The Color of Courage

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  “No, better safe. We don’t think any of you are in direct danger, because CASE wants a big, attention-getting event. They staged the day care thing to put you on the defensive, keep you occupied while they set up their end game. But we really don’t know what they’re thinking for sure.”

  I sipped the soda. Sweetness exploded on my tongue. “Why would they go to all that trouble? What if we were kept in jail? Wouldn’t that be opposite to their plans?”

  “Not necessarily.” He fed me a fry, then prodded me to pick up my fork and eat my salad. “They just wanted to slow you down. Maybe you were getting too close. There wasn’t much chance you’d stay in jail.”

  I ate a few bites, waiting for him to elaborate, and found him watching me. He met my eyes for several long seconds, then lifted his burger the rest of the way to his mouth and broke the connection.

  “I showed the cops footage of the M Street rescue and the day care fiasco side by side. They couldn’t match the latter to any of you at M Street. It looked like two men and a woman, all the wrong heights. And the woman had red hair, which none of you do.”

  “That was stupid.”

  “Or deliberate.” He bent to sip from his straw at the same moment I did mine, and we both stopped, inches apart. I saw Evan’s eyes on my mouth and licked my lips. He came closer and paused. I didn’t move. He closed the remaining space and kissed me softly. Not long, but sweet, and our mouths clung when he drew back.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Feeding you.” He picked up a cherry tomato from my plate and pushed it between my teeth.

  I chewed it, swallowed. “Why? If there’s no direct danger, why aren’t we going to the real meeting spot?”

  He sat back, breaking the connection between us. I straightened, confused, and turned back to my salad.

  “You needed to eat,” he said softly. “Adam had planned to meet you here, but when he couldn’t come, he sent me. He said you wouldn’t have eaten much and would keep going until you collapsed unless I made you stop.”

  That all sounded like Adam, except the sending Evan part. “Why you? Why not Trace? Or just call me and tell me where to go?”

  “Your cell phone’s off.” He didn’t smile. “No one else was close enough. And I insisted.” He leaned forward again and said in my ear, “I wanted any moment I could get with you, Daley. Any moment that we’re not battling terrorists and Adam’s not trying to make you fall in love with him.”

  I shivered, both from his breath and voice in my ear, and from his words. The incongruity made my head spin. Not just being courted while in the middle of a national-security-level mission, but being courted by two men when a month ago, I couldn’t even hold on to one.

  I don’t know what Evan thought of my lack of response, but he resumed eating and we said no more until we were finished. He paid at the counter and we went outside to a car parked directly out front. I didn’t ask where we were going, and he didn’t offer. But somehow, I wasn’t surprised when he pulled the car behind a bar a few miles away. He parked next to a Dumpster and we entered the back door of the bar, then climbed a set of narrow stairs to a dingy room that overlooked the alley.

  I’d never been here, but I knew what it was. This bar was where Trace and Adam had been right before they saved their first citizen. The bar owner knew them well and let them use this room as their first headquarters. Adam and Trace still came here from time to time, to hang out with their old friends and be nostalgic. Trace liked basking in the hero worship, I suspected, but Adam did it to remain grounded in his past. And now we’d returned to our roots.

  No one else was here, but marks in the dust on the floor showed that the desk, chairs, folding table, and all the equipment on them had arrived recently. I went to the desk and booted up the computer while Evan wandered the room with a small electronic tool that I assumed was checking for bugs. I examined the software on the computer and surfed the Internet for news stories about us, most of which now reported our release and reduction in suspect level.

  Evan stopped wandering and settled on one of the cushioned folding chairs. I knew he was watching me and pretended to be engrossed in what was on the screen. It didn’t work.

  “I was afraid what happened the other night would be changed by what I had to tell you,” he said.

  I didn’t even try to make sense of that. “What are you talking about?”

  He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “When we slept together. What did it mean to you, Daley?”

  I switched off the monitor but stayed where I was, the barrier of desk and equipment making me feel more removed from him and therefore safer than I’d been in the soda shop. But I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.

  “I was an outlet,” he offered. “You needed escape from what had happened.”

  At least partly true, so I nodded.

  “And afterward?” He wasn’t going to let me leave it at that.

  “Afterward, you were gone.” He didn’t apologize or offer an excuse. He just waited. “I wished you hadn’t left,” I finally admitted. “But I honestly don’t know if I only needed the moment or if there was more.”

  “Was more. So there isn’t now? Because of Summer, and my secrecy?”

  I looked toward the stairs, but they were old and creaky and we’d have plenty of notice that someone was coming. I wasn’t going to get saved by interruption.

  He stood and started toward me. I threw up a hand. “Stay there.”

  He stopped. “Why?”

  “Because.” I scowled at him. “Why are you like this? Most guys are not like this.”

  “I’m nowhere near most guys, Daley.”

  Of course he wasn’t. I wouldn’t be so attracted to him if he was normal.

  I cocked my head. But he was normal. He wasn’t like me, different from the general population. Different like Adam. But he lived in a shadow world, disconnected from real people in his efforts to rid the world of villains, and that wasn’t normal, either.

  I backed up my thoughts and addressed just his original question. “No, Evan, what you revealed yesterday doesn’t change how I felt after we had sex the other night.”

  He smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “But.”

  I lifted my arms, palms up. “But? I don’t know any more than that. I don’t know you outside the context of this situation.”

  “But you’ve known Adam. And for a lot longer. I’m up against some pretty strong walls, Daley, I gotta tell you.” He walked to the front of the desk, slid the monitor aside, and leaned his hands on the desk so he was right in front of me. I could have easily moved, but I didn’t.

  “Don’t think this is over.” He rocked forward and gave me another soft, heartfelt kiss like the one at lunch, then retreated to his chair.

  This time I was saved from having to react by the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Summer entered first, followed by Adam and Kirby. I stood and hugged Summer hard, while Kirby made a sound of pleasure and took my seat at the keyboard.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  She nodded, her chin digging into my shoulder. “I haven’t talked to him in years, Dale. But the hole death leaves is so much different.”

  “I know.”

  She released me and went to her brother, hugging him just as hard. “Why didn’t Mom tell me?” she asked, arms still around his waist.

  “She didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t get to tell you all of it yesterday.” He sat down with her. Adam remained standing by the door, I perched on the edge of the desk, and we all listened.

  “Dad’s team believed CASE was more radical than the legislation they were pursuing, and they investigated for a year before I was called in. Right before the final op of the Chicago heroes, he was killed. The poli
ce found him under the El and said it was a drug situation.”

  “He would never take drugs!” Summer burst out.

  “No, they thought he was investigating a drug syndicate. We knew differently, but weren’t allowed to reveal our existence, never mind set the record straight.” He rubbed his hand over his face, and a haggard look came over him. I knew if I tuned in, I’d see his grief and despair again, but I was afraid to open myself up.

  “I was trying to settle his affairs and find you and Mom when I was assigned to San Diego. I knew he had Mom’s number and address, that he contacted her once in a while, but I hadn’t found it when I got reassigned, and I couldn’t take his papers and stuff with me. Then the zoo thing happened, and I was temporarily released. I found her in Ohio and went to tell her about Dad.”

  Summer was trying to hold it together, but it was an obvious struggle. Adam handed her a box of tissues from the folding table, and I was struck by his thoughtfulness. There wasn’t another reason to have bought those. He either knew the rest of the story, or just anticipated her grief reaction.

  “So when you told her?”

  “She fell apart. I had to have her admitted to the hospital, she was such a mess. Before she was discharged and was well enough to talk to me, things had started happening here.”

  Summer blew her nose and tossed her tissue to the trashcan. “All right, enough of that. No more tears.” She sniffed hard and shoved her hair back off her face. “So what’s the situation? Who else is from your agency?”

  Evan shook his head slowly. “I’m it. They’ve got people stationed elsewhere, in case we’re wrong about DC. But we’re small, and made smaller.” His voice dropped. “Dad wasn’t the only death.”

  “Okay.” She drew in a long breath and looked from Evan to me and very obviously not at Adam. “What about you and Daley?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “It’s up to her.”

  Kirby swiveled and punched my thigh. Adam headed for the stairs. “I’m going down to wait for Trace.”

  Summer whispered into Evan’s ear. He excused himself to the bathroom. As soon as they were gone, Summer rushed over and she and Kirby bombarded me.

  “What the hell is going on?” Summer’s voice, whether from intense gossip excitement or from her earlier crying, had gone all squeaky.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Kirby punched me again.

  “Ow! Stop that.” I rubbed my thigh.

  “Summer found you wrapped around Adam so tight you were almost the first thing ever to penetrate his skin, and Evan say’s it’s up to you, and you don’t know what we’re talking about?”

  “Oh, that.”

  They both punched me, and I couldn’t help my grin. Everything else aside, it was a rush having two men wanting me. A rush that lasted only a few seconds, because “everything else” wouldn’t stay aside.

  “Trace always said Adam had a thing for you but would never act on it,” Kirby said. “Who started that kiss?”

  “He did.”

  “And let me tell you, that was no tentative, let’s-feel-this-out kind of kiss.” Summer fanned her face and neck. “That was pent-up passion. How long has it been going on?”

  “Since yesterday. Seriously,” I added at their crestfallen looks. “It had been brewing, but he wouldn’t let himself tell me. He almost did when he was in the hospital after M Street, and then in the park he decided he couldn’t, because his feelings for me could make me a target.”

  “So what changed?” Kirby asked.

  I blushed. “Uh, well, I slept with Evan. That didn’t make Adam happy.”

  “You told him?”

  “I had to. We were talking about the possibility of a mole, and I thought all along that Evan was using me to get to Summer or HQ or both.”

  “Never.” Summer shook her head so hard her hair hit me in the face. “Evan would never in a million years sleep with a woman for work. Not even to save thousands of people.” She rubbed my back. “If he slept with you, he meant it.”

  I sighed. “Thanks, that makes this so much easier.” The truth was, the guys themselves were making it easier. Evan was pursuing me. Adam was backing away and letting him. Sadness washed over me, but I didn’t have time to think about it further. The men came trooping back in, Trace in the lead.

  “Cool!” He rubbed his hands together. “Just like old times.”

  “Not exactly.” Adam came around Trace and took position next to the desk, his arms folded, his feet braced. I realized his casts were off completely. Everyone circled him, and once again he was in charge. But there was a difference. I barely listened as he explained what he’d been doing with Charles and his vast informational resources while I tried to figure out what was so different now from hundreds of other HQ pow-wows. I studied his face, and it hit me.

  He was no longer just a leader of heroes. He was a hero himself.

  “We have a target.”

  My attention snapped into focus as “where?” chorused around the room.

  “Lincoln Memorial.” He shifted toward me a little. “We decoded that part of the message board correctly.”

  “When?”

  “How?”

  Bit by bit, the details came together. Charles had enlisted a cryptologist who worked for one of his companies to review what we had collected off the Internet. Using what we already knew and the little we’d figured out before we were all arrested, he decoded the rest of the communications.

  There was going to be an educational ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial in two days, relating to the Atlanta Campaign during the Civil War. Summer camps from all over the region would be attending, which meant lots and lots of kids. CASE’s exact plans weren’t laid out, but we surmised they would make a small disturbance to draw us there, then spring a trap that would either kill us all, or lead to us killing children. Either way, DC’s legion of superheroes would be vanquished.

  Adam had talked to the police, who talked the organizers into moving the event. Buses would be redirected to the other end of the Mall. We couldn’t publicly cancel it, just as we couldn’t send in teams of bomb-sniffing dogs and electronics surveillance. It would drive CASE back underground to come up with a different plan, of which we would have no inkling.

  “It would be much easier,” I mused, “if we could take out the players before then. I don’t suppose they decoded any of the names?”

  Adam shook his head. “They’re posting from public computers with temporary screen names. It would take too long to work backwards to positive identifications.”

  “Don’t you have anything on them?” Summer asked her brother. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, so I assumed she’d forgiven him.

  “Unfortunately, no. They’ve got a high-level backer, as far as we can tell. Someone with money and the ability to erase trails. We have traced some connections to disposables, people like Scarengio and Paselteur. But players that low don’t know anything beyond the scope of their particular assignments. They don’t know who recruits them or does the planning or anything of value.”

  “And if they did, they’d wind up dead, anyway.” I thought of Gino, a man I’d helped save, but who’d been lost as soon as he agreed to start.

  “So we have to concentrate on stopping them at the scene,” Trace concluded.

  Adam and Evan both nodded. The computer in front of Kirby beeped. I leaned to see the screen as she woke the monitor. We had mail. A lot of it.

  Adam came around the desk and leaned over me, one hand on the back of my chair like nothing had happened between us. He was as casual as he’d ever been, and my heart ached at the thought that he’d given up on me.

  He nodded, looking pleased. “Charles came through. Kirby, can you print those out? We don’t have much time.”

 
She nodded and started clicking away. I grabbed the pages off the printer to sort, foreboding growing as I read snatches of information. We were taking the battle to CASE. They wouldn’t expect us to know what they were going to do. We weren’t simply reacting anymore. But there was one thing that kept reverberating in my head.

  No matter what we did to prepare for it, it was still a trap.

  We spent the rest of the day and late into the night preparing. Equipment and gear arrived by the hour. New suits came in, and the guys spent as much time oohing and ahhing over them as the women did. They were black this time, more form-fitting though not tight, and very supple where our old suits had been stiffer. Summer put hers on immediately and moved around the room using her speed. Papers reshuffled, tools flipped in midair, knives flew around our heads with speed and precision I knew exceeded her usual.

  She stopped in the center of the room, beaming. “It’s like fighting naked.”

  “Not even close!” Trace held up two of the new flexi-shields, which were clear. “All of this is graded to stop armor-piercing ammo. It’s flame repellant, blade resistant, and even a friggin’ mosquito can’t get between the fibers.”

  Evan surveyed the mass of fabric spread over boxes and chairs. “You’ve got extra.”

  “No we don’t.” Adam tossed him a shirt. “One’s for you.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You’re on the team. You don’t have to have superpowers to need a suit.”

  Evan studied him, the shirt in his hand. I didn’t tune in, tempted as I was to read him. The relationship between my two men was getting too complicated even for me.

  “Thanks.”

  Adam nodded. Evan set his suit aside and helped Trace open a box of electronic defusers that we could use to jam radio signals between detonators and explosives.