by Matt Carter
He cuts off Card’s response.
As soon as the call ends, I touch both palms to the glass and shatter it inward in a controlled, heat-shifting crack.
Eddie leaps off my back as soon as the path to Collingwraith is clear, swats the phone out of his hand with his bat, and kicks it away across the floor.
I wrap Collingwraith’s face in the crook of my arm before he can scream, letting him bite down on my unbreakable skin like a pacifier.
“You’re not going to die, okay?” I tell him. “Be cool, you’re okay, you’re fine.”
He only had a second’s glimpse of my shape when we burst in through the window, and he looks briefly surprised, even disoriented to hear a soft, female voice coming from under my mask.
Good cop is off to a good start, I guess.
Eddie goes for the desk, bats the drink aside, shattering the glass against the floor, and sits down at the computer, shaking the mouse to stop the screen from locking.
“I know that Mayor Card and Milgram are working together,” says Eddie. “I need to know who else is involved, what they’re planning, and how to access any records of their communication. I can find that out either from you or from your computer. You get to stay in one piece after sharing. Can’t promise the same for this overpriced porn theater.”
He twirls the bat casually over the laptop’s keyboard.
Collingwraith makes a noise into my arm, and Eddie gives me a nod.
I put a finger to my lips and loosen my hold on Collingwraith’s mouth.
“I can’t discuss my clients,” he says, quietly enough that he doesn’t seem to be trying to summon help. “If I do that, my life’s over anyway.”
“Your professional life, or your actual life?” I ask. “If you’re worried about retribution from Milgram’s people, we can protect you.”
I try for sympathetic and comforting, but really I’m thinking about how much I’d enjoy putting the man who’s making a fortune off minimizing Ace’s sentence into witness protection.
No more Jeremy Collingwraith, attorney to the stars. Just some guy with a new name he didn’t pick in a new nowheresville town, not allowed to appear in the news ever again.
“Yeah? Who the fuck are you?” snorts Collingwraith.
“The people who could’ve killed you by now if we felt like it,” Eddie points out.
“So you’re super,” says Collingwraith. “I can neither confirm nor deny any relationship between myself and the underworld figure known as Milgram, but general wisdom is that he has plenty of supers of his own. If I were in Milgram’s employ, and two masked supers entered my residence to entice me to betray him, wouldn’t you consider it equally likely that they’d been sent by Milgram himself as a test of my loyalty?”
“He’s got you living in fear, doesn’t he?” I ask, my arm still around him in a half choke hold, half hug. Whatever product he uses in his hair is leaving grease stains on my sweatshirt.
“Whatever you’re hoping to find, it won’t be on that hard drive,” says Collingwraith to Eddie, who’s still clicking away. “All confidential materials are kept on secure servers.”
“But you can never really clear your browser history,” says Eddie, taking a USB cable from his pocket and plugging his implant directly into the laptop. “Not to me.”
He sets the media player to full screen, then rolls the chair to the side, leaves his fingers touching the keyboard, and lets his eyes slide out of focus.
In real time, the computer shows us its own past, exactly as Eddie sees it.
Backwards and in fast motion, Collingwraith sits at his desk, talking on the phone. He checks three different email accounts.
Eddie slows down and shifts his angle of perspective to catch each username, each password as it’s being typed. He zooms in on snippets of conversations, and I catch some advice to Card on offshore accounting, some mentions of the names, and outstanding charges of a few of the Milgram thugs Dissident and I brought in.
Then, for kicks, he focuses in on Collingwraith picking his nose.
Time elapses backward a night or two, Collingwraith’s pants are off, and Eddie pauses the image.
“You gonna make me watch the whole director’s cut, or can we get to the cliff notes?” he asks.
Collingwraith gives us a bleached, toothy smile, adapting on a dime. “You two can still walk away, you know. We can forget the window, I’ll go back to doing my job, and you can go back to whatever it is you do, without knowing enough to make every power player in the city want you dead.”
Eddie and I swap an instant’s glance, confirming what we both already knew coming here.
“You let us worry about that,” I say.
Eddie drums his fingers impatiently on the laptop, and finally, Collingwraith gives.
“It’s no story you haven’t heard before. Mayor Card wants to move up the political ladder and needs money no law-abiding man ever had to make it happen.”
“He was on the cover of Forbes last year,” I say.
Collingwraith shrugs. “Campaigning is expensive.”
“So he’s subsidizing it with a cut of Milgram’s profits, in return for turning a blind eye,” says Eddie.
“No!” says Collingwraith. “No, Card’s the one paying Milgram.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For turning WPC into a warzone.”
“Fucking typical,” says Eddie, spinning his bat around in agitation.
“So that he can convince everyone to let him wall it off?” I ask.
“No, so he can be the one to rebuild it,” says Collingwraith. “He’s got all the investors he needs lined up to clear out the wreckage and foreclosed buildings and build luxury condos and modern offices in their place, all aboveboard. As soon as the project’s finished, Milgram will get to peddle his wares to a more lucrative class of clientele, under a police force handpicked to leave him alone, and Card’ll personally be raking in the rent of half the city, and sitting on the platform of the man who made Pinnacle City whole. But before he gets started, he has to prove to the investors that he’s not leading them into another of his PR nightmares. Chasing poor people out of their homes gets you boycotted. Flushing out a nest of well-documented depravity makes you a hero.”
It makes me sick to admit it, but Card might be smarter than I thought. No less evil or crazy, but smarter. After all his rants about walling off WPC, he’ll be able to spin buying it out, knocking it down, and starting over from scratch as the reasonable alternative.
“Who are the investors?” asks Eddie.
“The list’s in the mail folder marked ‘PCR Prospects,’” says Collingwraith.
Eddie finds it and scans through names.
“It’s the usual,” says Collingwraith. “Companies that want a monopoly on the new class of residents the project will bring in, a chance to stamp their name all over it, under Card’s, of course. Clothing importers. Diamond dealers. The—”
“The Pinnacle City Guardians,” Eddie reads aloud.
“Yeah, the Guardians want to set up a sister team in the West.” Collingwraith nods.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and turn him around to face me. “Which Guardians?”
He chuckles nervously.
“Your partner over there just said. The Pinnacle City Guardians.”
“Specifically!” I realize I’m shaking him, but I need to know. “Which members agreed to this? Who have you talked to?”
Collingwraith shrugs grandly. “Some personal assistant. I don’t know whose; she was representing the interests of the team as a corporate entity.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“Hey, hey, ease up!” says Eddie, crossing the room in a blink to get between us.
My handprint is burned into the front of Collingwraith’s shirt and still smoking when I let him go, but he’s unhurt.
“Whoa,” Eddie whispers, tugging me away by my sleeve, avoiding my skin. “What happened to my good cop?”
�
�You said to be myself.”
“Well, tell yourself that we got what we need,” he says, grinning as he closes the laptop and tucks it under his arm. “No matter who was supporting this thing, we have enough to stop it.”
I take a breath, let the sting of betrayal, the confirmation of what I’ve feared ever since getting the Card assignment, dissipate. I let the heat go with it, and try to absorb what Eddie’s saying.
We can expose Card and the so-called heroes who’ve been using me to pave the way for their investments. I can stop waiting among them for chances to snoop for this exact evidence. No more of Jacob’s camera in my face, or my barely-there Solar Flare leotard riding up when I fly, or Card’s press conference rants citing me as his complicit representative of womankind.
I’m free.
I wrap Eddie in a quick hug before taking the computer in my hands and turning for him to hang onto my back.
“Hey! You’re not taking that with you, are you?” Collingwraith calls after us. Inspired by his indignation, Eddie grabs a mostly full bottle of cognac off Collingwraith’s bar as we fly past it, leaving the same way we arrived.
Between sips from the bottle, Eddie gives me directions for that flight home I offered so half-heartedly on the morning of my first PCG briefing.
I’m glad to get to make good on it now.
“Can you explain to me why this stuff is so expensive?” he asks, wrapping his bottle arm around my neck so he can pull his mask off.
“I don’t know,” I admit, following suit and tucking mine into my sweatshirt pocket. “I’ve never bought it. Snuck some when I was twelve, though.”
“And they call you a role model,” Eddie tuts, taking another long gulp.
“Mom just about cried when she caught me.”
“Her little girl growing up too fast?”
“No, her little girl cutting the good stuff with Pepsi.”
Eddie cracks up and holds the neck of the bottle toward me. “And what does your sophisticated adult palate think?”
I shake my head. “It’s wasted on me. I’d need about a case to get a buzz.”
“Too bad, ’cause you know how much this set me back.”
Holding the computer and his free arm tightly to my chest, I roll back in the air so he can pour a sip into my mouth.
“It’s awful,” I discover out loud, choking on my swallow.
“Good stuff my ass,” Eddie agrees, and drinks one last swig before dropping the bottle into the night.
I land us in front of his building on a street I’d have called dilapidated not too long ago. It still is, of course, but my perceptual threshold of dilapidation has been drastically redefined lately.
He finds his balance and reaches for the computer, but the goodbye doesn’t come on cue, and our hands both dawdle maybe a few seconds longer than it takes to make sure he has a secure enough grip to carry city-saving evidence.
It could be my imagination, but that stifled edge of righteous disgust since he learned my name seems to have gone dull—or maybe it’s only become submerged in a tide of cognac.
He clears his throat and wipes a droplet of the drink from his lips. The night we met may be one of the more abstract snapshots in my mental album, but suddenly I remember those lips touring the sensitive spots of my body, the softness of them between the occasional stick of stubble, with a startling spike of clarity.
“I, um, I was going to bring some groceries over to the Medozas tonight,” he says, and some piece of tonight’s victory has slipped out of his smile without explanation.
Right. Well, that makes this nice and simple.
“Do you—”
“Yeah, I should probably go take care of a couple things too,” I say, before it can un-simplify. “Get stuff in order for my resignation.”
There are few things I’d like more right now than to help Eddie drunkenly carry grocery bags to the safe house until the wee hours and then maybe see where I wake up tomorrow, but Collingwraith’s information, however useful, has left me with homework, and I know I won’t be able to give anything else my full attention until it’s done.
“Right.” Eddie nods with what might be disappointment, shifting the laptop to a more comfortable position in the crook of his good arm. “I’ll get the history recorded and start organizing it tomorrow.”
“Cool,” I say, though this is much more than cool. Before I can overthink it, I kiss him briefly on the cheek and then back away, floating my feet off the ground. “I’ll check in then.”
Mom’s phone is off when I try calling. It’s long after the housekeeper’s shift, and when I ring the doorbell, I almost expect, maybe almost hope, not to get an answer.
I don’t want to ask her this question.
But I don’t want to go back to Guardian Tower and pretend that I can sleep with it unasked, either.
She’s at the door in her aquamarine dressing gown before I can debate whether to ring again, looking equal parts worried and pleased by my unannounced appearance.
“Kimmy! Is everything okay?”
I nod, change my mind, and shake my head.
It’s closer than it’s ever been, maybe, but it’s also not okay. It’s never been okay.
“Can I sleep here tonight?”
Mom simultaneously hugs me and pulls me inside so she can close the door against the cold I always forget to feel. “Of course. What happened? Are you and Mason having problems again?”
I laugh, louder than I mean to. Crying to my mom about Mason feels like an old dream, and somehow even that fact makes me feel oddly sad.
She sits me down at the breakfast nook, puts on the kettle, and carries on quizzing me while I try to form the answer she’ll never guess.
“Is there another boy?”
I shake my head. I don’t need to explain Eddie to her today, if there’s even anything to explain. This isn’t about him.
“Work then? Is Pinnacle still giving you a hard time?”
This is as close as we’re going to get.
“I think … I think Pinnacle did something,” I start, testing the waters. “Something bad. I think all the Guardians might be part of it.”
She sits down across from me and puts her hands on mine. “What kind of thing?”
Take a breath.
“I think the Guardians are supporting organized crime in WPC.”
This time, she laughs. “What? The Guardians are fighting the gangs every other week.”
“Yeah,” I say, voicing the pattern that’s been adding up in my head since long before I wanted it to. “Because they’re eliminating competition for the Milgram syndicate.”
Mom’s expression dips toward serious. “Where’s this coming from?”
I swallow. “Actually, I don’t exactly think it. I know it. And it’s not just the Guardians. It’s Mayor Card and the police department and god knows who else, and I’m pretty sure it’s been going on for a while. I just needed to ask you …”
My throat is so dry.
“Do you think there’s any chance Uncle Ethan was involved in this?”
Mom bites her lip uncomfortably.
Pain—real pain—explodes in both my hands, as the freeze power in hers suddenly activates. It takes her only seconds to drain all the energy from mine, my hands which can comfortably make snowballs at the South Pole without gloves.
Even with my forearms encased in a block of zero-degree ice, it takes me a moment to understand that this is an answer to my question.
Mom stands, and from the box of hot cocoa waiting on the counter, she pulls an already prepared syringe full of the unmistakable red-orange glow of Jovium.
As soon as it’s free of its airtight container, a wave of wooziness overtakes me, cutting short any attempt to charge my hands back up to break free.
“Mom?” I croak, asking for any kind of explanation.
The kettle is whistling, and I can only think how good a mug of hot cocoa would feel in my hands, until Mom sticks the needle in my neck, my s
kin already softened by the Jovium’s ambient presence, and I stop thinking all together.
CHAPTER 19: THE DETECTIVE
This was a bad idea.
I shouldn’t have tried carrying so many grocery bags in one go, but at least this way I don’t have to make another trip.
I’m barely able to pull the Lineup’s front door open, but I manage to squeak inside without spilling any of the bags. The regulars look up at me, but instead of trying to kick me out or lob insults or kill me, as they might’ve done a week ago, they’re back to their drinks and badly sung Christmas carols in a hurry.
All told, I’m having a pretty decent day.
The work Kline and I’ve been doing has calmed down WPC and the Crescent some, to a point where the smell of smoke and roving gangs of EPC assholes are no longer a constant and more an occasional irritation. With Card busy attacking the “liberal media” for “sullying his son’s name” and Milgram’s forces scattered and shrunken from Kline and Dissident’s attacks, the city feels at peace for the first time in a long time, or at least as at peace as it could ever feel.
I waddle over to the bar and set the bags down. Tragedii, cleaning a glass with her eye laser, wanders up to me.
“These for me? You shouldn’t have.”
“Not quite. Just came to drop them off at the Well.”
She nods curtly, sliding me the Well’s hidden key. “Good.”
I glance around and notice a face missing. “Isn’t Petting Zoo supposed to be on tonight?”
“Yeah, but seems she had a big bachelor party coming into the club and is gonna be late. Like those frat boys’ll tip better than our people,” she says, waving at the Lineup’s mess of regulars.
“Her loss.” I pick up the key and grocery bags, making my way for the rear exit.
“Hey, Eddie?” Tragedii calls after me.
“Yeah?”
“It’s good having you back.”
“It’s good being back.”
She wants to say more. I can see it in her human eye, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t have to. These past weeks have been crazy for all of us; we’ve all done things we’re not happy about.
It’s not raining too badly tonight, yet another way this day continues to go well, and as I head down the back steps and open up the Well, I’m smiling.
