Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives

by Kieran Strange

  There was hope – a spark of it, just one, and it was tiny but it was there, right at the back of her eyes as if it were too scared to show itself just yet.

  “You really think...” she mumbled, “... that I could still go to college one day...?”

  Cabe straightened up a bit. “I will personally write your recommendation letter myself. And it’ll have an official United Nations stamp on it. But the only way I can do that, Riley, is if you stop this... and come with me. Calmly, quietly, and without any restraints. All right...?”

  A single heartbeat passed between them before Riley inclined her head in a slow nod, and Cabe’s heart finally removed itself from where it was wedged nervously down his colon. “O-okay...” she barely whispered, and she took the two careful steps to bring her closer to the man on the rooftop, gingerly passing him the first Bic lighter as he reached for it.

  “Atta girl. See?” Cabe took the lighter in his hand, sliding it into his jeans pocket without losing her gaze. “Super cool, super chill, super easy. And I kinda sound like an episode of Sherlock, so it can’t be that bad, right?”

  Through the tears, she gave a tiny hiccup of a laugh. God, she was so young, too young to be dealing with this shit, Cabe told himself again. The targets and wards he was usually assigned to were at least adults in their own right, out of school and already thrust into the real world. There was nothing more heart-shredding than having to take in a child or teenager who should be rocking out alone at the back of the bus with their headphones on and their beats turned way up, or scraping their knees on the asphalt of the playground, instead of possibly facing a shoot-to-kill scenario with the local police department, hundreds of feet above the city.

  “Cool,” urged Cabe, stretching out his arm again for the second lighter. “All right, Riley, c’mon. Let’s get you down from here, ‘kay? My partner for this case ain’t my usual partner, it’s this guy who used to live local here; he was sent with me ‘cuz he knows Chicago really well. Anyway, he told me about this Lou Mal... something’s? Apparently they do the best deep-dish pizzas in the country. And I bet if I tell him we’re both fucking famished, we can totally grab takeout on the way back.”

  “Back where?” Riley was asking as she nervously, almost reluctantly, held out the second Bic for him to take. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to, and she never got her answer.

  “CHICAGO POLICE!”

  The unholy roar of an announcement behind him heralded the arrival of the exact people Cabe had been trying to rush out of there to avoid. Any time the local police department got involved, it added a whole extra thousand feet of red tape that had to be woven, navigated, and evaded. And red tape had never been Cabe Sparrow’s forté.

  Whipping around on the spot, Cabe spotted the bulk of them immediately. Four armed officers, two with assault rifles, had assembled themselves strategically to the east of the rooftop exit. The waist-high concrete barricade that split the roof into two sections was one of their only options for cover, and so they were all crouched behind it; a fifth officer was just inside the heavy metal door, his pistol jutting out around the side of it to point at them, and a sixth and seventh had established themselves behind the barricade on the west side of the door.

  Bloody... fuck.

  “CALMLY AND SLOWLY LAY DOWN ANY WEAPONS YOU HAVE,” one of them was bellowing into a megaphone to be heard over the rush of the wind. “SUBDUE ANY ANOMALY ABILITIES YOU CAN PERFORM, AND GET FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND!”

  Shit, shit, shit...

  “It’s cool, guys, I got this!” the British man yelled back – as if, through some miracle of the universe itself, the seven armed officers would welcome that as a totally acceptable and legitimate argument, and leave the two of them to sort out their fire-breathing, city-destroying quarrels on their own. “Seriously, everything’s cool, we’re both unarmed, and we’re gonna head home now... nothing to see here... just got a little over-excited, that’s all...”

  They wouldn’t – but hell, at this point, anything was worth a try.

  “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING –”

  Riley was backing up, slow and careful, toward the end of the neon sign. He couldn’t see her, but he felt the way the metal swayed gently with the movement. Cabe deliberately shifted his body as much as he dared to while he was standing over the city street, using his body to block as many of their crosshairs from being able to pin her down as possible. He did not want them getting a clear shot at her, not even for a second.

  For fuck’s sake...!

  “All right, seriously, listen – I know this sounds crazy,” Cabe was yelling back, both of his hands empty and raised submissively at his sides, “but I’m an intergovernmental agent with the United Nations, charged with this girl’s –”

  “ON THE GROUND, OR WE WILL SHOOT TO KILL!”

  Shoot to kill!? panicked Cabe inwardly, though a small part of him wasn’t surprised. Cops were starting to lose their nerve more and more, and citizens were rising from silence to back them up – and in some respects, Cabe didn’t blame them. Dealing with seemingly ordinary human beings who could breathe flammable gases or turn completely invisible or even scale walls and ceilings as if gravity itself didn’t exist (just some of the examples Cabe had personally had the pleasure of being assigned to) was a damn good reason for being a little more trigger-happy on the streets. While cops being killed by Anomalies wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence, every few weeks a news story would break. It had become a reality of the job that police departments and other federal and state service workers all across America lived in fear of these days.

  Or at least, believed they had to fear. Perception was a powerful weapon.

  He couldn’t permit his mental distraction to last too long, because every second right then was precious. Every second could mean the difference between life and death for him, the people on the ground, the police on the roof... and Riley herself.

  But there was another reason he couldn’t take his time responding. And that was because Riley had already retreated to the very end of her little ledge and was now cowering there, eyes wide, both gloved hands clutching the Bic lighter to the chest appliqué of her hoodie as she stared at the half-dozen or so weapons trained on her with round, fearful eyes.

  “They’re... they’re gonna kill me...”

  “No, they’re not –”

  “I can’t do this anymore...”

  “NO!”

  It was too late. Both Cabe and the cop with the megaphone screamed out in protest as the tiny teenage girl gave her would-be savior one last frantic look before... she was gone.

  Just like that.

  NO!

  Cabe wasn’t sure exactly where his brain was at that particular moment in time, but when hindsight finally came around, if he survived this encounter, he would have to guess that it wasn’t in his head – or at least that his body had just flat-out stopped listening to it at this point. Because not even a heartbeat after Riley had teetered herself backward off the edge of the building to commit herself to a fate under her own control, Cabe’s boots were clanging over the neon sign with the one, two, three, four bounding steps it took him to reach the very limit of its span over the Magnificent Mile –

  And then, he was falling.

  The scream of the air as it surged by was deafening. Wind and snow pelted his bare face like the blades of a billion tiny knives thrust up at him from below. His arms were flung violently back against his sides, bruising both his ribs and his elbows, as the natural G-force assisted him in adopting a much more aerodynamic pose, so that he could swiftly and effectively close the distance between himself and his target.

  ShitshitshitshitSHIT...!

  If someone had told him he would be in this position thirty minutes ago, plummeting at terminal velocity toward the streets of Chicago’s busiest shopping district, he would’ve laughed it off as an attempt to get under his skin – which was reasonable, considering most other operatives at W.A.R.D. knew about his severe phob
ia of heights. Thirty minutes ago, he’d been happily stuffing his face with questionable meat at a donair shop several blocks from his hotel room in the Loop district. It had been three days since Riley’s mother had locked her in her room after she ‘just couldn’t take anymore’, and so Cabe had taken the opportunity to grab a bite to eat while his partner had been on the phone to their supervisor back in Seattle. The order of business? Riley’s three-day bedroom imprisonment had no doubt been a detriment to her mental stability, and approaching her and her mother in an official capacity was becoming more and more urgent. Once they officially made contact with the family, they could offer support, services, and advice to help them deal with Riley’s... change.

  Sadly, they wouldn’t receive the opportunity to reach out before all hell broke loose. Shortly into his meal that evening, the text from Cabe’s temporary partner for the case, Agent Haustead, had sent his phone buzzing across the table. Riley had popped her bedroom window out of its frame, stolen her mother’s car, and was heading (according to the tracker they’d planted on it) for downtown Chicago.

  Despite dashing down here direct from the donair joint, mid-mouthful, Cabe was still (as always, when he was working a case) in possession of a great deal of the safety equipment he was often required to keep on his person when dealing with an Anomaly whose abilities and emotional state put them in a situation this... precarious. His gun, concealed beneath his jacket in its holster, was one item that seldom left his personage on the job, along with mace in his pocket, a tactical knife sheathed in his boot, and a pair of standard-issue handcuffs clipped to the back of his belt. He was also wearing his W.A.R.D. communications earpiece, which meant he was more than able to hear his temporary partner for this case screaming wildly at him as he fell. Agent Haustead was down on street-level, which had been the prime spot to cover Cabe’s back, and was demanding in a frantic voice to know what the hell Cabe thought he was doing!?

  Haustead’s position had been tactical, lest things go horribly, horrendously wrong and he need to take Riley out before more damage was done. That being said, his young British partner deciding to swan-dive right after her may have thrown a wrench into Haustead’s plan to detonate the pseudo-bomb before she hit the ground, considering Cabe had quite literally thrown himself right into the blast radius instead of under some form of cover.

  But Cabe’s willpower, his tenacity, was unshakable. He had been so, so close... and now, regardless of his intense and sometimes even crippling acrophobia, the knowledge that he had just thrown himself headfirst off of a building in downtown Chicago meant nothing to Agent Sparrow. Nothing, nada, zilch, zip, zero. The only thing he was focused on, the only concern on his mind at that moment in time, was the safety of Riley, and the safety of every single person within the immediate ten-block vicinity.

  This was a bomb he would not allow to detonate, under any circumstances.

  C’mon... C’MON...!

  One fist was clenched tightly around the chunky, rubber handle of the sturdy metal gadget in his jacket pocket – something he’d been requested by his supervisor to carry on him, at least whenever it was functional, ever since that time he was roundhouse kicked off of the top of the Empire State Building... which was a fantastic story, when he actually had the time to tell it and wasn’t sailing gracefully to his death. The other, his non-dominant arm, was straining, fighting with as much strength as it could to spread itself wide like a wing, just as he came down on top of a flailing, shell-shocked Riley. Regardless of whether or not one deliberately meant to throw themselves into a thousand-foot dive, without proper training and without knowing what the force of all those Gs actually felt like, it was likely to render them dazed and breathless for the majority of the drop.

  Halfway, we gotta be at least halfway down...

  The strong muscles of the agent’s outstretched arm curled and tightened around Riley’s waist, yanking her in close to the cushion of his own body and immediately spreading his legs and flattening himself out as best he could to slow their descent. A loud grunt ground itself painfully from the very hollow of his chest as he struggled against the pressure, struggling to retain control over his own limbs as the wind fought back against him.

  Every single movement, every single breath was a battle he couldn’t win but couldn’t afford to lose.

  Everything seemed to happen in the same blurry, frantic, jet-propelled second. Cabe twisted himself over, one arm dragging Riley’s body on top of his own to shield her from the powerful wind resistance as well as – eventually – impact. His other hand was still in his pocket, firmly wrapped around Agent Sparrow’s own pre-planned exit strategy: a piece of tech developed in-house at the North American branch of W.A.R.D. which, if you were the type to judge a book by its cover, seemed to be nothing more than a bulky, oversized rope climbing ascender, with a soft rubber grip and a tightly-spun reel of cable jutting out at one side.

  Growling with the effort, Cabe wrenched it from his pocket and thrust it out over the top of Riley’s body, aiming it as best he could at the building that was rushing past not twenty feet from his outstretched legs.

  He honestly couldn’t remember another time when he’d been this grateful to have remembered a specific piece of gear.

  C’mon, Sparrow, make the shot, make the –

  He squeezed the trigger, clamping it down hard within the handle itself. A length of steel cable burst from the top of the pseudo-ascender with the force and speed of a bullet; the tiny grappling hook at the end punctured the wall of the building at the twenty-fourth floor, a solid nine or ten storeys above them, piercing the brick as if it were butter and anchoring itself firmly in place.

  “HOLD YOUR BREATH!” he screamed, though at this point, he wondered if Riley were even conscious anymore, or if she could even hear him if she was. Bracing himself for the sudden jarring stop, Cabe spun their bodies around on the cable, so that he was between his ward and the solid, brick wall which was rushing up on one side to meet them.

  Shit, shit, shit – please don’t fucking explo –

  Concrete smashed into the tense muscles of his back. In the exact same instance, the taut wire snapped tight as gravity fought it for ownership of its two-person burden, wrenching his left arm so sharply against the socket that it took him until he noticed his fist was still clenched around the handle to realize his arm hadn’t actually been dislocated. Winded, choking for air, he only allowed his body to bounce once against the building before using one strained, aching leg to spin himself and his ward as they dangled some four-hundred feet above the ground.

  Cabe was right – Riley was unconscious, which, in a way, made his job of removing her from this epically awful scenario in one piece and relocating her to a W.A.R.D. safe-house much easier. His much larger, stronger body easily covered hers like an enormous flesh-and-bone blanket, sheltering her from both sight and gunfire from the rooftop above as he nestled her securely between his chest and thighs, and the brick wall of the skyscraper.

  And then, hanging there by his own brute strength and willpower alone, suspended fourteen storeys above one of downtown Chicago’s busiest holiday districts... Cabe Sparrow began to release the trigger in short, controlled bursts, abseiling his way hurriedly toward the sidewalk.

  Where he knew, without even looking down, that his team would be waiting for him. For a swift, pain-free extraction from not only the crowds that had gathered to watch the dramatic display, but the local law enforcement who would no doubt be on their tail the second his boots touched asphalt.

  Sometimes, working for a security division that wasn’t supposed to exist – an anti-terrorism unit that one in maybe every five million people in North America were cleared and contracted to even have the tiniest sliver of knowledge about – could be a real bitch.

  Especially when it came to making a clean getaway from an exceedingly public display of criminal activity by one of the very Anomalies they were charged with protecting.

  Which was why, when it came to
moments like this, after he had pulled off a crazy, reckless, and quite possibly suicidal stunt in order to save the lives of what was possibly hundreds of people in a busy American downtown core… there was no one he would rather have his back than his brothers and sisters, his family, at the World Anomaly Reconnaissance Division.

  You’re gonna be fine, Riley, I swear on my life. I made you a promise.

  You’re gonna be abso-fucking-lutely fine...

  One

  The only thing sweeter than the familiar sound and smell of his own home turf, Cabe Sparrow decided, was the surprise Venti Extra-Hot Quad-Shot Peppermint Mocha that was waiting for him as he stepped out of the terminal and into arrivals.

  “Aww, yeah, fancy overpriced coffee,” the veteran Field said as he gratefully accepted the heat of the paper cup into his hand. He flashed his handler a wide grin. “Ronnie, you sure do know how to make a guy feel special first thing in the…” He paused, blinked, and checked his phone. “Wait, what time zone is it again?”

  “Pacific. It’s just after ten.” Ronnie, more formally known as Agent Veronica Moss of W.A.R.D.’s Investigative Affairs Department, immediately returned the smile with a curve of her own rosy lips, nursing her own half-finished beverage. The sight of the tall, dark-blond man inhaling the syrupy scent from the cup was a welcomed one; she knew how much he loved his coffee. “And besides, a job well done deserves a treat.”

  “A treat?” Cabe raised one eyebrow at her as the two agents began their short walk toward the airport exit. No one paid the pair much attention, too consumed with welcoming home relatives or trying to find out how to get from the terminal onto the Seattle public transit system. Cabe always travelled as lightly as possible when he was on assignment; W.A.R.D. took care to privately ship all of his gear and tech, so all he had to do was make sure he could cram everything else he needed into a carry-on. It was worth it to avoid fighting with grumpy, jet-lagged crowds at baggage claim. Whenever he finally touched down to sweet terra firma, he wanted to get as far away from the airport as possible and forget the experience had ever happened in the first place.