A New Day (StrikeForce #1) (10 page)

“Jolene,” Damian said, and I shook myself out of it, rubbed my arms, trying to warm myself. This was different. I could walk away any time I wanted. And when I was ready, I would.

“I was thinking, after this job is over, maybe we can come back here and watch a movie or something? We can hang out. I’d like to know more about you,” he said, and I got up and went over to the window. “Or not,” he added, an edge to his voice that I hadn’t heard there before.

“I think that the less we know about one another, the better,” I said, looking at the window, watching his reflection. He shook his head, leaned his elbows on the table.

“When are you going to trust me?” he asked.

“I don’t do the trust thing. We’ve established that already, I thought.”

“We’re partners. You really need to get over this.”

I took a breath. “About that…”

“Don’t,” he said, and I turned around to look at him.

“Don’t, what?” I asked, aware now of the tightening in my stomach, the adrenaline rush, the immediate “fight or flight” thing that had been my response for most of my life. Usually, it came to “fight,” and I was fine with that. Mostly.

“Don’t start talking about splitting up the team already. We’re just getting started.”

“We’re doing too many jobs. I never did this many. I did one a month, maybe two—“

“Yes, but it’s not just you anymore. You have your goals, and I have mine.”

“Yeah, and your goals are a hell of a lot more expensive than mine, I think,” I said, voice raised a little when he started to interrupt me. I crossed my arms over my chest. Three weeks, and we’d already had this discussion twice, about the rate of our jobs, about the concept of “enough.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I knew he was thinking. Trying to find a way to finesse me into his point of view, most likely. After a few moments, he blew out a breath and looked at me. “You’re not thinking big enough. Whatever it is you’re doing with the money, and I think I know what it is, you could go bigger. You could do more.”

“And risk someone starting to ask questions,” I argued. “The whole reason this has worked for me so well, for so long, is that I’m not stupid. Other than a few slip-ups, I’ve done my best not to be noticed. And that goes for the robberies themselves as well as what I do afterward. And you don’t get that. You were raised with money, you’ve got this house… you go throwing money around, and no one will give it a second thought. Me? All anyone would wonder is ‘where the hell did she get that kind of money?’ And I don’t want anyone wondering about me.”

“You are so damn scared of everything,” he said. He shook his head as if he was deeply disappointed in me.

“Because I am. Fear makes me careful.”

“Or it holds you back,” he argued.

I was sick of the conversation already. We were delving too far into sharing our goals and dreams for my liking and he was starting to piss me off. I looked away, out the window.

He cursed under his breath, then ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to get into all this shit,” he said. I didn’t answer. “Yes, my goals are more expensive than yours, maybe. But you benefit, too. The people you want to help benefit. Your mother benefits—“

“Leave my mother out of this,” I said quietly, slowly. I turned my head and looked him straight in the eye, and he was the first one to look away.

“I didn’t mean it in any way other than to say, you’re doing it. You’re helping her. What we do together is helping.”

I turned back to the window. “Don’t pretend to care about that.”

I heard him sigh, and then I heard footsteps as he started pacing across the library. He did that a lot, and I was finding it more annoying with each passing day. “You’re right. I don’t care about it, but you do. And you’re doing it.” Then he laughed. “What are the odds I’d finally take on a partner, and it’s one who has the screwiest sense of honor I’ve ever heard of?”

I bit my lip. Took a breath.

“After this one tonight, I want to cut back some. You did this before on your own. You want to do more jobs, do them without me. Save the big or tricky ones for the ones we do together. But little shit like last week? That armored car? You could have done that on your own.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have gotten a cut of it,” he said. After a moment, he shrugged. “It’s convenient having your help. It makes my life simpler. But if it’s cut back or lose you as a partner completely, then I’ll cut back on our team jobs. Okay? I know a guy who’s looking to partner up. Maybe I’ll start doing some side jobs with him.”

I nodded. Took a breath. “If you ever rat me out, so help me I will kill you myself,” I told him, meeting his eyes. “And we both know I can.”

He didn’t look away. “I know you can, and I don’t doubt that you would try it. I don’t know how many times I can tell you that you can trust me. Yeah, my plans are different from yours, and I’m a little annoyed that I thought I was all set and now I’m not, but—“

“What are your plans?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We don’t have a sharing type of partnership, Jolene.”

“Is it something I’m going to hate having had a hand in?”

“I don’t think so.”

I watched him, and he shook his head again. “You know I was raised rich, and I’m sure you’re already thinking ‘oh, boo-hoo, poor little rich boy’s gonna tell me about his struggles.’”

He wasn’t wrong. It was almost exactly what was going through my head. I just shrugged.

“And I didn’t struggle. Not the way you likely did. But I spent a lot of time alone, and then, as soon as my mom left, my dad shipped me off to boarding school.” He laughed. “I loved it there. Freedom. Nobody watching me every second. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I had to tiptoe around and try not to be noticed, try not to bother anyone. I could be whatever I wanted.”

I nodded.

“There’s nothing like that for kids with powers,” he said.

“Are there many?” I asked. It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to.

“There are some. Do you have any idea how easy it is to open up an educational center in this state? And the laws are even more lax when it comes to powered people. Honestly, it’s like they just want to pretend we don’t exist.” I could tell that he was warming up to talking about it. He started talking faster, moving his hands around, making more animated gestures. “I read about these girls in Wisconsin who got expelled from their public school because they were supposedly a danger to the other kids. And then they got kicked out of their homes.”

“That’s rough,” I said.

“Yeah. They lived on the streets for years, begging for food and money. Took to robbing places, pickpocketing.”

“What happened to them?”

“StrikeForce arrested them. Last I was able to find out about them. StrikeForce says that they served their time and are living new lives, with new names.”

“Well. At least StrikeForce managed to do something for them,” I said. “Unlike the usual, you know?”

He nodded. “Maybe. But how much better would it have been if they’d had a place to come to when they were kids? Or if there had been a place for their parents to ship them off to, the way my father shipped me off?”

“So… that’s your plan? Open up a boarding school for powered kids?”

He nodded.

“That’s surprisingly altruistic of you. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Well, I don’t. They’ll all be well versed in the art of thievery.”

I scrunched up my face. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

He shrugged.

I closed my eyes. “You know what? I don’t want to know. Let’s go back to our ‘no sharing’ rule now.”

He shuffled through some newspapers on the table. “If you say so. You ready? There’s money sitting out there with my name on it.”

A few minutes later, we left the house in silence, then split up. I flew away once I was a few blocks from his house, out of the sight of any nosy neighbors who may have been watching, and then walked to a corner store where we’d planned to meet up. We’d walk together from there, then fly to our target, which was another bank in the northern suburbs.

It took us a little over fifteen minutes to get there, and, light though Damian was, my arms were grateful when I was finally able to put him down. Flying and carrying him was convenient, but not exactly the most elegant way to go. We landed a few blocks away, behind a grocery store that was closed for the night.

“Jolene,” he whispered when we landed.

“Yeah?”

“I was kind of an asshole earlier. I know you hate it when I bring your personal life up. I’m sorry.”

I stopped and looked up at him. “And I’m sorry I can’t be the kind of partner you want,” I said. “I’m just not made that way.”

“I know,” he said, glancing down. “We’ll work it out.“

“Yes, we will. Meaning that when I say ‘nope,’ that’s it. Right?” I asked, and he rolled his eyes. We finished donning our disguises as we hid near the dumpsters behind the grocery store. I wrapped my face and pulled up my hood, and he pulled on a black ski mask and gloves. “Let’s go. You have a closet that isn’t filled with stuff somewhere in that big house, don’t you?”

He let out a short laugh, and I felt myself relax a little, felt that edge of excitement that came from the thrill of planning a heist. I can only imagine that it’s how athletes feel before a big game, or, maybe how it feels right before you’re about to kiss the love of your life. Crazy, exhilarating, out of control. The world both seems to slow down and speed up, all at the same time. It’s beautiful. It was life, and even with all of the stress Damian brought into my life, I still loved this part.

We took to the air again once we got close to the bank. “After you,” he murmured, and I shoved the doors open, breaking the metal grates and the multiple locks as easily as if I’d been pushing open a screen door. Alarms started going off, lights flashing, and Damian strode past me, calmly speaking in a low voice that sounded more like a series of clicks and weird buzzing noises than actual words. The first time he’d done it, it had freaked me out because I wondered if he was having some kind of fit or something. But this was his thing. This was him, “talking” to the electronics and other devices in the building, breaking in to the safe and other systems, making it easy for us and, hopefully, buying us time.

“Here we go,” he said. He pulled the door to the safe open, and we rushed in and started grabbing whatever we could. Bags, stacks of money, whatever. I filled my pockets but mostly focused on watching for our friendly local police officers. Or StrikeForce, who we expected to show up all the time, but hadn’t managed to put a damper on one of our jobs yet.

They managed to show up after the fact, talking about what a menace we were. They knew about Damian from before, I guess, because when they talked on the news, they lamented the fact that the two super villains doing the most damage currently in Detroit had teamed up together. Him, they’d started referring to as “Virus” after they started piecing together how he’d committed his crimes over the years.

Me? I was still “the burglar.”

Ah, well. I was the one who’d wanted anonymity.

“Twenty-seven seconds,” I said to Damian. We tried to get in and out of any building within a half a minute, which was usually before we chanced any run-ins with law enforcement. Not that Damian especially cared, but I didn’t want to risk having a physical confrontation with anyone.

“Let’s go,” he said, grabbing one more bag from the sturdy metal shelves. We ran out of the building, stepping out the front door just as the first few police cars pulled up, bright headlights and spotlights washing over the front facade of the bank, bathing both of us in white light.

“On the ground with your hands up,” one of them said through a megaphone.

I heard Damian let out a low laugh, and then I was grabbing him under the arms, hoisting him and his multiple bags of cash into the air. The officer shouted through the megaphone at us, and then I heard a bullet whiz past my head. I wasn’t surprised, exactly, that they were shooting at us. The rules of engagement for officers facing powered people were different than for non-powered people. The general gist of it was: use whatever force necessary to take us down, and if you do take us down, probably better if we end up dead. In that way, I guess StrikeForce was the lesser of two evils.

Another shot narrowly missed my thigh, and I ducked, hard, to the opposite side.

“Holy shit,” I shouted.

“Fly faster,” Damian said. “Higher.”

I did. Soon, the staccato sound of guns firing faded away. No more bullets whipped past me, and I flew higher into the cold night sky, relieved to get some cloud cover between them and us.

“This is exactly why we need to slow down. Too risky,” I said.

“Let’s not. Okay?” he grunted, and we flew for a while in silence. We had to dodge the occasional police helicopter out looking, almost surely, for us. It wasn’t hard to do. My main concern was that one of the flying StrikeForce members might track us down, but so far, we’d been lucky.

I didn’t like to keep pushing our chances.

I didn’t feel like doing it anymore.

The realization hit me out of nowhere. I’d always loved pulling these heists. The thrill of the job, the exhilaration during and afterward, the nice, fat payday after a job well done.

Maybe it was because of him. Maybe I just didn’t like being responsible for someone else. But as I flew, I wondered if it was more than that.

I shook it off, and worked on flying, fast, keeping a grip on Damian.

“Shit,” I heard him say.

“What?”

“We’re being followed. Nightbane,” Damian said, and I gritted my teeth, started flying faster, pushing myself. The only thing I knew about Nightbane is that he could fly. It was enough to make him a definite danger; the air was our safe harbor.

“He’s gaining.”

I pushed harder, holding Damian tightly. I maneuvered, cut hard, trying to shake Nightbane in the dark sky.

“Still on you,” Damian said, looking behind us. “Shit.”

I dodged, spun, changed direction.

“He’s almost here. Drop me,” Damian said, and I ignored him and flew faster, harder, putting all of my energy into flying forward.