Super Trouble (3 page)

“I’ll
be sure to get right on that,” she snapped, stomping on his foot. “Since when
can you teleport?”

“I
can’t.” He averted another foot-stomping by lifting her so her feet dangled off
the ground. She thanked him with a heel to his shins—or she would have if he
hadn’t been ready for her and dodged. “Stop fighting and I’ll let you go.”

She
muttered something that sounded suspiciously like
that’s your specialty,
but
she went still in his arms. “Take me back.”

“That
I won’t do.” He eased her feet back to the floor, ready to take defensive
action if necessary, but she seemed to have worked out her temper. Kim had
always been quick to anger and quick to forgive, her rages passing with the
speed and passion of a summer storm. Frost was more the slow moving blizzard
type.

“If
you can’t teleport, how did you teleport me? Did your sister build you some
kind of teleportation device? And how the hell are you dampening my TK?”

He
loosened his arms, immediately regretting the loss of her heat. Impervious as
he was to cold, he’d never longed for any warmth except hers. But he’d given
that up a long time ago.
For the best
. He just needed to keep reminding
himself of that. 

He
stepped back, watching her warily as she turned to face him, arms held loosely
at her sides in the defensive stance he’d once taught her.

“Tandy
didn’t build me anything. Technically, I made
you
teleport us here.”

Shit.
Why had he told her that? A smart super—especially one who might be called in
to hunt down his former friends at any moment—never revealed the secrets of his
powers unless absolutely necessary.

But
she wasn’t thinking about what he’d revealed about his own powers.
Her
jaw fell. “I can teleport?”

“No,
you can’t. But you have the potential.” Which he’d tapped into to drag them back
here. The teleport had been clumsy as hell and he’d nearly fallen on his ass
when they arrived, but he’d managed it. Now Frost dropped his hands to his
sides, though he kept a tight mental grip on her TK. “You’re a strong
telekinetic. You could learn to teleport. If you live that long.”

She laughed,
bright and sharp and utterly lacking in humor. “Am I dying?”

“Do
you have a death wish?”

“Oh
please. I can handle Little Vic.”

“I
wasn’t talking about Little Vic, Trouble.” The nickname came easily to his lips,
seeming to fall off them when he was least expecting it.

Her
breath shortened, crystal blue eyes flaring wide. “Are you threatening me?”

“I
can’t let you go vigilante. No matter whose girlfriend you used to be.”

“He
kidnapped me!” she shrieked, another summer storm kicking up just as quickly as
the last one had dissipated.

“You
weren’t able to identify him.”

“Because
he was wearing that stupid Volt mask the entire time!” She stalked toward the
door, but he used a pulse of her borrowed TK to block her way with a heavy
recliner, the chair scraping noisily across the floor. Again, clumsy but
effective.

He’d
never really gotten to the point of finesse with TK, no matter how often he’d usurped
his brother Chance’s power over the years. Some powers were easier to
manipulate than others, he’d learned. He could freeze any ability—mindbending,
superstrength, superspeed, it didn’t matter—but when it came to drawing the
power into himself and using it, that was trickier. He couldn’t even sense some
powers—like his little sister Tandy’s newly revealed power-nullification talent—and
others he knew to steer damn well clear of—like Eisenmann’s pryokinesis. But he
was just good enough with Kim’s talent to use it against her.

She stumbled
over the chair with a little shriek of frustration and whipped toward him. “Little
Vic is making a living—a disgustingly good living, I’ll have you know, raking
in more in a month than I made all last year—by being The Volt on national
television. A gig he only got because he used the trial for my kidnapping to
make himself famous, but
no
, of course no one can prove he’s actually
The Volt who kidnapped me. How ridiculous of me to think he might be
profiting
off my abduction rather than going to Area Nine to rot with all the other
supervillains!” Seeming to realize she wasn’t going to get back to the alley,
she took out her aggression on her jacket, wrestling out of it and flinging it over
the roadblock recliner. She attacked her black zippered hoodie next.

He
couldn’t argue with anything she’d said. Little Vic, the oily little weasel,
was profiting from the crime he’d been acquitted of—and had almost assuredly
committed. But there was no proof. And even if there had been, double jeopardy
protected the bastard from a second prosecution.

Frost
swallowed back the icy anger that threatened to rise.

Not
for the first time, he thanked God it had been Justice and not him who’d
swooped in to save the day the first time Kim was abducted.

Frost
had been in the middle of a super-hunt in Europe. He’d been so careful to make
sure no one knew Kim was special to him, make sure no one would think of them
in the same sentence let alone try to use her against him. So damn careful that
he hadn’t heard a word about the kidnapping until she was already home safe.
Even then, knowing she was all right, his rage had been a blinding, animal
thing. He’d have used Vic Peccorino as a cryogenics experiment, flash freezing him
in a heartbeat and shattering the frozen statue. He would have crossed the line
without flinching.

So
it was good he’d been half a world away. Good that it had been Justice who rode
to the rescue. Good that the papers immediately speculated on a relationship
between the pair and he was forced to stay away, to move on.

It
would have been far too easy for him to turn villain protecting her. He had
that darkness in him, never closer to the surface than when he thought about
anyone harming her. So he’d watched from afar instead, taking more and more
out-of-town contracts, hunting supers all over the world, and piling up debt
after debt to Captain Justice. The man who repeatedly saved the only woman Frost
had ever wanted—keeping him from going rogue avenging her.

Some
lines should never be crossed.

Kim
had finished stripping off her excess layers—down to a t-shirt, jeans, and
those sky-high black boots, her eyes still flashing angrily as she kept up a
steady stream of bitching.

Frost
couldn’t help drinking in the sight of her, his hands itching to touch, but his
voice was even when he spoke over her tirade. “When he does something illegal,
you can bring him to justice. Until then, acting against him is a personal
vendetta and that isn’t what superheroes do.”

“Is
letting criminals go free what superheroes do?” she asked with exaggerated
sweetness.

“Prove
he’s a criminal.”

“Give
me five minutes alone with him and I’ll get you a full confession.” There was a
dark glee in her eyes, something he’d never seen there before. Ambition? Absolutely.
A certain ruthlessness? Sure. But not this bitter rage.

“What
happened to you?”

He
didn’t mean to ask the question aloud, but the words hung between them and he
couldn’t take them back. She was so much the same, but something had hardened
in her and it chipped at his own frozen heart to see it.

“What
happened?” she asked incredulously. “I was kidnapped
twenty-five times
,
you ass. And you know what? The first time wasn’t that bad. Little Vic is about
as intimidating as a wet sponge. I was never actually afraid of him—which is
something I never should have admitted in court. I think that did more to hurt
my case than any of the legal wrangling about confirming his identity. That and
the fact that the defense claimed I
benefited
from the kidnapping. Like
I asked for it. And damned if my career didn’t take off like a shot. I was
suddenly the It Girl at the Sentinel. Not only could I tell my own story, but I
suddenly had sources in the superhero community. And everyone who was rescued
by a super wanted to tell their story to Kim Carruthers because she understood,
she’d been there. I was flying high, baby. So long as all I ever wanted to
report on was supers. And provided I kept my superhero boyfriend and smiled
pretty when he trotted me out on the red carpet. Don’t get me wrong, I liked
Justice, but after a while I started to wonder what we had in common besides
the fact that we’re both extremely photogenic.”

Frost
tried not to take a vicious satisfaction in the fact that she hadn’t said she
loved
Justice.

“But
you know what happens next when you’re the top superhero correspondent in the
city, dating a high profile goody-goody? You get kidnapped again. And again. The
goddamn super villains keep coming after you. Most of them just wanted the
freaking
publicity
that Little Vic got, but some of them were real prize
sociopaths.”

She
fell silent, her gaze going distant, and his hands fisted, itching to pound
into whoever had put that haunted echo in her eyes. He took a step toward her,
instinct urging him to pull her into his arms, but he didn’t have that right.

“Justice
always came for me. DynaGirl helped a few times—you remember Darla Powers? Someone
always saved the day, rescued helpless little Kim from the Big Bad. I bought a
super strength Taser and a gun—became a damn good shot. But, you know what? I
never fired either one outside of a target range. Never got the chance. It’s
amazing what a disadvantage we mere mortals are at when there are superpowers
on the playing field.”

Which
was exactly why he’d never believed relationships between supers and non-supers
had a prayer. Why he’d left her in the first place.

She
sighed, still not really seeing him. “And then there was Demon Wroth. I don’t
remember much of that abduction, actually. He kept me unconscious for most of
it. And when I woke up? Look at me. Kim Carruthers, Super Girl.” She focused on
him then, her eyes back on the here and now.

He
wanted to slay every demon that had ever left a shadow in those baby blues, but
he wasn’t that kind of hero. He was the one who could only protect people by
staying as far away from them as possible. So he’d stayed away from Kim. Five
years.

Five
years thinking he was doing the right thing by staying away. Five years of
certainty that she was better off without him. Five years of nightmares
stalking her while he was bouncing around the world stalking nightmares of his
own.

For
the first time, he wondered if he’d made the right choice. If he could have
protected her better than Justice had. Sure, he would have gone rogue the first
time someone dared touch her. His family would have cut him off and he would
have been hunted down by someone like him. But would it have been worth it to
make sure Kim never had that haunted look in her eyes?

Would
he have regretted that choice as much as he now regretted leaving her?

Chapter
Four: Looking For Clues at the Scene of the Crime

Kim studied
Frost as her story sank in, though his dark face showed little.

Her
own throat felt strangely raw, though her eyes had stayed bone dry. Nothing
like a little jaunt down memory lane.

It
was surreal having him here again. This was the same apartment she’d gotten
when she first moved to the city after college. The apartment he’d left that
morning when he walked out of her life, leaving only a note to remind her that
he’d ever been part of it.

Pathetic
as it was, she’d probably stayed here in part because she was waiting for him
to come back. Then, when she’d finally decided to take control of her life
again, stop waiting and leave town, Demon Wroth had happened.

“You
know the irony of it?” she asked, flopping onto the recliner he’d repositioned.
“I was getting out of the super business. Moving to the Capital to take over a
political correspondent position. I’d already had to go independent contractor
with the paper because my history with supers made me uninsurable—a liability
to the company. But I had this shot, this one shot, to get out. I broke it off
for good with Justice and was packing up my apartment, ready to leave all this
bullshit behind and what happens next? Justice gets tangled up with Mirage, I
run one last super story, and Demon Wroth comes back from Argentina or wherever
the hell he’s been hiding and snatches me out of this very living room.”

The
muscles across Frost’s shoulders jumped visibly beneath his light jacket, his
eyes darting around the room as if looking for the intruder.

“Makes
it real, doesn’t it? Scene of the crime. But if I moved every time some villain
violated my place, I’d never have time to unpack.”

He
cursed under his breath.

“Yeah.
That’s
what happened to me, Frost. I got kidnapped twenty-five times.”
And
you never came for me
.

She’d
always waited for it to be him. Wanted it to be him. She’d never quite gotten
him out of her system, no matter how she tried. Even when she had a drawer over
at Justice’s apartment, she’d always had one eye on the door, waiting like an
idiot for Frost to appear. And he never did.