a decent code name. Lame.), they also noted that neither of us seemed any weaker for it.

  Damian’s team had garnered its share of attention. The media called them supervillains, and I had to agree. Compared to the others, Damian looked like an amateur. His partners were criminals; infamous ones, villains who had been around since the First Confluence. Of course, the media considered me one of them, due to past associations.

  But I wasn’t. And I wouldn’t be. His new crew, who the media had named “Mayhem,” was full of the kinds of people I detested. He had one guy on his team who was suspected of murder. Two more who had no issues with hurting people. Of course, they hadn’t yet hurt anyone while working with Damian, but I still hated it, that he was associating with actual super villains.

  I mean, we’d done shit. The public considered both of us villains. But we were never that level of evil. Ours were victimless crimes. Money and things that could be replaced, paid for.

  I mulled it all over as I drove Luther’s Buick through Hamtramck. We were on our way back from church, and I had yet another heavy wad of bills in my jeans pocket.

  “Have you heard from him at all?” I asked her.

  She didn’t answer at first. “No.” There was so much in that one syllable. Disappointment. Anger. Maybe a touch of worry. She would be concerned about the same things I was, that he knew too much, and who knew what he’d do with that knowledge now that he didn’t need either one of us anymore. And, I think, maybe some concern for Damian himself, though that might have been me reading too much emotion into Luther’s personality.

  “I don’t like his friends,” I said as I turned a corner onto one of the residential streets. I tried to keep my tone light and remember to speak in some form of code. I was getting better at it all the time.

  “That makes two of us,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “He’s running with the wrong type of crowd.
Thought I taught him better than that.” And there it was, for sure. She was disappointed in him but also worried. “I hope he knows what he’s doing,” she added.

  “Well. He’s smart. We just have to believe that he’s smart enough to not do something stupid.”

  “Unless he’s already done it,” she said darkly, and I had nothing to say to that, because it was the same thing I’d been thinking.

  And really, there was nothing I could do about it anyway. It was none of my concern, and I needed to remember that. Keep my focus on what mattered.

  All I wanted to do was live my life, take care of my mother, help my neighbors, and figure out what the hell it was that I was supposed to be doing. And it would have been a hell of a lot easier if a certain masked stranger hadn’t made me start wondering if I’d already gone too far to ever be redeemed.

  Chapter Ten

  I was just getting in after visiting Mama. I’d taken the bus, not wanting to risk flying. I’d found myself, more often in the past couple of weeks after my initial burst of robberies, trying to keep a low profile. All I wanted now was for everyone to forget I’d ever existed so I could maybe move on and figure out what the “so much more” was that I was supposed to be.

  I hated the masked guy for the doubts I was starting to have about myself, my life. When I was being sensible, I knew better. I knew this had been a long time coming, that even someone as good at lying as I am eventually has a moment of truth.

  I got off the bus near the church and preschool that was a few blocks from my apartment. It was a little community Christian church, a small white building with stained glass near the front door. In the fenced yard behind it, I could see plastic toys for climbing on and sliding down.

  I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, so I decided to walk off some of my nervous energy. I turned the corner, taking the long way around, past the large park with its sledding hill. The only sound I could hear was the traffic going by on the road I’d just turned off of.

  Past the park was a vacant home. Big two-story house, probably divided up into flats. The porch railings sat at awkward angles, and the front door was wide open. From inside the house, I heard a crashing sound. I stopped and looked to see if I could see anyone. Most likely it was some dumbasses trying to steal the pipes or furnace or something to sell as scrap. There was a lot of that going around.

  I saw a figure come toward the door, and I stopped short.

  He was there. My masked nightmare in black.

  He had a guy by the scruff of his neck, holding him while putting handcuffs on the guy’s wrists. I must have made a sound, because he turned, quickly, and I froze.

  He took the guy’s arm and set him down on the porch.

  “Stay quiet,” I heard him rasp to the guy, who just nodded, wide-eyed, looking terrified.

  “Um. What’s going on?” I asked him as he walked up to me.

  “That kidnapping that was on the news earlier this week? The two teenage girls?” he said in a low voice, and I nodded.

  “The girls were returned home safely,” I said. Then it dawned on me. They’d mentioned the name on the news, in derisive tones. “Killjoy?” I asked as I finally put two and two together.

  He didn’t answer. I wondered if it was because he likely knew the rumors about him, if he was even Killjoy. That he was insane. Reckless. He hadn’t seemed crazy to me. Maybe he wasn’t Killjoy.

  Or maybe I was crazier than I realized.

  I looked over at the guy. “He was the one who took the girls?”

  “Yeah. But he got away before I could grab him. He’s their stepdad, and he got into a fight with their mom, decided to use them to hurt her. Real asshole,” he added.

  “Is he…?”

  “Powered. Yeah.” He paused, and it seemed like maybe he was looking at me. “You staying out of trouble?” he finally asked, resting his large hand on the fence next to where I was standing.

  “For the moment,” I said. “Why did you say that crap to me?” I blurted out.

  “Because it’s true. That’s the thing about living in the shadows. You see all the shit people are trying to hide. You’re trying to hide the wrong side of yourself.” We stood in awkward silence for a few moments, and the guy in the cuffs made a noise. Killjoy (or whoever he was) made a sharp motion with his hand, and the guy went silent again. “You live around here? Or are you robbing someone? Doesn’t seem like your kind of target,” he asked after a moment.

  “I live sort of near here.”

  “This is what I mean. I don’t get you. Why live in a shithole like this when you undoubtedly can afford better?”

  “I’m nuts, probably,” I said, and there was a short huff from him that might have been a laugh.

  “Can I come back and see you once I finish with this asshole?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Trying to figure you out, maybe,” he said, and my stomach twisted, my body warmed.

  “Well, that’s mutual,” I said.

  “So?”

  “How about the park down the block?”

  “Don’t trust me enough to invite me over?” he asked, and I pieced up a hint of amusement in his voice.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “Not at all.” He went and hauled the guy up again. “See you in a bit. You’re not gonna stand me up, are you?”

  “Nope,” I said, feeling a smile pulling at the sides of my mouth. He nodded, and then he moved, almost too quickly than seemed possible, down the street, into the dark night. I wondered how he planned to get around, hauling a cuffed guy along with him, but eventually I just made my way toward the park again. Here was my chance to figure out whether I even needed to worry about the stuff he’d said to me. If he was crazy, then what the hell did he know about anything? I could ignore him and move on, and chalk up all of my insecurity over my heists to the way he’d surprised me that night, along with my messed up partnership with Damian. I’d see he wasn’t worth taking any advice from, and my life would go back to normal.

  An hour later, I was sitting on one of the benches in the small park when I saw his dark form emerge from behind a stand of trees. I’d chosen a bench set out of the way, mostly because he would only draw attention, dressed the way he was. If he was Killjoy, I doubted he would take the mask off. Which was majorly disappointing.

  He sat on the bench beside me. “Did you take him to StrikeForce?” I asked him.

  “Hell, no,” he said. He leaned back and rested his arm across the back of the bench, behind my back. Warmth emanated from him, and I felt a little shiver go up my spine.

  “Why not? Isn’t that their thing?”

  “StrikeForce is the last place I’d put anybody,” he said.

  I looked at him, wishing I could see his eyes. “Why?”

  “That place is a mess. Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “Yeah. Trust me. You already kind of do, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. I could fly away at any second. Punch you and knock you out,” I shrugged. “There’s not a whole lot of danger here for me.”

  “No?” he asked, and there was that tiny accent, that hint of amusement. I wondered if he was smirking under the mask. I bet he was.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “You won’t show me your face and you have yet to tell me who you are, despite seeming to know everything about me,” I said.

  “Ah. Well. My face is nothing special and I’m not entirely sure I trust you yet, darling.”

  “I’m totally trustworthy,” I said with a grin, and there it was: an actual laugh. Deep, rough. I felt warmth shoot through me at the sound of it. It was a good laugh.

  He shook his head. “Says the thief. The super villain,” he added.

  “I’m not a super villain.”

  “Well, you’re definitely not a run-of-the-mill villain. Give yourself a little credit,” he said, and I laugh
ed. “Quite the opposite, actually,” he added.

  “So you took that guy… where? You didn’t take him to StrikeForce, so what does that leave?”

  “I have a few friends in low places. Handed him over to have him taken to another facility.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You just did.”

  “Annoying,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Will you answer?”

  “Depends on what it is.”

  I took a breath. “Why haven’t you just taken me in, then?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I already answered that. I think you’re worth more. You can be more. I don’t think you’re too far gone yet.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Now it’s your turn to answer something for me,” he said.

  “Depends on what it is,” I said, parroting his own words back to him, and was rewarded with a low chuckle.

  “Fair enough. Tell me how this shit started with you. I can guess enough. You grew up poor. You and your mother struggled. I know she has health problems. I’m guessing you saw it as a way to help her.”

  I nodded, wondering why I was ready to kill Damian at the barest mention of my mother, yet this guy who wouldn’t even give me his name elicited some kind of trust. I really did need to maybe try to figure out what was wrong with me. My sense of judgment sucked.

  Maybe this was what happened when you spent too much of your life not letting anyone get to know you. Maybe you ended up spilling your guts to weird guys on park benches because you’d spent the past few weeks remembering a few quiet, unsettling words.

  “That was pretty much it,” I said, wanting to tell him, stupid as it was, wanting someone to understand. “We lost our house, and my Mama worked her ass off trying to keep us fed and happy. It wasn’t easy. And then she started getting sicker, and the insulin and dialysis weren’t cheap… this was before everyone had health care,” I added, and he nodded. “And then she got hit by a drunk driver on her way home from work one night. It was shortly after the first Confluence. I was fourteen. She needed all of these surgeries, medicines, therapy. It was insane. So the bills started piling up. They took our car. I just remember her coming home from her second job when she should have still been in bed, and trying to sell stuff on eBay to scrape together a few dollars.” I paused. “I stared shoplifting when I was maybe ten. Out of spite, really. After her accident, I started picking pockets. Only problem with that is that not everyone carries cash, and it’s too easy to get caught.”