Blindside (3 page)

“Your kind can transfer power to each other. I’d figured you’d be interested, considering this one has your stats.”

Mac kept his face stone cold, easy enough to do when his body went frigid. “I thought
your kind
dealt with facts.”

A sharp, predatory smile. “You want facts? Five years ago, the Hero of New York is said to have lost his powers. About the same time, a man broke through the vault of Central Bank. Ripped it apart, by all accounts. Then there was a man in Russia who could fly after a rescue by Red Square. Twenty years ago, your old man couldn’t shield himself from gunfire.”

Glass shattered in Mac’s hand.

“Guess you weren’t lying about the serum.” With a raised eyebrow, Williams shoved a stack of napkins at the nearest drop of blood.

Shards of memories nullified the jagged cuts over his fingers. “My father—”

“Died saving your ass. I looked it up.” A faint shrug, as if the act meant nothing. “Maybe you did something similar before you left San Mike. Maybe you thought you made a hero, left a legacy.”

“I didn’t.” The words ripped out of him, sharp like the edges of the broken glass. He crumpled up napkins to press against the cuts, to stall for time and keep something in his fingers.

Not possible
.

“I got a guy who has your stats, reports dating back for about a year.” Williams slammed his glass hard on the wood imitation counter. His drink, a vile-smelling vodka, sloshed cheerful and clear over the rim. “He’s beating up dealers, messing up the supply chain. I got badasses crying like kids with broken pinkies.”

“You’re saying that’s bad thing?”

“Assault is still assault. He’s skimming their profits.”

“Your problem. Not mine.” Except Mac couldn’t shake the ugly rolling in his gut that had nothing to do with the lost fight or the thin whiskey.

“He has your powers.” Damning quiet words followed by a knowing smile. Bastard no doubt thought he finally got through. “Maybe you got a cousin, or maybe you transferred you powers to someone who’s enjoying them too much. Either way, this mess is on you.”

Just walk away
. “You got a bead for who he is?”

Those knowing eyes studied his face. “Built like a linebacker and wears a black cape. Know someone with a flair for dramatics?”

Relief coursed through his veins. Williams hadn’t mention blindness. Had it been Lana, the Rook would’ve been dubbed the Vampire, and people would swear any sign of daylight set fire to “his” cape.

But he couldn’t deny his weakened state during the fire. The way Lana had bounced from the docks, safe from the fire but bleeding from the impact. He’d thought her flight over the flames had been from the second explosion. Wrong time, wrong place. Now…. “It only happens with my kind and never lasts more than a week.”

“At least you don’t deny it. I spent two weeks with Homeland on that dance.” Grudging tone, a flare of a match touching the tip of a slim cigarette hanging from William’s mouth. Either the bar was one of the few left in New York where a jackass could light up, or nobody gave enough of a fuck to tell Williams to put out the cancer-pencil. “Everyone wants to keep this info down. In their shoes, I’d feel the same. Every idiot on the street will say he’s got the blood type of a ‘hero.’” Air quotes flickered ashes from the cigarette. “You think transferred powers don’t last; you keep on believing that. Safer for everyone around. But I have to go with my gut and it’s telling me you’re at the root again.”

Mac schooled his features to remain stone cold, the acrid tease of nicotine burning his nostrils. “For all you know, this Night Rook could be me.”

“I thought about it.” Williams throw him a smile around a cigarette clamped between camera-ready teeth. “You couldn’t be at two places at once—I had a friend checking you out. I ride a desk, but I’m still a cop.”

“The Hero of New York can help you.”

“San Mike business stays in San Mike. And City Council asked for you on the invitation.”

“An invitation that you also extend?”

“God, no.” Ashes rained onto the tray, bright amber glowing and then fading. “I don’t need you to interfere with police work. I need trained men out there, not somebody who acts before he thinks. But politics are shit, and in the end, I’m just a public servant.”

Honesty for honesty, even if the exchange smelled putrid.

Mac forced his next words to stay nonchalant. “I have no means to fight, if he has powers. And you were all over the media about keeping superpowers out of the cops’ way.”

“You break you word you gave San Mike, that’s your call. I asked for your help in good faith.” Under the Dodgers cap, Williams let out a ring of smoke and flicked more glowing amber at the ashtray.

Mac fought to push past busted joints and the dull throbbing edge of pain. “I’ll train your guys.”

“We can’t afford to give your drug vials to every cop in town.”

Unbidden, the image of Lana coalesced in his brain, her cop uniform shredded by bullets, stained dark with blood. “If this Rook bounces bullets, a needle won’t stand a chance against his shields.”

Under the Dodgers cap, a smile. “The power isn’t constant. You’d know how to get that timing right. And believe me,” he said, looking at the cigarette butt glowing in the ashtray, “If I could get anyone else, I would.”

The Night Rook wasn’t Lana.
Couldn’t be her
. “I’m paid ten grand a night.”

“We’ll call it even for the harbor.”

God, he wanted another drink. “You publicly told me to stay out of San Michael.” And that had been another fist into Mac’s gut.

Williams stuffed a pair of ones under the ashtray. “And now I’m publicly asking you back.”

The uber-expensive tinted face shield of Lana’s helmet took the edge off the pools of light. Lucky for her, the city didn’t care much about the broken street lamps in the slums of downtown.

“You wanna score?” The young and hardened voice came at Lana from under a Triple
X
sign flashing in a graffiti decorated window. With the neon not bright enough to cut into her eyes, she made out monochromatic features of a teenage boy, his left eye bruised and swollen shut, his body tall and skinny.

“Fifty a gram, ninety for double.” Small hands in tattered gloves dug out a plastic baggie, and the tint of her shield made the powder glitter razor pink.

“Don’t want to show me that, kid.” The helmet deepened her voice to a growl, straddling the line between ridiculous and freaky. She couldn’t process light, but she had plenty of cash for toys thanks to the monthly checks from the Friends of the City fund. The grant had shown up just as her short term disability ran out, and it was either take the money or filch off her parents.

“You don’t look like a pig.” Weary eyes watched her without fear. “You’re the Rook. I saw you on TV. Bet you ain’t fast enough to catch me.”

Lana dug out a C-note. “I need Pavlic Mendoza. Know him?” Stupid question given that Pavlic ran the block, probably taking half of the kid’s profits.

“I don’t know nothing. Bet you can’t even beat me up.”

She caught a tiny whiff of fear, a subtle spike of shame.

“You’re too bony to beat up,” she said and waved the money at his eye level. For all the affected bravado, he didn’t quite have the guts to try to snatch the bill out of her hand.

“Mendoza,” she said again and dug out another bill. Might as well spend the city’s money—not much difference between paying for sources and taking online classes. Both gave her information.
Nice way to justify it, freak
.

The kid’s neck mimicked the gentle swaying of
LIVE NUDE GIRLS
reflecting in his overblown pupils. “He ain’t gonna talk to you.”

She matched his tone. “That ain’t your problem.”

His quick grin made him look younger, innocent. Not part of this eastside slum with its inevitable stench. “He hangs down at that bar, the one with stupid red flamingos.”

Peachy
. She held out the money, hoping he’d get himself something to eat. “He bust your eye?”

The kid brushed a hand over his swollen eyelid and shrugged off the question. “Sure you don’t want anything? Got primo shit.”

“Don’t push it.” No choice but to turn toward painful lights. Red was the worst, the sharpest color in the spectrum. Under the shield, her eyes stung with moisture, and Lana fought the need to push a hand under the helmet and wipe her face. You’d think after a year and change, she’d get used to the tears.

“You really the Rook?” The kid fell into step beside her, his gait controlled and light, ready to bolt at first smell of trouble. “Do something. Show me.”

The flashing signs burned her eyelids in cha-cha rhythm. “I don’t do tricks.”

“Come on. Please? They say you got real powers.” His tone was that of a real kid, no longer fearful, his non-bruised eye open wide with wonder.

The light-bending ability to make her frame appear huge already took up a great chunk of power. Then again….

“How about a trade?”

She all but heard the kid’s mouth part in shock. “Yeah? I got—”

“Not that,” she said when he dug for his baggies. “Your sunglasses.”

A cheap pair of aviators hung behind his neck.

“You’re shitting.”

So Lana sent a jolt of power at the pink neon girl with lit-up nipples. When the glass shattered into pieces, the kid’s “Wow!” speared her heart.

Glasses were shoved into her hand, the lenses cold and smooth and thin against her palms clad in black leather.

“Go home,” she said over her shoulder and headed for the flamingos, wind from the river snarling at her cape.

Mid-level dealers didn’t hawk their product on the street. Night Rook would not do well inside The Red Flamingo, but Lana figured cleavage would be her key in blending in.

The sunshades cut down on the pain, and the skin-tight leather ensured no one looked at her face too long before traveling south. She stuffed the cape into her helmet and justified paying top dollar for virtually indestructible paper-thin silk.

Inside, harsh Latin rhythms beat at her eardrums. She pushed through alcohol-drenched bodies and used the breaks between the lights to push her way up to the bar.
Make room for
Daredevil, 
bitches
.

“Hey, mamas. Wanna party?”

Give him a smile
. “I could get in the mood.” Her shoulder blades itched under the eye searing light show. No point turning around—even during small patches of relief she wouldn’t find the owner of that gaze. “Pavlic Mendoza hooks me up. Know him?”

“Mendoza?” Her new friend curled a thinly mustached lip in an expression that held both respect and distaste. “That half-breed shithead’s too expensive. If you want good shit….” The lasers bleached out her retinas, but she figured
Papi
gestured something about hooking her up with “good shit” on the cheap.

When meaty fingers curved over her gloves, Lana suppressed the urge to blast him. “Your girl’s gonna get jealous.” Maybe a jealous woman owned the stare stabbing at Lana’s back.

“I got no girl, sweet mamas. Wanna try me?”

“Maybe.” She let Papi bring her hand up to his mouth, his lips lingering on the leather as if taking a taste.
Just my luck, someone with a fetish
. “Mendoza, first. Then let’s see you dance.” Despite the sunshades, the lasers rendered her blind. For a short moment, she was helpless, the lava in her veins whispering to blast the lights away.

“Mendoza.” Despite the pain, she steeled the words into a husky-voiced command.

“Okay, mamas. He’s probably still here.” She could see shapes, black outlines against white hell that was her vision. No choice but to trust Papi to steer her through the mass of alcohol drenched bodies gyrating in the pulsing razor light. She couldn’t lose Mendoza, not when she was this close to finding a connection, a thread of data linking corruption at San Mike PD to those who had set Nicky up.

She still couldn’t say, even in her mind, that her brother was murdered.

That feeling of being watched followed her deeper into the sea of writhing bodies. She should’ve been used to people staring both as the Night Rook and as the invalid who could barely function in daylight.

“Hey, homes.” During a momentary relief of near darkness, Papi clapped the massive shoulder of a bulldozer leaning on the bar. “My baby wants to party.”

“Yeah?” Lights bleached out his face when Pavlic turned, but Lana got an impression of a heavy chin and a thin upper lip concealed by an attempted mustache. A hand adorned with multiple gold rings clutched at the lapel of an imitation leather coat. “Why would I care?”

“Chill, bro. She ain’t a cop.” A respite from the lights revealed Papi’s tight smile.

“Hey, Pavlic. A friend of mine says he’s offered you good money. And when you didn’t call him back, he asked me to sort out your mess.” She barely heard herself over the music. “You know him right? Tall, dark type. Wears a helmet. Been trying to get ahold of you for weeks.” Her helmet hung from her elbow, below her waist, the crowd hopefully too thick and drunk for anyone to notice.

Mendoza shot a look over her shoulder. “I don’t know nothing.”

“Yeah? I believe you. But you haven’t called my friend back. You know how he gets when he’s unhappy.” Despite Papi’s squeeze on her wrist, Lana stepped closer, making Mendoza hunch up lower to the bar.

“What friend? I thought you wanted to party?” Papi tugged her closer, brushing a palm over her breast under a pretense of a hug. His breath of mint, beer, and pot twisted her stomach into knots.

That gaze at her back…. “Give me a minute.” The light razored her eyelids, the flashes merciless beats of pink.

“You’re with me now, aren’t you? I wanna know about your friend.” She had to grit her teeth to keep from blasting Papi into the crowd on the dance floor. With tears blurring what was left of her vision, she glanced over her shoulder, trying to find that gaze.

“Come on, mamas.”

Damned lights wouldn’t stop flashing.

“Come
on
, baby.” Another tug at her wrist, strong enough to whip her around, and when the lights dimmed again, she thought she recognized a face. Pain hit, deep and low in her belly, an old ache she had thought was buried with the guilt.
Not possible
.