Hey, it's Dan. You know what to do.
The beep sounded, and Jill suddenly found herself unable to speak. She opened her mouth, but nothing came.
With a sigh, she tried again. "Hey, Dan... it, uh, it's me. Probably the last person you expected to hear from, but... I dunno. Everything's falling apart right now and I just..." She stopped herself, staring into the sky and biting her lip to fight off another wave of tears. She was not about to crack while leaving this voicemail. "Dad's back. Least, I think it's him. Sure looks like him. And Gregor... apparently, he and I now have cybernetic guinea pig in common. I don't even know how to describe all this, or why I'm even calling, I just... I'm scared and alone and I dunno how I'm gonna get out of this. I just... just stay safe, okay? Wherever you are, just stay there and do what you're told until we bring down The Collective. Okay?"
She sighed and wiped at her eye, swiping away a tear that had the audacity to run down her cheek.
"And Dan? I love you." Even now, Jill wasn't sure why she said it. "Even after... well, everything."
She hung up before she could start crying again, stuffing the phone back in its hiding spot and springing to her feet. Hiding in an alley feeling sorry for herself was little more than a band aid on a gaping wound. It felt good in the moment, but if Jill was really going to find her way out of this mess, she would have to do so by doing what she always did—investigate every possible lead and angle until everything fell into place.
And she knew just where to start.
CHAPTER 37
Once the shock wore off, once Jill finally let her stomach settle after the double-whammy of seeing her father kill in cold blood on television and discovering David Gregor had subjected himself to the cybernetic experiment she long thought dead, Jill felt nothing more than a surge of adrenaline. That jolt overrode every other physical sensation and before she knew what was what, Jill found herself back in the Seventh Precinct, hoping her former colleagues could shed some light. But they were just as shocked as she was, and the way Detective Watson had paled upon hearing the news had stuck with her even hours later.
Being related to Paul, Jill often forgot how people whose last name wasn’t Andersen related to Paul’s story. They all practically revered his work as a detective, and rightly so, but they had struggled with the reality of his duplicity. Not that Jill hadn’t, but the truth was that learning he had been a murderer made saying goodbye to him easier. Jill was a cop. Her entire life was about following the evidence, following the truth. The truth said Paul Andersen was a killer.
The truth also said he was still alive.
With the police unable to help—which was honestly of little surprise—Jill marched her way to her current place of employment. Because if anyone could pull back the proverbial curtain on a secretive government experiment she thought dormant for almost a decade, then perhaps it was an equally secretive branch of a federal law enforcement agency. She wandered her way through the myriad of security protocols, as if she could walk this path in her sleep, eyes focused straight ahead as her hands coiled into fists. This was Jill's first time storming through the bullpen in her superhero outfit, and to her surprise, it didn't trip any alarms. Even the elevator scan went without a hitch.
She crossed the bunker bullpen, ignoring the greetings and stares of her colleagues before pushing her way into Richard McDermott's glass-encased office, slamming the door shut behind her and staring at her senior agent.
For several tense moments, Jill was met only with silence. McDermott wouldn't even look up at her. Once he finally did, his face betrayed little; if the bruises on her face bothered him, he wasn't letting on. He had a maddeningly good poker face, and short as Jill's fuse was at the moment, his facade of nonchalance had her hands twitching to ball into fists.
"You know," McDermott finally said as he set down his pen, "you fascinate me."
The crease in Jill's forehead deepened. "What?"
McDermott leaned back in his leather swivel chair, hands clasped together at his midsection as his shoulders rose in a shrug. Sometimes, a laidback demeanor like this was an asset. Right now, all it did was make Jill want to punch McDermott in the nose. "I dunno, I just... I've never met someone so brave, yet so cowardly."
Jill's fists tightened; it took every ounce of willpower she had to keep from crossing the desk and grabbing McDermott by the collar. "You wanna—?"
"Let me explain," he cut Jill off with a placating hand. "You've devoted your life to law enforcement—first as a detective working Homicide, now with the FBI. That takes stones, I don't care who you are. Especially in a town like this."
Jill gave a one-shoulder shrug, now frowning in confusion more than anything. "No different than anyone else with a badge."
Well, the ones who weren’t using that badge to break the law.
"But see, then there's this other you," McDermott explained, pushing himself out of his chair and emerging from behind his desk. He pressed a button on the side, and the glass surrounding them instantly fogged. "The you who's standing before me right now. The dark shadow overlooking the downtrodden. The rumor that keeps the bad guys peeking over their shoulders. The proverbial sword of justice. The silver eyeplate, the red glowing eye that tells this city's citizens that whenever the authorities fail them, you're there. Don't let the BPD's manhunt a few weeks back fool you, Andersen; this town backs you. Enthusiastically."
Jill crossed her arms over her chest with an arched brow. "I'm sensing a huge but coming..."
"Your military service was exemplary. One clandestine science experiment aside, you were the model soldier. Yet you bristle whenever someone thanks you for that service." McDermott cocked his head to the side. "Why?"
"I was fighting a war that never should've been fought." Jill shook her head. "I was aiming semi-automatic weapons at people who had no quarrel with me or my country."
"No, I think it’s deeper than that. It's not political with you."
The urge to grab McDermott and shake answers out of him returned. This wasn’t what she had come here for. Jill had too many questions that needed answered to waste time like this. She was supposed to be questioning him, not the other way around. And why did this feel like a job interview? Shouldn't these questions have been asked before he offered her the gig?
"Fine. You want the truth?"
McDermott flashed a tight-lipped smile. "Always."
Jill's mouth opened, and at first, no words came. They seemed to get stuck in the back of her throat, refusing to come out. It was a truth Jill had admitted only to herself several times over the years, but she could never bring herself to say the words to someone else. Almost as if she were afraid her admission would make everyone see her differently. But why did that matter—particularly when she wasn't all that proud of her service?
Closing her mouth, Jill shook her head and managed to rake her fingers through her hair as her eyes darted to a random spot on the floor. "I enlisted to run away."
"Now we're getting somewhere. Running from what?"
Jill scowled at her new boss; he was acting more like a shrink than a federal agent. Still, she had opened this door. Closing it now would only invite more scrutiny. "My life."
"Go on."
"My father had just been sentenced," she explained in spite of herself; even as Jill's brain screamed for her to bring the focus back to The Collective and her father, to Gregor and the fact that Project Fusion had been resurrected, she kept going along with this seemingly pointless interrogation. "My mother had committed suicide. My brother was in a terrible car accident and lost the use of his legs. Just... one thing after another after another, and I just... I broke."
McDermott nodded, either in understanding or sympathy. It was hard to tell which. "You needed an escape, and Uncle Sam was more than happy to oblige."
"Basically."
"What about Project Fusion, then?" McDermott folded his arms and his eyes narrowed, almost as if he were eyeing Jill with a suspicion she feared from him
back when she was on the run. "Was the whole... superhero thing the plan all along?"
"No. Yes. I mean..." Jill sighed and shook her head, biting her lip. This was getting her nowhere. "Honestly, I dunno. I guess in the back of my head, it was a silly little what-if. My brother was a big comic book geek growing up, and he loved all these heroes who underwent secret government experiments... and voila, here I am."
"When did Bounty become a thing?" Now McDermott's hands were in his pockets. He was fidgeting more than Jill was, which was strange, because she felt like she was the one under the proverbial hot light. "You already fight crime. Why play dress-up for it?"
"Not long after I got out of the Academy. Didn't feel like my badge was doing enough."
"You're only one person, though." Okay, McDermott was way too young to be playing the father figure here. "No one can save an entire city by themselves."
"Still, it felt like I could do more. I felt like I needed to do more." Jill was doing everything she could to avoid McDermott's gaze. She couldn't believe she was telling him all of this; she didn't want to, and yet the words wouldn't stop spilling from her lips. "Spent a couple months' pay on a costume, brooded a bunch in my apartment, and then one night, I just... did it."
"Was it for your father?"
Jill's eyes finally met the agent's. "What?"
McDermott pushed off the edge of his desk and began pacing around what little space his office afforded. It was smaller than Jill would expect for someone who had an entire division of the FBI at his fingertips. Not that anyone could ever actually prove that; were it not for the badge and all the paperwork, Jill would have thought this was all a charade. "Your father was on Death Row by this point, yeah? I mean, decorated cop like him, no way did he actually kill those people, right? I'd imagine Bounty was, at least in part, your attempt to clear his name and get him out."
"...Maybe a little."
"But then it turns out he did kill those people."
This was it. This was Jill's chance to steer the conversation to where she had originally planned to take it when she first stormed into this office. "And he still is."
The smile and the color left McDermott's face as his shoulders slumped. "What?"
"You didn't see the latest transmission?" Jill yanked the door open and stormed out into the bullpen again. "Castillo, pull up the last feed from The Collective."
As the video expert's fingers flew along his keyboard, and the bevy of flat screens along the wall to Jill and McDermott's right sprang to life, she fought the urge to keep the bile tickling the back of her throat from rising any further. It didn’t matter how many times she saw this video; she would never get over it. She sucked in as deep a breath as her lungs would take, forcing herself not to avert her gaze when two men wearing black ski masks and military fatigues came into view.
She could tell the one on the right was her father. Between them sat their latest victim: a state legislator from Annapolis whose name Jill forgot who had been accused of accepting bribes in exchange for relaxing the state's regulations on political donations. The cut along his neck was so clean, so deep, it was a wonder his head was still attached to his body. His shirt was soaked in blood, and it had pooled around the chair before drying. The masked man on the left, silent, was wiping his machete clean.
Her father approached the camera, tapping the lens with his index finger. "Is this thing even on?" he asked in that digitally altered voice, yet Jill was so sure she could now hear Paul's voice behind the fog. "Regardless, our methods clearly have not worked to this point."
Jill stole a sideways glance at McDermott.
He was as pale as she was.
"This town is in more desperate need of a wakeup call than we thought. So, what say we get started, hm? Just rip that bandaid right off. The Collective is done hiding."
Paul Andersen ripped the mask the rest of the way off, glaring directly into the camera.
"Hello, Jill. Happy to see me?"
Every instinct told Jill to look away. She shook with fear and rage, yet she forced herself to stand on this spot, to stare at the row of masked men who were claiming, in an echo, that they would be the undoing of everything wrong with Baltimore—seemingly oblivious to the fact that they themselves were among the supposed problem. Her pulse quickened, to the point where Jill thought her heart was actually lodged in her throat, because even though she had known what was coming, it was still a punch to the stomach.
McDermott shook his head as the video paused on the visage of Paul's grinning mug. "No..."
"Answers." Jill turned to her boss. "Now."
"You think I know what's going on with this?!"
"Someone has to!" Jill shook her head, willing the tears threatening to build in the corner of her right eye to stay hidden. She was not about to have an emotional breakdown in the middle of the bullpen, in front of so many of her new colleagues. "Paul Andersen is supposed to be dead, Richard."
"You ask me, he still is."
Jill turned around at the sound of her partner's voice, frowning at how calm Ramon was in the face of this revelation. She watched as he approached, placing a hand on the bend of her elbow and giving her a curt nod before turning his attention back to McDermott. "All due respect, sir... this is above even your pay grade."
Jill's frown deepened as Ramon led her away from McDermott, down one of the dark hallways leading deeper into the bowels of the bullpen. The lights were dimmer and less frequent the further they got from the main command center, before Ramon led them into one of the interrogation rooms and immediately disconnected the microphone from the table and punched a series of buttons on the console along the far wall.
"Ramon?" Jill cradled her arms over herself, watching her partner's every move. "What the hell's going on?"
"I don’t think that's your father."
Jill blinked, opened her mouth and shut it again. That couldn't... but... she sank into one of the plastic chairs with a sigh, cradling her head in her hands. That man looked and sounded so much like her father, and yet that was impossible. But what Ramon had just told her was impossible, too. So... which was it?
What was the truth?
"I don't know who that man is," Ramon added, taking the seat across from Jill, "but it is not Paul Andersen."
CHAPTER 38
Brian yanked his door open before Jill even had a chance to knock.
She lowered her fist with a frown, slumping her shoulders before crossing the threshold. "Have you been staring through the peephole this whole time?"
"I've never heard you sound like that," Brian explained, shutting the door and wheeling to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and grabbed two bottles of beer, twisting the tops with the dexterity of a man who had drunk entirely too much beer in his life. Handing one of the bottles to his sister, who was still in her bulky leather getup, Brian stalled with a long swig. He shook his head with a hiss. "So... what's got Big Sis so spooked?"
Jill's frown deepened, even after downing half her bottle. "You don't know?"
"Campaign stop and a court hearing," he said. "I've only been home for, like, twenty minutes."
Jill sat on the arm of her brother's couch, staring at her half-empty beer bottle. In a way, she was glad he hadn't seen the video yet, but she shuddered to think what his reaction would be once he did. She briefly considered not showing him. Aside from knowing he was already in The Collective's crosshairs, what else did Brian need to know about them? But Jill had kept too many secrets from her brother over the years, and as hard as the truth was going to be, it would be worse if he found out some other way.
Besides, Jill needed to run an idea by her brother. She needed his permission to do it. And he couldn't give permission if she kept him in the dark.
"There, uh," Jill cringed with a pause. "The Collective put out another video today."
Brian rolled his eyes and took another swig. "More posturing?"
Jill quirked her human brow. "You're awfully calm for a guy with a target on
his back."
"The Collective's not gonna do anything to me." Brian set his bottle aside, shaking his head. "Every time they set out to get someone, they did. Quietly. No one knew they were in danger until it was too late. Those freaks have been saying my name a lot lately. But here I sit, drinking beer with my sister while they're still trying to make everyone shit themselves."
Well, he certainly had a point. It didn't quell Jill's anxiety, and it didn't make what she had to show him any easier, but she appreciated that Brian was calm about all this. Either he was better at this than her at times, or he put on a good front. She couldn't decide which was the better option.
Still, she sighed and polished off the rest of her bottle before pulling out a smartphone that was tucked into her boot. She entered the fifteen-digit code Castillo had provided, staring at the black screen and shaking her head. Jill chewed on her bottom lip, her hands trembling around the device.
"You really need to see this," she said, handing the phone to her brother.
Brian took the phone with a frown, tapping the center of the screen to play the video. At first, nothing happened. Then, after five seconds, a light bulb burst to life and two masked figures emerged from the shadows. It took Brian several more seconds to realize there was no audio, and he cocked his head at his sister, his face twisted in a mask of confusion.
"You don't need the sound for this," Jill muttered.
Brian's eyes went back to the phone. Two minutes of tense silence followed, and Jill reached for her bottle again. She picked at the corner of the label, anything to distract her. Anything to keep her from having to see her brother go from confused to mortified to despondent in a matter of seconds. She hated the thought of what this would do to him. Brian had worked so hard to make peace with everything that had happened over the years, and the progress he and Jill had made was a source of tremendous pride.
Was she about to undo all of that?
Jill put the bottle back down, forcing herself to watch Brian. The crease in his forehead deepened, the way it always did when he was lost in concentration. Jill smiled at the sight, surprised that such a normal thing could lighten her mood. Even with the dread of knowing what was to come.
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