Still, there was no time to waste. I jumped to my feet. “Can you get the ladies up, please? We need to be out of the door as soon as possible. We’ll intercept Reuben and the others and get on our way to Annapolis.”
Jen sighed. “You have to eat first.” She sounded almost bored.
I hunted around for my boots. “No time for that,” I said while peering under the couch, where I only found a mousetrap and a moldy granola bar. “Did you see where Reuben put my boots? And where are my knives?”
“Eat, and then I’ll tell you.”
I paused and looked over my shoulder at the petite civilian. “Um…what?”
Jen crossed her arms. “I said, ‘eat, and then I’ll tell you.’ Don’t make me tell you what Reuben said.”
I sat on the arm of the couch and tried not to glower. “What did Reuben say?”
“He said he has five younger brothers and he’s never lost a fight with any one of them.” She made air quotes. “And then he said, ‘eat the damn food, you stubborn idiot, or I’ll tell your whole team about how you burned down a bookstore after Lark whooped your ass.’”
Heat creeped up my collar into my ear tips. “That’s…well, that’s just…Imperator burned down the bookstore. I just happened to be there.”
Jen pressed a fist to her mouth to quell laughter. “And was it Berenice who actually whooped your ass?”
Oh, screw all of you. “No, it was Lark,” I grumbled.
This was more than one man’s efforts to keep me from running headfirst into danger—this had to be Reuben’s version of a power play. Why else would he steal my boots and knives, dangle my atrocious past in front of me, and force feed me from a distance? I’d never met someone who swung so wildly between competent commander and raging jerk, except maybe Dean Monroe.
Jen snickered and disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a minute later with a plate loaded with frosted toaster pastries, scrambled eggs, tangerines, and a cup of vanilla yogurt. In the other hand she held a steaming mug of coffee. “Here you go,” she said kindly as she put the plate and mug on the coffee table. She pulled a fork out of her pocket and handed it to me. “There’s lots more if you want. I figured your powers required an insane metabolism. Is that the case?”
Her question softened me, and I answered, “No, I’ve never noticed any unusual appetite. I don’t know where the healing energy comes from, but I’ve never reached a limit. I knew a guy once who could instantly grow plants from seeds, and he never said anything about needing extra food or rest. It might be the same thing.”
I instantly regretted speaking of Dean. I took a sip of the bitter coffee and hoped Jen wouldn’t ask more questions about Dean. If she did, I’d lie and say I didn’t know much about him. Besides, my powers were cooler than his. I had two, and he’d be dead without my healing powers.
She must not have been impressed by Dean’s earth-goddess abilities, because she asked, “What about the running?”
“I’ve never formally studied it, but I think I can run about as long as any other normal guy.” I mulled over my second, less-showy ability. “I get winded if I run for several minutes. It’s just that I can run a whole lot farther in that time.”
“I sometimes wish I had a power,” she said, staring airily into the distance. “I don’t know what, though.”
I finished the yogurt. “Well, you can make Berenice do what you want, and you pretty much have me whipped, so you’re on your way.”
She turned red. “I hope you don’t think I’m mean. Reuben’s a friend of mine, and I respect his judgment. He accurately predicted you’d try to skip town when you woke up, and then he said you’d refuse food.” She eyeballed my plate, which was already mostly empty. “You wouldn’t have gotten far on an empty stomach.”
I blushed and ate the last of my eggs with deliberate slowness. “It’s hard to be chided by someone I barely know. And my wife was kidnapped,” I added, trying not to sound resentful.
Jen studied me while I ate. “You know,” she said after a few seconds, “You’re not nearly as scary as Berenice makes you sound. I was kind of nervous about being alone with you.”
I looked up, shocked. “What? What did she say? Did she accuse me of something?” In all my dealings with the team, I’d never indicated that I was the sort of man you couldn’t trust a lady with. A shiver slid down my spine at even accidentally being compared to Beau.
Jen shook her head. “Not exactly. She just always made you out to be…like…a really rough guy, I guess. Maybe someone who left crime because it was convenient, not because of morals. She doesn’t have much regard for Jill, either, so it makes sense to her that Jill would fall for a creep. At least, she didn’t have any regard until recently, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because Jill beat up Peter and brought Reuben home. I doubt she really likes Jill. Rube and Gabriela won’t let Berenice say one bad word against her, though.”
I put down my plate. “I’m not a bad guy. I’ve done bad things, but I’m learning that the latter doesn’t necessarily make the former.”
Her eyes shone with a warm emotion. “I really am glad you found your team.”
Feeling the heat creep back into my face, I changed the subject. “Can I ask you a question?”
She looked surprised. “Uh, sure. Shoot.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m assuming you don’t mean my name.”
“No. You obviously know the Baltimore team quite well. How did you meet them?”
She leaned back into the couch and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. “A couple years ago I was on my way home from a night class at Johns Hopkins. I should’ve called campus escort services, but me being me, I thought that since I was a big, mature sophomore, I’d be safe.”
“Mugger?” I asked, already concerned. Jen was so tiny.
“In the plural,” she said dully. “Two guys came out of nowhere and knocked me down. One grabbed my arms while the other went through my purse. When he didn’t find anything valuable, he started punching my stomach and demanding to know where my money was.” She gazed sidelong at me. “You know, because nineteen-year-old undergrads are known for being so rich.”
My insides burned with fury. “And then?”
Tenderness transformed her face. “And then Artemis was there,” she said softly. “I never really saw her fight the guys. One second I was crying because I was sure they were going to beat me to death on the sidewalk, and then the next she was holding me and telling me I was going to be okay. She called the police and stayed with me until they came. I’d never felt so safe before.” She looked at me again. “There really is a sweet woman underneath the sourness. I hope you get to meet her one day.”
“Did you stay in touch after that?” I asked, uncomfortable with the idea of a “sweet” woman inside the sourest person I’d ever met who wasn’t a Sentinel.
“No. We reconnected at a party I threw the next year. There’s a long story there, but basically she was feeling rebellious as hell that night and ditched patrol. She met my friend Elena, who invited her to my party, and that’s when we became friends.” She shook her head at some private joke. “I haven’t figured out whether that’s a good thing or not.”
“Meaning…?”
She sat up and leaned on her knees, her mouth pursing with uncertainty. “I became the seventh member of the team. I counseled her to leave every time she showed up here with a new burn, I combed the dark web to figure out where the mural artists around here are getting the team’s pictures, I did research for them, and I helped Gab with Reuben’s injuries after the tribunal. But the more I learned about their stupid cult, the more I realized that my proximity to their lives placed us all in danger. I mean, look at Reuben, for heaven’s sake. Don’t tell me you believe that’s solely because he got married to her. They want—”
“Total and complete control,” I finished. “Yeah, I know.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Oh man, do I know—did you say you have access to the dark web?”
/>
Her list of activities had finally registered. The dark web was the subsection of the deep web where illegal activities, such as selling torture videos, took place. If Beau had footage of Jillian, it would be there.
“Uh, yeah. Not for crime, obviously, but for—”
“No, no, I get it,” I said quickly, grabbing her laptop. “Can you pull it up? I need to look for something.” Upon seeing her suspicious expression, I continued, “I need to see if my brother has put up videos of Jillian. She might be trying to send me a message.”
“Ugh, Beau. I’ve heard about him. Give me the computer. Eat while I get it up.”
I swallowed the rest of my breakfast in large bites, not bothering to chew. She was clearly an expert in the deep web; I saw several applications on her desktop that provided various types of anonymity while browsing. She logged on and typed from memory the meaningless string of letters and numbers that led to a website that specialized in video footage of superheroes.
“This is where I go to see if the team’s faces are visible in any security footage,” she explained. “It’s not usually a problem, but other teams are downright lazy about keeping their masks on. The Boston team’s house is right next to a house with a security camera, and they take their masks off before getting inside. I guess their neighbors don’t like them, because they’re always selling the tapes on here. I’ve thought about writing them a letter and telling them.”
“I always thought the mask thing was dumb,” I murmured as I perused the listings, which named the city, date, and quality of the videos. “It made more sense in the age before smart phones and mass media.”
There were surprisingly few videos of my team; perhaps our constant presence on social media reduced the value of this type of contraband. “This website’s empty. Any others?” I’d try Beau’s special site after trying hers.
“Yeah, they’re dumb, but try telling them that,” she said with another shake of her head. She began to type another address, again from memory. “Masks make them feel safe, so they wear them even though websites like this exist.” There was a dark edge in her words. She turned the computer towards me. “I hope you don’t mind images of gore.”
Row after row of horrific thumbnails filled the screen, each with large sections of red. The website promised the very best in real life superhero violence. One “sample” picture on the side bar showed two young, unmasked superheroes clinging to each other, each one missing a hand. Their stumps gushed blood onto their uniforms, which were noticeably dated. The men couldn’t have been older than twenty.
“The 1984 Miami bombing,” Jen said. “They were the only survivors. You can buy the rest of the pictures in the file for the low, low price of $9.99. Of course, it’s hard to pick out which limbs and guts belonged to their teammates and which ones belonged to the civilians. You can also buy the files for the 1994 San Diego lynch mob attack and the 2005 Nashville riot. Everything else is just a picture or two from various battles around the country.”
I regretted eating my breakfast. “Any other sites?” I asked, breathing in through my mouth and out my nose. My uncle had once tried to blow up the Saint Catherine team, yet I’d never spared a thought to how that battle could’ve turned out had things gone differently.
“Just one,” she said, typing again. “It specializes in guesswork of what superheroes look like without their masks. I’m not sure, but I strongly suspect a couple of the artists are disgruntled police sketch artists.”
I put my hand on the keyboard. “What I’m looking for isn’t on that site. Let me.” She slid the laptop to my knees and I took a breath, then began to type and speak, rushing through my words. “My family tortures people for information. It sounds medieval, but it’s amazingly effective. Not all information is in a hard drive, right, so our services are occasionally needed, if you’re desperate enough.” The familiar website came up, with its simple black background. “I think we both know that the people who buy this kind of stuff don’t care that it’s footage of illegal activity.”
“Oh, God,” Jen whispered as she saw my brother’s offerings. “This is sick.”
Each listing promised bona fide footage of someone’s anguished screams while my brother and his best friend Will applied untold horrors to their abused bodies. Beau didn’t dare ask to film my parents—now just my mother—as they worked; it wasn’t “professional,” and it certainly wasn’t discreet. But the lure of easy cash was too much for my brother, and he was given access to the victims in the downtime so they couldn’t rest.
Videos like these could fetch thousands of dollars, depending on the type of torture method, the attractiveness of the victim, and the length of the video. Beau had once bragged to me that a mere three hours with a pretty young woman named Anya, a witness of a mob hit, had earned him a new sports car.
And my team wondered why I never talked about my brother.
I turned the computer back towards me, trying to shield the good person to my right from the images. “If you give me a minute, I’ll see if the video I’m looking for is here,” I said. “You don’t need to—”
She pointed to the screen. “That one says Battlecry!”
My heart thudded double-time as I forced my eyes to read the information. The panic receded as quickly as it had come as I took in the grainy, black-and-white thumbnail. “That’s not it.”
“Why does it say 1967?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly. “It’s not what I’m looking for.”
How typical of Beau, to try and milk cash out of our home movies. He couldn’t have been more gauche if he’d tried.
As my heart went back to its normal rate, I skimmed the rest of Beau’s website. It displayed his usual mundane offerings, mostly taken up with drugs, pornography so deviant that it made me blush, and stolen weapons.
Curiously, he was also hawking an elaborate jeweled necklace that I was sure I’d seen in the Smithsonian only a few years prior. That type of high-stakes theft wasn’t his specialty; he must’ve had a partner. I had a good idea who that partner was.
“Alysia,” I grumbled. I’d almost forgotten about Will’s twin sister, a vicious young woman who could walk through solid objects. All Beau would’ve had to do in order to steal the necklace was use his power to shut down the security systems in the museum for a few minutes while Alysia ran through brick and stone to the exhibit.
The front door’s handle turned.
I slammed the laptop shut. As if she read my mind, Jen grabbed it and slid it under the couch, and we both automatically relaxed into feigned nonchalance.
Reuben walked in, bearing my boots and knives. Reid and Marco followed; Marco was also carrying clothes. We all nodded in greeting to each other before Marco squinted at me and said, “You’ve been into trouble.” Before I could protest, he dumped the garments on the living room table. “I got Jill’s uniform and knives from the truck. Are you ready for the next phase?”
Something about his question angered Reid, because he let out a growl and marched into the kitchen. Jen followed him.
Reuben shook his head and handed me my boots and knives. “Don’t worry about him,” he said smoothly. “How was breakfast?”
“I think I hate you.”
“You hate me because I’m acting like an older brother, and you’ve never had a positive experience with one. This is how we’re supposed to act. I look after you and make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”
“I don’t need someone to look after me!” I jumped to my feet. “Jillian is—”
“Benjamin.”
“What?”
“Explain to me, in detail, how you are going to save Jillian. Tell me right now.”
My hands shook. “I…I…”
Reuben caught Marco’s eye. Marco nodded, then hurried off down the hall. When he was gone, Reuben looked back at me. “I’m waiting.”
“I don’t have a plan right now,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t appreciate you act
ing like—like—”
Like an older brother. Damn it, he was right. Earlier, at Gabriela’s, I’d noticed that he was a “professional older brother.” He’d aimed his authority and I-know-better attitude at Reid, so it had been acceptable, even amusing. Now that he’d turned his professionalism on me, I couldn’t handle it.
But he wasn’t Beau. I needed to get over the hang up I hadn’t been aware of until thirty seconds ago.
“Yeah, I know you don’t have a plan,” Reuben said. “You didn’t have one last night, either. And I know you want to storm that house yesterday, but we can’t go into enemy territory without a rock. Solid. Plan.”
He didn’t sound mad—something told me I’d yet to see him truly angry—but there was no arguing with that tone.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut. “Fine. But you didn’t have to drug my coffee.”
Obviously he’d manipulated the events of the previous night so I’d go to sleep. I’d been so tired that I’d felt intoxicated—which I clearly had been.
Yet, he looked shocked by my question. “Drug you? I’d never drug you. You were so tired that you were swaying on your feet. I wasn’t worried about you dying at your house so much as I was worried about you dying on the way to the truck.”
“You could’ve just told me that.”
A strange emotion passed behind his eyes as he fought a smile. “I think you’re forgetting something.”
I sank back on the couch and rested my head in my hand. “What?”
“I didn’t meet you yesterday.”
What was he carrying on about now? “Um, yeah you did.”
Instead of answering, a blackish, smokey mask flickered in front of his face, then disappeared. Obsidian was talking to me now, not Reuben Fischer.
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