Superheroes Anonymous (7 page)

No. Jeremy wasn't Blaze.

I swiped a hand across the mirror to get a look at myself—­and froze.

Damn. I was
hot
.

The solution Dr. Mobius had hit me with might have been killing me, but it was doing me some great favors in the process. I'd always been a little soft—­one ex-­boyfriend had used the term “doughy”—­especially around the middle, carrying a little more pudge than I liked. I'd been one of the first girls to get a bra in middle school, and I understood the benefits of being curvaceous. But I'd always wanted to lose the extra softness. And I had. I'd traded it in for the body of a freaking Olympian: sculpted shoulders, lean ropes of muscle on my arms. Washboard abs. No extra weight on my chin, no wobble to my upper arm.

I'll admit it: I flexed a little in the mirror. Just, you know. To see.

Wrapped in a towel, I moved back into the other room and tried to turn on the TV, only to sigh. I really needed to set up my cable and internet bill to autopay for those times when I was kidnapped. Apparently, I wasn't going to be able to check the news until I could get somewhere with free wi-­fi. Muttering, I ignored all my regular jeans and went straight for the skinny jeans I'd kept holed away in the back of my closet. Leftovers of either wishful thinking or a resolve to lose more weight—­I couldn't remember. I pulled them on. They were loose.

With my favorite shirt bagging around my newly developed muscles, and my feet stuffed into proper shoes, I grabbed some cash out of the emergency fund and headed downstairs. My first goal was to get to the office, see what kind of damage control I needed to do, and figure out a way to contact Blaze. Late-­afternoon sunlight slanted into the lobby, which made me blink.

As did the date on the newspapers at the newsstand down the street from my building. I picked one up and gaped at it.

“Gonna pay for that?” the vendor asked.

“Uh, sure. Here. Thanks.” I handed over a twenty and waited for my change. According to Dr. Mobius, I'd been asleep for nearly two weeks. Adding in the day I'd been awake—­or possibly longer, since time was impossible to judge in a windowless room—­with Dr. Mobius, it should have still been June.

It was the first day of July. If my calculations were right, I'd been asleep in my apartment for something close to three days.

Even stranger, there wasn't a single reference to Dr. Mobius or me in the paper. I frowned at an article that mentioned a street protest against a local congressman, as the signs in the picture seemed familiar. But that was all I could find.

One of the bylines on the third page caught my eye: Naomi Gunn. It appeared that the woman who had jinxed me was more than she'd claimed to be.

“Huh,” I said as I scanned her article about the new bill about superhero corporate sponsorship. Why had she told me she ran a blog called Crap About Capes when this looked like a professional, full-­time gig?

At work, the security guard waved me through without looking up from his screen, so at least I didn't have to worry about my missing work badge. It was Portia, and not Adrianna, seated behind the receptionist's desk in the lobby. And she, unlike the guard, did look surprised to see me.

“Girl!” She rose on her towering heels. “I thought you quit!”

“What? No, I didn't quit. Where's Adrianna?”

“Milan,” Portia said, drawing out the word to make it clear exactly how she felt about that.

I couldn't care less. “What do you mean, you thought I quit? Why would I quit?”

“Maybe because you didn't show up for work in forever? Where have you been? You look good. Did you go on that cleanse I kept telling you about? Because I am on day two, and I have to tell you—­”

“I was kidnapped, Portia. I didn't go on a cleanse. Did
anybody
think to call the police?”

“You said you hated all of us, and then you left for coffee. When you didn't come back, we figured you'd quit.” Portia twitched her shoulders up, then down. “I mean, it's not like you're getting kidnapped every other day now, Girl. Blaze is in Miami.”

“Yeah, this guy apparently didn't know that.” I ran a hand over my face, trying to gather my bearings. “Can I talk to Angus?”

“He's not here.” Portia moved back behind the desk. “He's in New York, and he'll be there for the rest of the week. Fashion week's in two months, you know that. But I'll leave a note on his desk that you stopped by.

“Can't you just put him on the phone?”

“Ooh, you know he doesn't answer his phone in New York.” She picked up a Post-­it note and started writing, her nails scratching against the paper in a way that made my ears itch. When she looked up, she almost looked apologetic. “But, um, he gave your job away.”

“What?”

“He promoted one of the girls from the mail room. And she whines less than you did, so I think he likes her more even if she's . . .” Portia bit her lower lip and her expression edged even closer to sympathetic. My stomach dropped to my knees. “She's kind of stupid? But even then, I don't think you're going to get your job back. I'll leave him a note, though, let him know you dropped by. Seriously, you have to tell me—­where did you go? Secret gym?”

I had to swallow hard as hot tears threatened to build up. There was no way in hell I was going to cry in front of Portia. I might have liked her best out of the office, but I still wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. “I was kidnapped, and I'm probably dying,” I said. And they'd given my job away without bothering to get in touch at all. It just
figured.
“Thanks a lot for the sympathy.”

“You don't look like you're dying.”

“Well, that's a relief,” I said, and headed for the elevator. I waited until the doors dinged closed behind me before I finally sniffled and wiped away a tear. I hadn't liked the job. I hadn't liked the ­people. I hadn't even liked the work.

So why did losing it hurt so much?

 

Chapter Seven

A
FTER THE OFFICE,
I stewed.

Losing your cell phone and wallet during a kidnapping is always a long process, but thankfully I'd been through it before. I decided to skip the police station for now and go to an internet café not too far from my old office instead. Faint hunger made itself known by the time I paid for an hour and logged onto one of the machines in the back. I checked my bank accounts to make sure Dr. Mobius hadn't drained them like the Earl of Pain had once, and then I dug in to do my research.

Searching Dr. Mobius's name led to nothing but physics theories. There was no mention of a prison break from Detmer, no past history for the guy. I suspected that he'd given me a false name, but even searching through the supervillain database based on his looks, I couldn't find him. The only reference I found to anything related to my kidnapping was a brief blurb in a police blotter from four days ago that there had been an altercation in one of the suburbs: a hit-­and-­run.

I distinctly remembered that minivan hitting me. After that? Not so much.

Since the next step would be to hunt down the dispatcher who took the call, and I had other matters to take care of, I switched gears and opened up my e-­mail. Jeremy's name was still listed as one of the top contacts in my book, which told me I really needed to make some new friends.

Jeremy,
I wrote,
can't talk because I don't have a cell phone yet, but I need help. Please get back to me ASAP with your number so I can call
.

That was nice and cryptic, I thought with a sigh as I sent the e-­mail. By the time my hour was almost up, there was no reply from Jeremy—­maybe he wasn't using that address anymore?—­and I'd canceled my credit cards and had started the process to get new ones. Another quick search on Mobius gave me nothing, but then, I wasn't a researcher, I didn't know how to find these ­people.

I did, however, know of one person who did.

I ran a search for Crap About Capes and was surprised to see that the blog was indeed real and looked pretty professional. A selfie of Naomi on the sidebar mocked me as I paged through the bio section. She was a freelance writer for a ­couple of the local papers, had a guest editorial spot on the Domino, and generally seemed in the know about all matters pertaining to superheroes. She had a public e-­mail listed on the site, so I typed up a quick missive.

She replied in less than a minute:
omg been trying to get in touch. did you get kidnapped again??? that means my story won't be happening?

No
, I wrote back,
and you jinxed me, you—­
I backspaced before I could type several of the less-­than-­flattering insults that floated to mind. Taking a deep breath, I said,
You owe me for that. Can you meet me somewhere? Need help. Promise a pretty good story.

following a lead. meet later?

I can come to you. Kind of urgent.

She e-­mailed back an address, and I sent a confirmation with my last thirty seconds of time. I grabbed two gyros from a street stand and kept the hunger at bay at least a little while as I made the trip across town. The address she'd given me was a bank, one I recognized. I'd been a customer there until the fifth or sixth time some lunatic with a bomb had held the place hostage to get to Blaze. They'd politely asked me to take my business somewhere else after that.

I found her inside the bank, arguing with a woman in a nice pantsuit. The lobby was a fancy throwback to another century, with vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and an air of snootiness that was hard to fake in a newer building. Standing back so as not to interrupt Naomi, I looked around and wondered exactly what kind of story she was checking out.

As luck would have it, I got my answer comically fast.

The doors behind me blew inward from the force of a kick. Two men in camouflage and tactical vests stormed in and sprayed the ceiling with bullets. Instantly, the air filled with screams of the patrons and bankers alike. Naomi flinched, turning toward the commotion.

I'd been in far too many holdups, though, to not know what would happen next. So I tackled Naomi during a second spate of gunfire and dragged her behind a kiosk while the woman she had been arguing with scrambled for safety. Naomi looked at me with wide eyes. “G-­Girl?”

“Shh,” I said. I chanced a glance around the kiosk. We hadn't been noticed yet, but it was only a matter of time. Was there a possibility any of us could crawl to safety? There was ten feet of space between us and the exit, but it might as well have been a mile.

“This is a stickup!” the man on the left shouted, as both men strode into the bank like they owned the place. “Cell phones on the ground in front of you, now! Don't you dare push that.” The latter was directed at a teller obviously reaching for the silent alarm.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Naomi said. She whispered it over and over. “I
knew
it.”

“Knew what?” I hissed at Naomi, as we watched the men kick cell phones away from ­people across the bank. This really was just my luck, wasn't it? Maybe the patron saint of hostages was trying to get my attention. It was beyond ridiculous.

“It's her. It's got to be her,” Naomi said.

“Her?” Both of the bank robbers looked male to me.

“Ch-­Chelsea.” Naomi's entire body had begun to shake. Her notepad had a picture of Snoopy on it, which seemed like a strange choice in stationery.

I gave her a long look. “I'm going to guess that's not your ex-­girlfriend.”

“No.” She laughed, but there wasn't much humor in the noise. “Definitely not.”

“We have about twenty seconds before we're discovered by the goons over there,” I said, and grabbed Naomi's arm. She flinched, so I loosened my grip a little. “Who's Chelsea?”

“She's—­she's a new supervillain, but nobody else is paying attention to her because she hasn't taken up a villain name yet. I keep writing about her, and I don't think she likes that too much.”

“You must lead an interesting life.”

She eyed me up and down, and I remembered that I had the new physique. “Same to you,” she said.

Before I could reply, one of the robbers rounded the corner. I saw the gun, just a black flash of it, and my body moved without letting my mind catch up. The toe of my boot dug into the marble as I surged forward. I hit him in the thick midsection with my shoulder. He let out an “oof!”

We crashed to the marble floor together. I'd never had a gymnastics lesson in my life, but somehow I rolled right back up to my feet. It took me a second to realize it, but when I looked down, his gun was in my hand.

Naomi gaped. “What the
hell
?”

I had no idea either. The gun was heavy, not only physically, but with the thought of what I could do with it. Belatedly, I aimed it at the man. “Don't move.”

He languidly reached down and pulled a pistol free from his hip, pointing it at Naomi. “Drop it,” he said.

I could see rings of white all the way around Naomi's eyes. Shaking, I set my gun on the ground and kicked it away from both of us.

“Good choice,” the man said. He had a faint drawl and he desperately needed a shave. A sheen of sweat covered his face. He pushed himself to his feet, warily, and kept the gun pointed at Naomi. “You, come with me.”

“Wait,” I said. My mouth was so dry, I was amazed I could speak at all. But I stepped forward. “I'm the one you want, right? Hostage Girl?”

“Hos—­Hostage Girl?” He blinked a few times, and my stomach sank. If he was surprised to see me, he really wasn't after me. “Is that really you? What are the odds? Hey, Victor, look who we got here. We took Hostage Girl hostage!”

“What?” came from the other side of the bank. “Is she just here for kicks?”

“I dunno.” The man gestured at Naomi with the gun. “You. Get up.”

She shot me a “See? I told you so!” look as she pushed herself to her feet. Our captor twitched his gun to indicate that we should start walking. Hands up, we moved to the center of the bank. I saw one man near the exit look like he was eyeing the hostage takers' guns, and I prayed he wouldn't try to be a hero.

That never ended well.

The other man, Victor, squinted at our faces. Like the first man, he needed a shave. “What'd you bring her for?” he asked, pointing at me.

“She's Hostage Girl, man. This is kind of her thing.”

Victor sighed. “Whatever, not my problem. The rest of you!” He turned to look at the rest of the bank patrons, all of whom were cowering in various states of terror. “Scram.”

The ­people huddled against the ground needed no more prompting: they raced for the doors en masse. The bank emptied, leaving Naomi and me in the middle of the open lobby with Victor and his friend, whom I decided to call Gary. They didn't instruct us to kneel or put our hands on our heads, nor did they seem terribly fussed about anything though Gary kept checking his watch.

“Who are you?” Naomi asked. “Who do you work for? What do you want?”

“Shut up,” Gary said. He jerked his head at me. “Watch this one. She knocked me down.”

Victor snorted. “How? She weighs like ten pounds.”

“I don't know, but I'm not kidding. Don't mess with her.”

“Whatever. You two, move it.”

Victor grabbed me by the back of the neck, shoving me toward the back offices. I saw Naomi shoot a furtive look in his direction, but I shook my head as tightly as I could. My little feat of gymnastics earlier aside, it was best not to antagonize hostage takers. My life the past ­couple of years had been training enough in that area.

“Ninety seconds,” Victor said, and Gary acknowledged it with a nod.

“What's going on?” Naomi asked.

“Shut up,” Gary said.

“Where are you taking us?”

“Naomi,” I said under my breath.

“This might happen to you a lot, but this is my first time,” she said. “I'm allowed to be curious.”

“Your curiosity is about to get you pistol-­whipped,” Victor said. His grip tightened on the back of my neck. It made the world seem a little . . . off. I couldn't put my finger on how. I could smell the acidic tang of his sweat even more sharply, mingling in the air with the stale scent of an overbrewed pot of coffee from what appeared to be a break room. The light overhead hurt my eyes, like it was suddenly too bright.

When I heard the footsteps, I reacted, turning my head toward the source before any of the other three did.

A woman stepped into view. She took in the scene—­Victor, Gary, Naomi looking terrified but up for anything, and me—­and I felt something of a chill creep up the space between my shoulder blades. She wore all black, but not a tactical suit: simple black pants, a black top, and decently cute boots. I guessed that she was a little older than me, and she was rigidly beautiful. She must be Chelsea.

She regarded all of us dispassionately, her eyes lingering on me. “I only wanted the reporter.”

“But it's Hostage Girl,” Gary said, like he was being helpful. “It's kind of her deal.”

“Those weren't my orders.”

“But . . .” Gary frowned. “Hostage Girl.”

“I hardly care what her name is. She's only another loose end I'll need to tidy up.” She dismissed me with a flick of her fingers and grabbed Naomi by the upper arm. “Watch over the girl—­”

“
Don't
call me that.”

Her eyebrows went up a fraction, but other than that, she ignored me. “—­while I take care of the reporter.”

“Where are you taking me?” Naomi asked, and I hoped the police showed soon. Or, even better, somebody super. Gary and Victor were a decent threat, but something about this Chelsea—­the way she carried herself, like she had every assurance that even the giant guns her hired men held were no threat to her—­told me she had some kind of power. Maybe that was why my skin felt like it was trying to crawl straight off my bones.

Chelsea and Naomi disappeared around a corner.

I looked from Victor to Gary. “Um, I don't suppose you'd be willing just to let me go?”

Victor snorted.

“Worth a shot. When she said ‘take care of the reporter,' do you know what she happened to be talking about?”

“Not our part of the plan. Don't care,” Victor said. He'd yet to relinquish his grip on me.

I looked down the hallway. I'd only known Naomi for a grand total of five minutes, and she'd already jinxed me and gotten me trapped in the most inexplicable bank holdup of my life to date. If I had anything to say about things, this was going to be the end of our acquaintance. I could research my answers elsewhere. But that didn't mean I wanted her to die or anything.

“No, really,” I said. “Any idea at—­”

Down the hallway, a scream cut through the air. In a blink, I'd ducked out of Victor's grip. I sprinted down the hallway. To do what, I didn't know, but if Naomi was hurt—­

Something grabbed me from behind. My stomach pitched as I was lifted off of my feet. I swung hard with my right elbow, the way I'd been taught in the self-­defense class I'd taken (it had proved worthless; when your enemies have super-­strength and super-­speed, you're better off not even trying sometimes). Pain sang up my forearm as my elbow smashed hard into a solid surface, and ripe cursing filled the air. The arms banded around my middle let me go.

I staggered upon landing, but before I could make it two steps, Gary was in front of me, gun pointed at my collarbone. “What the hell are you?” he asked.

I looked down at my arms, which were shaking. Dr. Mobius had turned me into an addict for some kind of compound I'd never heard of, but he hadn't mentioned any side effects. And I'd say being able to take down a guy twice my size was definitely a
side effect.