Darkest Day (StrikeForce #3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  He shook his head and handed me a plate. “They’re a big deal to my grandma, too. I’m not likely to forget them. The woman’s a terror with a wooden spoon,” he said wryly.

  “The street thing amuses me a little, though. I can always fly out of the way if there’s a problem.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said with a shrug. “Plus, I’m counting on you flying my ass to safety if there is actually a problem, so…”

  I laughed. “I’d fly your ass to safety. Promise.”

  He glanced at me, and our eyes met for just a second before we both looked away. “Good to know.”

  We finished the dishes in silence and then kind of stood around awkwardly in his kitchen. “I should probably go check in with Jenson. She’ll have about a thousand questions about what happened. And I want to go through the stuff we got from Maddoc’s house,” I said.

  “Or you could stay,” he said, meeting my eyes. “If you want.”

  I want, something whispered deep inside me. And I’ve got to be honest, it freaked me the hell out.

  “Maybe another time,” I said, hating the shakiness I felt. I was doing it again. Fuck. A guy acted decent to me and I was getting stupid. Jesus Christ, did I ever freaking learn?

  “Thanks for dinner.”

  He watched me, brow furrowed in concern. “What just happened?”

  “What?” I asked, heading to his bathroom to grab my uniform.

  “Your heart rate just went nuts. Like, panic.”

  “I just realized I really do need to go. That’s all,” I said, hugging my uniform to my chest as if that could muffle the way he could hear my heart beating. “Thanks,” I said, and he nodded. I opened the door and tried not to run out on him. I swore I was barely able to breathe until I got onto the elevator, and I stood there with my eyes closed, trying to settle down.

  So desperate.

  So easy.

  Pathetic.

  Killjoy’s words echoed through my mind, haunting me, reminding me of how very, very wrong I’d been about everything with him, how obviously messed up I am about guys. Ryan was a friend. Co-worker. And he’d been kind to me, good to me, and pathetic idiot that I am, my stupid heart was already turning it into something more.

  “Not this time, Satan,” I muttered, something Mama had often said when she was refusing to let herself fall into being angry or depressed. Or when she recognized that she was about to do something stupid. I closed my eyes, and opened them again when the elevator doors opened. I made my way down to my room and let myself in. I leaned back against the door and just tried to breathe. This was stupid. I was overly-emotional. Still mourning Mama. Obviously still blaming myself for Mama, because I deserved the blame. Still wanting to find Killjoy and rip his heart out. Stressed out over the changes at work, over seeing Maddoc and having to face him again. And very clearly messed up in general. Nothing new on that count, at least.

  I pushed myself away from the door and tossed my uniform onto the chair in the living room.

  “Fuck,” I groaned. I needed to get my shit together, and this was just one more example of it.

  I spotted the large cardboard file boxes I’d taken up to my suite to go through after Portia’s clean-up crew had brought them back from Maddoc’s house. I grabbed one and set it on the coffee table, pulled out a stack of papers and started reading through them.

  No more letting my mind wander, for a little while, at least.

  I spent the next couple of hours going through the stuff from Maddoc’s house and car. Most of it was crap. Junk mail, bills. Maddoc’s real name was apparently Sergei Kovalchek. He had expensive tastes and the credit card debt to go with it. I’d assumed that supervillainy was a fairly prosperous gig, but apparently not much of that was trickling down to Maddoc. No signs of any family members or love interests. Lots of letters from dumbass women who had villain fetishes. I tossed another one of those aside in disgust. I got my fair share of weirdo mail, and just about every guy on the team got a handful of nude (or close to it) photos mailed or emailed to them every week from fans.

  Mine were usually from guys who wanted me to hit them.

  I shook my head and kept going through the papers. There wasn’t a ton there, but then I remembered that I still had both of the phones Maddoc had been carrying with him. I went to my room and grabbed them, then flopped back down onto my couch and started going through them.

  It wasn’t much more interesting than his other mail and paperwork. I was about to give up when a few items on his web browser history piqued my interest. He’d spent a few days regularly looking up information on the Detroit Mafia. And one name kept coming up over and over again: Bruce Giannotti.

  Giannotti.

  I grabbed my own phone, where I usually kept quick notes of shit I didn’t want to forget, and went to the note I’d written after the secret dinner meeting I’d had with the rest of my little team.

  Daemon’s real name was Salvadore Giannotti.

  I almost let out a little shout of joy, and I forced myself to calm down and focus. It could just be a coincidence. I doubted it was something Jenson and David had missed. They’d been going over all of this Daemon shit since the night I’d gone to his house.

  And yet… if Daemon was related to the Detroit Mafia godfather, it wouldn’t be that much of a leap to suggest that Detroit’s super villains and the Detroit Mafia were working together. And if they were, it explained why Detroit seemed to get hit so hard with this shit, why we had more problems with villains and crime and general insanity than anywhere else since the Confluence.

  Mafia ties would explain where Killjoy got the funding to buy allies and facilities and guards and all of the other shit we were finding.

  It was something to mention to Jenson and David. Another angle they could be looking at.

  My eyes were starting to blur from reading for so long. I set Maddoc’s phone down on the coffee table and lay down, resting my arm over my eyes. The next thing I knew, my phone was ringing. I blinked awake, irritated with myself for dozing off when I still had more stuff to go through. I picked my phone up, and at the sight of the “unknown number” on the screen, my heart started pounding. I quickly enabled the call tracing app and answered.

  “I was thinking about you,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said, and I closed my eyes and tried to stay calm.

  “Killjoy.”

  “Come on, sweetheart. You don’t need to call me that.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure I do. What’s up? Not busy murdering innocent women today? Done drowning kittens?” Keep him talking. Just keep the motherfucker talking so I could go get him.

  He laughed, and it made me want to puke. “Still not over it, I guess.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what the socially acceptable practice is when it comes to having contact with the asshole who murdered your mother,” I said.

  “I didn’t murder her. Death did.”

  “Technicalities. What about kidnapping? Doing much of that lately?”

  “Tryin’ to pin that on me too, sweetheart? We both know that’s not my thing.”

  “Right. Just murder.”

  I heard him sigh.

  “So you got Maddoc, huh? Did you enjoy throwing that in my face all over the news today?” he asked, his tone icy.

  “He killed Virus,” I told him. “Did you know that?”

  “He did not.”

  “He did. The body was in the back of his SUV. He did it on Raider’s orders. She told me that while I was kicking her ass today.”

  He didn’t answer, and I smirked. I knew it would burn him. He’d told me about her going behind his back when they’d been married.

  “Render knew all about it,” I added, and I heard him snarl. “Your team is out of control, Killjoy.”

  “You’re trying to piss me off now. So you’ve got Maddoc. I guess you have Daemon holed up over there, too, huh?”

  I didn’t answer. They really were looking for him.

  Which mea
nt I needed to find him first.

  “Why don’t you come over and find out?” I asked.

  I glanced at the clock. I needed to keep him on for at least thirty seconds. Almost there.

  “Maybe another time. I have to go, but I wanted to tell you that you need to stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  I laughed. “Is that a threat?”

  He hung up. I swore and opened the tracker app, and was greeted with the words “track unsuccessful.”

  I held the phone up, this close to throwing it at the wall but I held myself back at the last second. Instead, I tossed the phone down on the couch. I’d recorded the call as well, so I could listen to it later. Not that it would reveal much. The asshole was being careful.

  I went to my room and started pulling on the black uniform I used for my little independent jobs.

  He knew we’d been poking around Daemon’s house, at the very least, I was sure of it. That crack about poking around where we shouldn’t. We were making him nervous, which meant we were getting close to something. And his people were starting to ignore his orders, no matter how powerful he was.

  He would make a mistake soon. My job was to keep pushing and make damn sure I was there when he tripped up.

  The first step was to check out Daemon’s house more for any evidence of Mafia ties, any clues about where he might be, since apparently nobody could find him. If he was dead, Killjoy and Raider didn’t know about it. The Mafia could have done it, if he’d pissed them off—

  If he was even part of that family, I reminded myself. Still too many questions.

  I finished pulling my boots on, thinking through it all. Of all of them, Daemon, Render, and Raider were most important. Render because he was probably their hardest hitter after Killjoy himself. Raider because she may or may not still be married to Killjoy and was very clearly playing her own game.

  But my money was on Daemon. I was fairly certain I knew where Killjoy’s team got most of its funding now. And it went the other way, too — I was pretty sure the Mafia would be more than happy to have some super-powered thugs on their side and turn Detroit into their own fiefdom. Maybe more than it already was. And since Killjoy had his little global domination dream, based on the emails he’d exchanged with Alpha back when they’d started working together, it would only grow if we didn’t stop them now.

  I quickly made my way toward the flight bay on my floor and took off into the night, flying quickly toward the neighborhood where Daemon’s house was. I wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t about to under-estimate Killjoy. It was entirely possible that he’d been trying to spring a trap for me, figuring that I would do this exact thing, charging off to mess with him as quickly as possible. We’d gotten Brianne and Maddoc, and that was a really good start. I’d destroyed his facility and made him come out into the open, exposing himself as the piece of shit he is. But it wasn’t nearly enough.

  I reached Daemon’s neighborhood and circled over it a few times. His house was dark. After circling a few more times and setting my jammer to disable his alarm system, I landed near the same clump of large evergreen trees in his back yard. I quickly picked the lock and let myself inside, listening, watching. I went into the living room and opened the drawer near the front hallway, the one where I’d found the envelope I’d refused to open the first time I’d been there. I shuffled through the drawer’s contents for a bit, and had to admit that it was gone. It didn’t really matter — I still didn’t intend to stoop to using kids to get to him.

  I looked behind the few pictures on the walls, trying to see if there was a safe or something. Nothing.

  That left the basement. If he had a safe of some kind, or equipment that he was hiding, it would be down there. The cameras David and Jenson had installed to help us spy on Daemon’s place hadn’t revealed any sign of Daemon being at the house, or the electro, for that matter, after the night I’d been there.

  I walked though the kitchen and then made my way down the stairs, once again grateful for the night-vision in my mask. When I reached the bottom step, I looked around. There were a bunch of boxes, some discarded furniture. It looked like there was a small room behind the furnace. I tried the door, and it was locked. I twisted the knob harder, then put my shoulder into the door, bashing it hard, and it gave. I smirked.

  The room looked like nothing more than a closet at first. There was a square table with a file box sitting on top of it. I walked over to it and lifted the top off.

  The top sheet of paper had my name on it. That was all I was able to see before I heard footsteps on the stairway. I put the lid back on the box and took a deep breath. I stepped out of the room, and Daemon stood before me, at the base of the stairs. I reached to the back of my belt and pulled out the stun gun. Daemon put his hands up.

  “Did you find the box I left for you?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  “What?”

  “The box,” he said, pointing toward the room. I nodded.

  “If you’re going to take me in, do it fast. I can’t do this shit anymore.”

  “What?”

  “You know what. Killjoy and his bullshit. I never wanted to get involved in all that mess. And my family thinks he’s so fucking great, that they’ll have it made with Killjoy on their side. They’re destroying themselves, and they can’t see it.”

  I still held the gun up, pointed at his head. “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You’ve figured out who’s funding Killjoy, or you wouldn’t be here right now. You know money buys a whole lot of shit. Including a few scientists to try to duplicate what Death was working on. This needs to stop. Take me in. Kill me, whatever. But you have to promise to do something for me, and we need to do it fast because they’ll be on their way. They knew you were here that night, when the alarm shut off. They wanted to see what you were doing.”

  “And where have you been all this time?”

  “Hiding,” he hissed.

  “Like the pussy you are,” I heard Killjoy say, and then a gunshot rang out, and Daemon went down. I shot at Killjoy, but I missed when he darted away.

  “Raider, take care of her,” I heard him say, and then he was gone and Raider was stalking toward me, a really, really not friendly-looking sword in her hand.

  I tried to stay calm. Daemon was still on the floor, and I thought I maybe saw him move. If I could get him to Command, they’d get plenty of answers. Of course, I had to survive the whacko with the sword, first.

  “Ugh. You seriously fucked that?” I asked. Crude usually worked like a dream, and, predictably enough, it worked this time too as she lunged at me, slicing at me with the sword. I ducked and shoved at her with my power. She went flying back across the basement.

  “I mean, really? What’s his dick, jellybean-sized, roughly?”

  “You’re sick,” she hissed, slicing at me again, and I pushed her back one more time.

  “Didn’t hear you deny it,” I half-said, half-sang as I punched out at her again, hitting her so hard with my power that she slammed back against the wall and her sword went clanging as it fell out of her hand. “No wonder you’re such a bitch, if you’ve been settling for jellybean dick all this time. Except for your affairs, of course.”

  She groaned and tried to get up again.

  “Don’t bother,” I told her. I raised the stun gun and let off a charge, and she slumped on the ground. I put a dampener and cuffs on her, then went to Daemon. He groaned. “I thought you’d actually protect me once you promised to help me. Take me in.”

  “Lucky for you he’s not a very good shot,” I murmured. I got another dampener out and put it around his neck. “If you’re fucking with me here, I am going to kill you myself.”

  “I’m not. I’m out. Lock me up, throw away the key, just get me the hell out of here. You want evidence it’s in that box.”

  I jumped up, hoping Killjoy hadn’t ported into the room and taken the box. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Why didn’t
he stay and kill me?” I asked Daemon.

  He stared at me, and then he laughed.

  “I’m not in a laughing mood. Why?”

  “Are you kidding? The psycho asshole is in love with you. He can’t kill you. Won’t let himself. He hates you, but he loves you. It was interesting to watch him slowly but surely lose his mind, but I’m done.”

  I looked around the basement. I couldn’t transport everything on my own, and I didn’t want to give Killjoy a chance to come back. I mean, I kind of did, but if he did, he’d kill Daemon for sure, and if the shithead was truly out, we could still get answers from him.

  I grimaced, imagining the lecture I’d get from at least a couple of people once I got back to Command.

  I pressed the comm in my ear twice. Jenson.

  “Hey. Can you have Portia come to Daemon’s house? I need a port out of here.”

  Jenson swore and muttered and threatened to kick my ass, but Portia appeared within seconds, and then we and the box Daemon had put together for me were all back at Command.

  Chapter Nine

  Once we were back at Command, the guards secured Raider in her cell while Portia and I took Daemon up to the med wing to have his gunshot checked. It was a shallow gouge in his shoulder, and Dr. Ali started cleaning it.

  Daemon looked at me. “I’m here. Okay? Now you need to hold up your end of the deal.”

  Portia raised her eyebrows at me.

  “It depends on what that is. You got shot before you could tell me,” I said, and he glared at me.

  “My ex and our daughter. Killjoy knows about them and I know he’s looking for them since I went missing. Bring them in so I know they’re safe. Protect them from him and I’ll do anything you want me to.”

  Portia and I exchanged a glance. I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Ryan and Jenson standing there in their uniforms, ready to do whatever we needed done.