by S T Branton
“Okay.” I took a bite of my burger, chewed, and swallowed. “But what happens if you meet your hero, and he doesn’t accept?”
“He will,” Marcus said. “He must. I will give him no other option.”
I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t have to find out what he meant by that.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I was getting used to waiting in lines.
The one for Cameron Cruze wound all the way around the hall, doubling and tripling back on itself. Marcus and I were toward the front of the middle, but we marked the very end of the cutoff.
“Sorry, folks!” a security guard told the disgruntled fans at our backs. “This soldier here is gonna be the last one in. Mr. Cruze is on a tight schedule.”
I let out my breath in a sigh of relief. If we had been just a few minutes later, this entire trip would have been for nothing. The wallet I’d gotten from the guy at Mac’s stand was already considerably lighter, and it was about to get thinner still. Cameron Cruze charged an extra hundred and fifty bucks for a photo.
I hid my frown from Marcus. He didn’t need to know what I thought about guys who operated like that.
The line crawled at first, but then its pace picked up. As we got closer, Marcus started to fidget. It was worst when he had a direct line of sight to Cruze; he would stare so hard I swore the actor could feel it. I tried to stop him a couple times, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing was going to distract him.
By the time we were two or three people away from the table where Cameron Cruze sat, Hall A was beginning to fill up behind us with the group for the next event. Although I hoped they wouldn’t try to rush us, I knew better. We were the last in line, and I was sure Mr. Cruze would be sick of posing.
Suddenly, it was our turn. I stepped up to the table slightly behind Marcus, fumbling for something to say. Cameron Cruze smiled at me. His teeth were blindingly white. They had to be fake.
“Hi there, sweetheart. What’s your name?”
That was all it took for me to know how much I didn’t like this guy. For Marcus’s sake, I faked a return smile. “I’m Vic. My friend’s a huge fan of yours.”
“Vic, huh?” Cameron arched his eyebrows. “Funny name for such a pretty girl.”
I pressed my lips together into a thin line. “Yeah, well—”
Marcus interrupted, his impatience finally getting the best of him. “Cameron Cruze!” he boomed.
I resisted the urge to bury my face in my hands. Here we go.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.” The movie star looked a little annoyed to be interrupted while he was hitting on me. I, on the other hand, was grateful for the disruption.
“You are the chosen one,” Marcus declared.
“I mean, yeah. Chosen to look cool on camera and make a shit ton of money.” Cameron flashed me another grin. He was really going for it. I looked away.
“Chosen to carry the legacy of Kronin, Hero-King of the Gods. Now you must duel me in order to prove your worth.”
“What the f—?!” I blurted.
I hadn’t known that a duel was part of the deal, and I cursed myself for not questioning Marcus about it further. Please let this be his version of a joke.
Somehow, I doubted it.
Cameron Cruze looked at me, at Marcus, and at the nearby security guard. He laughed nervously. “How about we take that picture so you guys can get on out of here? I think the next thing is about to start.”
He stood up.
Marcus strode around the table. “No pictures. We must duel. It is part of the sacred contract.”
He reached down and drew the sword. I threw my arm across my face as the blade flared into being. Shouting voices filled my ears.
“What the hell is that thing? How did he get it past security?”
“Get him out of here, now!”
It was hard to tell if they were talking about Cameron or Marcus. I opened my eyes to see the guard lunging for the sword. Marcus drove his elbow back into the guy’s solar plexus, and he instantly collapsed, clutching his chest and wheezing. The other guard caught a stiff arm to the face, which dropped him to the floor out cold.
“Marcus, stop!” I yelled. “Cut it the hell out!”
But Marcus was in his own world, his gaze burning into his would-be opponent’s eyes. Cruze stood frozen behind the table, taking in the glowing sword, the incapacitated guards, and the wave of reinforcements charging into the room. His lower lip trembled. If I hadn’t been consumed by a mix of confusion, adrenaline, and panic, I would have cracked up.
Cameron Cruze, hotshot action hero and would-be savior of all humanity, was about to cry like a baby.
He gave me one last fearful glance, eyes glistening and split, sprinting toward a side entrance. I swore I heard him sob a little.
It sort of reminded me of Rocco in the bar, except I had zero desire to chase him. Good riddance.
While I watched the action hero flee, a guard grabbed me by the elbow. It was not a smart decision.
My brief training kicked in and I spun, ripping my elbow free and landing a solid left hook across the man’s cheek. He stumbled backwards into a table and crashed to the floor.
“Get on the ground!” Both of us pivoted to face the new surge of guards that had come in behind us. The rest of the giant room was in chaos. Everyone clamored to get an eyeful of the action, but with Cameron Cruze departed, there was only me—and Marcus holding a mythical sword.
“Put down your weapon!”
Marcus did not put it down. The next thing I heard was a distinctive electric clattering. Marcus let out a roar, and then he joined his conquests on the floor.
I knelt of my own volition. It seemed like the most prudent option. Handcuffs were clicked around my wrists, and I was led out by the chain. Marcus was being dragged behind me.
“Nothing to see here, folks,” one of the guards said while the others formed a perimeter. “Move along. The next event will proceed as scheduled.”
***
The female wing of the holding center was empty except for me and a strung-out girl with wide, staring eyes and jittery limbs. She was clearly hopped up on something, and I didn’t care to find out what it was. The cop who escorted me in had the judicious sense not to put me in the same cell as her.
I sat down on the bunk as the cell door slammed shut.
“I’ll be back in a minute with an update on your friend,” the officer said. She was smirking. “Then you can make your phone call. Okay?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Fine.”
She left. I seethed in silence, gripping the edge of the shitty mattress so hard my knuckles turned white, and glowering a hole in the bare concrete floor. Across the way, the girl with the shakes got up and stumbled over to her bars.
“Hey. Hey, you.”
I ground my teeth. I was in no mood to be talking to anyone about anything, much less an addict in her state. But I knew her type as well as I knew any other type on the streets. She was going to be tenacious. In our current location, there’d be no getting rid of her.
“Who, me?” I sat back against the wall and looked at her with my eyes half shut, making my face a mask of contempt.
“Yeah.” She tried to smile, exposing a mouthful of startlingly yellow teeth. “You getting sprung?”
I shrugged. “Probably. Don’t know when, though.” I had been left hanging before, and with Marcus likely still dazed from his taste of taser shocks, I doubted my policewoman would be back soon.
“Do you think you could bail me out, too? Just say we’re friends. Say you know me. They’ll buy it.”
“They wouldn’t buy that shit in a million years,” I answered. “And, no. I don’t know you. We’re not friends.”
Little Miss Crackpot giggled quietly. “You’re a real hard-ass, you know that? I like it.”
“Thanks. I’ll say a prayer for you when I get home.”
After that, the girl slunk back to her corner and fell into a withdrawal-induced trance. I
could practically hear her bones rattling under her skin.
***
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.”
I roused myself from the uneven doze I’d fallen into. I didn’t remember falling asleep. It was surprising how much I could ignore under the right circumstances.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and blinked at the figures outside my cell door. “How’s Marcus?” I asked. “Can I make my call now?”
“He’s gonna be a little while.” The cop smirked whenever she talked about Marcus. I found myself hoping they weren’t giving him too hard a time, wherever he was. “No calls yet. You’ve got a special visitor.”
“What are you talking about?” I frowned. It was unlikely that Jules had already discovered I’d been arrested at a comics convention, and the only other people I knew who would visit me in jail had been dead for five years.
“Sorry,” said a voice I recognized instantly. “I have a bad habit of dropping in unannounced.”
Deacon St. Clare stepped forward and smiled at me.
I wanted to shrink into the wall. What the hell was he doing here? What did he want? Even as the questions swirled around my head, I had the sinking feeling that I already knew.
Still, I somehow managed to play it as cool as possible. “Oh, hey.” My expression sank back into resigned apathy. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing about this day has been what I expected.”
The female cop made her exit. Deacon pulled a chair up to the bars and sat down. He was wearing a full suit today, minus the tie. The top button of his crisp white shirt was open, allowing me a teasing glimpse of his throat. I forced myself not to look below his jawline.
“Gotta hand it to you, Vic,” he began. “I’ve been working this field a while now, and I’ve never heard of someone getting hauled out of a comics convention because their buddy pulled a sword on a movie star.”
“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes. “Can we please not do this right now? I have not had a good day.”
Deacon nodded sympathetically. “I feel you. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to make that bad day any better.”
I let the air out of my lungs in one big whoosh. “All right. Lay it on me.” My whole core tensed with anticipation.
He watched me for a moment with a tiny, secretive smile on his lips. Then he said, “There was a shooting a couple nights ago. In a bar that’s a known mob spot.” His chin came to rest on his steepled hands. “I’ve received witness reports identifying the perpetrator as a sexy woman in a tight little dress. High-heeled boots. You know anything about that?”
“A sexy woman you say. And your first thought was to come asking me? I’m flattered.”
His smile crept higher, but he didn’t say anything.
“Look, it’s a big city. What makes you think this mystery woman—who sounds absolutely amazing, by the way—has anything to do with me?”
He leaned in closer to the bars. “The joint belongs to a guy named Rocco Durant. Pretty high up in the criminal scene. A notorious criminal. That name ring a bell for you?”
I didn’t say anything, and Deacon continued. “It should. Five years ago, he orchestrated the murder of Ed and Loretta Stratton. I know those names are familiar to you.”
“What’s your point?” I made sure to keep the edge off my voice, even though what fear I felt was quickly turning to anger.
“All I’m saying is that it would make a lot of sense to me if those two little facts happened to be connected. By one person.”
His eyes burned into mine. My cheeks flushed and tingled. He had me one hundred percent cornered, and he knew it.
I fought back the best I could. “How come it’s taken you five years to figure out Rocco Durant was responsible?” I asked bitterly. “No one did shit for me when I needed them to. Maybe if you boys in blue had done your jobs right the first time, we wouldn’t both be here now, would we?”
Deacon chuckled. “Be careful what you say, Vic.” There was no meanness in his words, but no slackening of his resolve, either. He reached inside his lapel and pulled something out. It dropped open in his hand. I saw the badge before my mind caught up enough to process what was happening.
“The FBI doesn’t really go for blue,” he said.
Well, shit.
***
I got up and started pacing the small space. He watched me from his spot on the other side of the bars. He was patient, letting me process.
“So the other night, at the party. That wasn’t flirting—that was an interrogation?”
Deacon cocked his head to the side. “Who says it wasn’t a little bit of both?”
“But you being there, that wasn’t random. You...you infiltrated it to get to me?”
He leaned back, his long legs stretching out before him. “Okay, first off, I didn’t infiltrate anything. Me and your blonde friend do run in the same circles, although I don’t think we had ever met before. But yes, I did go to the party knowing that you were going to be there.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I’m good at my job.”
“And your job is to investigate me.”
“No.” Deacon jumped to his feet and wrapped his hands around the bars. “I need you to know Vic, that it’s not you I’m after. It’s Durant. I’m going to bring him to justice.”
My heart stopped. Five years ago I begged the cops to do something, to do anything. But no one listened. And now, this charming young Fed was standing here before me, my knight in shining armor.
It was too good to be true—and too late.
“Well if you’re after Durant, then what are you doing here? Doing with me? Go get the son of a bitch.”
“It’s not that simple, Vic.” He stepped back and picked up where I had left off in the pacing department. “Durant is slimy. I’ve been putting a case together, but the evidence just isn’t conclusive enough. But with your help, I can get what I need to put him away.”
“Put him away?” My words were barely a whisper.
“Well, yeah. He needs to pay for his crimes, and I’m aiming to make him do it in a eight-by-ten box just like this one.”
“I don’t want to put him anywhere that isn’t six feet underground,” I spat. “Pay for his crimes? He deserves to die. That’s the only thing that makes this right.”
“Vic, you know it can’t go down like that. But work with me, tell me what you know, and we can finish this thing.”
I looked down at my hands. “No.”
“But—”
“I said no. We’ve talked enough.”
“Vic you don’t understand.”
I raised my chin and stared daggers back at him. “I’m not saying another word until you get my damned lawyer.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There was plenty of time to stew over Deacon as I sat facing the stark concrete wall of my cell. The jig was up between us, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. How I wanted to feel was that he had become my enemy, that we were firmly fixed on opposite sides—me vigilante, him a douchebag with a badge—and there was nothing either one of us could do about it. That was the way it had been with the cops and me.
But that wasn’t the way things were with Deacon. He cared, I could tell he did. And I didn’t understand it at all.
When Jules eventually showed up to bail my ass out, I expected her to be the typical super serious and no-nonsense friend I had come to know. I was ready for her to upbraid me for being an idiot and then follow it up with one of her trademark maternal lectures on thinking about my future and bettering myself.
I braced myself accordingly.
Instead, she gave me a big warm smile as the officer let me out. “Hey, you. How was your stay?”
My brain, thrown completely off balance, stuttered a little. “Uh, it could have been better.”
“We’ll leave a mint on your pillow next time,” the female cop quipped. She furrowed her brow at the sheet in front of her. “Now, is it just you who’s out of here, or are you taking your bu
ddy with you?”
This caught Jules’s attention. “Your buddy?” She glanced at me. “Oh, you don’t mean…”
I grimaced. “Actually, this whole thing is his fault. It’s a long story.”
She pursed her lips. “I expect to hear it later.” A small sigh escaped her lips. “All right. We’ll take him, too, if he’s ready.”
“Trust me, he’s ready.”
The cop spoke into her radio, and a few minutes later, a door on the other side of the room opened to reveal Marcus. He carried the pieces of his armor heaped in his arms. Understandably, they had not let him keep it in his holding cell. His face was starting to look old and worn again, a fact which did not escape Jules’s unimpeachable eye for detail.
“Wow,” she whispered to me. “He looks different. And wait. Is he holding a suit of armor?”
I whispered back, “Don’t ask.”
He carried himself differently, too. Rather than striding, he seemed to shuffle over to us, his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast. I’d never seen him looking so downright gloomy before. Whatever anger I had harbored toward him began to evaporate as soon as I saw how miserable he evidently was.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
He nodded without a word.
***
Once we were out on the street, Jules turned to me. “I’m sorry, Vic. I have to get back to work. I kind of cut out on a huge case to get you.”
“Aww, you didn’t have to do that.” I felt a sting of remorse. “You could’ve let me rot a little while longer.”
Jules’s smile was pained. “Of course, I couldn’t do that. We’ve been friends for how long?”
“Fourteen years. Almost fifteen.” Since freshman year of high school. Jules had been my anchor through a lot of the worst times in my life.
Her smile softened. “See? That’s a legacy. You’re not going to rot in jail. Plus no one is pressing charges. It seems Mr. Cruze has no desire for any of this to ever see the light of day. Barely took anytime at all.”
“Well, I owe you,” I said. “Send me an invoice.”
She laughed, squeezed my hand, and was gone. For a brief moment, I wondered why she hadn’t said anything to Marcus, but then I realized he wasn’t as nearby as he should have been. I found him sitting on the curb by the corner, armor heaped up next to him. He didn’t look up even when I sat down beside him.
