A New Day (StrikeForce #1) (13 page)

Or maybe I was crazier than I realized.

I looked over at the guy. “He was the one who took the girls?”

“Yeah. But he got away before I could grab him. He’s their stepdad, and he got into a fight with their mom, decided to use them to hurt her. Real asshole,” he added.

“Is he…?”

“Powered. Yeah.” He paused, and it seemed like maybe he was looking at me. “You staying out of trouble?” he finally asked, resting his large hand on the fence next to where I was standing.

“For the moment,” I said. “Why did you say that crap to me?” I blurted out.

“Because it’s true. That’s the thing about living in the shadows. You see all the shit people are trying to hide. You’re trying to hide the wrong side of yourself.” We stood in awkward silence for a few moments, and the guy in the cuffs made a noise. Killjoy (or whoever he was) made a sharp motion with his hand, and the guy went silent again. “You live around here? Or are you robbing someone? Doesn’t seem like your kind of target,” he asked after a moment.

“I live sort of near here.”

“This is what I mean. I don’t get you. Why live in a shithole like this when you undoubtedly can afford better?”

“I’m nuts, probably,” I said, and there was a short huff from him that might have been a laugh.

“Can I come back and see you once I finish with this asshole?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Trying to figure you out, maybe,” he said, and my stomach twisted, my body warmed.

“Well, that’s mutual,” I said.

“So?”

“How about the park down the block?”

“Don’t trust me enough to invite me over?” he asked, and I pieced up a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Are you surprised?”

“Not at all.” He went and hauled the guy up again. “See you in a bit. You’re not gonna stand me up, are you?”

“Nope,” I said, feeling a smile pulling at the sides of my mouth. He nodded, and then he moved, almost too quickly than seemed possible, down the street, into the dark night. I wondered how he planned to get around, hauling a cuffed guy along with him, but eventually I just made my way toward the park again. Here was my chance to figure out whether I even needed to worry about the stuff he’d said to me. If he was crazy, then what the hell did he know about anything? I could ignore him and move on, and chalk up all of my insecurity over my heists to the way he’d surprised me that night, along with my messed up partnership with Damian. I’d see he wasn’t worth taking any advice from, and my life would go back to normal.

An hour later, I was sitting on one of the benches in the small park when I saw his dark form emerge from behind a stand of trees. I’d chosen a bench set out of the way, mostly because he would only draw attention, dressed the way he was. If he was Killjoy, I doubted he would take the mask off. Which was majorly disappointing.

He sat on the bench beside me. “Did you take him to StrikeForce?” I asked him.

“Hell, no,” he said. He leaned back and rested his arm across the back of the bench, behind my back. Warmth emanated from him, and I felt a little shiver go up my spine.

“Why not? Isn’t that their thing?”

“StrikeForce is the last place I’d put anybody,” he said.

I looked at him, wishing I could see his eyes. “Why?”

“That place is a mess. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Yeah. Trust me. You already kind of do, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I could fly away at any second. Punch you and knock you out,” I shrugged. “There’s not a whole lot of danger here for me.”

“No?” he asked, and there was that tiny accent, that hint of amusement. I wondered if he was smirking under the mask. I bet he was.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“You won’t show me your face and you have yet to tell me who you are, despite seeming to know everything about me,” I said.

“Ah. Well. My face is nothing special and I’m not entirely sure I trust you yet, darling.”

“I’m totally trustworthy,” I said with a grin, and there it was: an actual laugh. Deep, rough. I felt warmth shoot through me at the sound of it. It was a good laugh.

He shook his head. “Says the thief. The super villain,” he added.

“I’m not a super villain.”

“Well, you’re definitely not a run-of-the-mill villain. Give yourself a little credit,” he said, and I laughed. “Quite the opposite, actually,” he added.

“So you took that guy… where? You didn’t take him to StrikeForce, so what does that leave?”

“I have a few friends in low places. Handed him over to have him taken to another facility.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Annoying,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Will you answer?”

“Depends on what it is.”

I took a breath. “Why haven’t you just taken me in, then?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I already answered that. I think you’re worth more. You can be more. I don’t think you’re too far gone yet.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Now it’s your turn to answer something for me,” he said.

“Depends on what it is,” I said, parroting his own words back to him, and was rewarded with a low chuckle.

“Fair enough. Tell me how this shit started with you. I can guess enough. You grew up poor. You and your mother struggled. I know she has health problems. I’m guessing you saw it as a way to help her.”

I nodded, wondering why I was ready to kill Damian at the barest mention of my mother, yet this guy who wouldn’t even give me his name elicited some kind of trust. I really did need to maybe try to figure out what was wrong with me. My sense of judgment sucked.

Maybe this was what happened when you spent too much of your life not letting anyone get to know you. Maybe you ended up spilling your guts to weird guys on park benches because you’d spent the past few weeks remembering a few quiet, unsettling words.

“That was pretty much it,” I said, wanting to tell him, stupid as it was, wanting someone to understand. “We lost our house, and my Mama worked her ass off trying to keep us fed and happy. It wasn’t easy. And then she started getting sicker, and the insulin and dialysis weren’t cheap… this was before everyone had health care,” I added, and he nodded. “And then she got hit by a drunk driver on her way home from work one night. It was shortly after the first Confluence. I was fourteen. She needed all of these surgeries, medicines, therapy. It was insane. So the bills started piling up. They took our car. I just remember her coming home from her second job when she should have still been in bed, and trying to sell stuff on eBay to scrape together a few dollars.” I paused. “I stared shoplifting when I was maybe ten. Out of spite, really. After her accident, I started picking pockets. Only problem with that is that not everyone carries cash, and it’s too easy to get caught.”

“Were you ever?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I was always good at being sneaky.”

“When did the house robbing start?”

I took a breath. “I was in high school. Dating this jock from Grosse Pointe. I heard him say the wrong thing about my Mama when he thought I wasn’t listening,” I felt heat creep up my neck, my face. It was a mixture of remembered anger and talking to him, this person who could have been anybody. “He and his family went on a trip to Hawaii for spring break, and I cleaned their house out while they were gone,” I finished.

“Did they ever suspect you?”

I shook my head. “We kept dating for a few months afterward. I let him break up with me, rather than breaking up with him. Nobody even looked at me twice.” I leaned forward, rested my forearms on my knees. “It was so easy. And I got so much, and I was able to pay some of Mama’s bills on the sly. It just seemed stupid not to do it again.”

“You got really good at it.”

I nodded. And then I laughed. “You’re probably wearing a wire or something, and I just confessed everything to you.”

“No wire. If the situation was different, I’d be more than happy to let you search me for one.”

I blushed and looked away.

A few awkward moments crawled by, and then he cleared his throat. “I’ve been there. Never went the stealing route, but my grandma didn’t have a lot. To this day, an empty cabinet stresses me out.” He paused, and I nodded. “It’s weird, the shit you start to do when you’ve been poor. Do you keep ketchup packets from fast food places?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Ketchup can make even the worst thing taste better,” I said, and he nodded.

“Right. Salt, too. And you can’t buy shit like that when you’re wondering if you can even afford bread or flour or whatever that week.” He paused again. “You start hoarding other bizarre shit, stuff any normal person doesn’t even think about.”

“What do you hoard?” I asked him, sitting up and looking at where I imagined his eyes to be.

“Canned goods and bandages. My grandma cut herself once, and we didn’t have a bandaid in the house. I remember her wrapping toilet paper around the cut, and the paper stuck to the sore and she had to pick it out later… I don’t know why. That stayed with me.”

We sat in silence a few moments.

“Socks,” I said after a moment.

He glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. “Socks?”

I nodded. He sat back, head turned toward me like he was listening. “Most of my clothes when I was a kid came from Goodwill, and I had nice stuff, because Mama was really good at grabbing stuff that was like new. Shoes, she bought me new, because she has a foot thing… they kind of gross her out, so she didn’t like the idea of used shoes,” I added, and he nodded again, and it felt completely alien to me to be talking about this to someone. Anyone, let alone this stranger in his mask. Once I started, though, it came out in a flood, as if I’d been dying for someone to ask me about it. I was almost giddy, just from the act of letting go of things that I’d held close for so long. “Shoes, even the cheap ones, were a strain on the budget. I spent a lot of time in shoes I outgrew, because I didn’t want Mama to know I needed new ones.”

“Socks, though. Nobody sees socks. I mean, nobody sees underwear either, but you have to have at least a few clean pairs around. Socks, not so much. I can remember for a long time, I had two pairs of socks. And they’d get holy and threadbare over time, and Mama would sew them, but it got to the point where the fabric was so thin on the bottoms from being worn so often that there was nothing to sew. It was winter, and we were this close to having our power turned off. We’ve been shut off before, but during the winter, in a trailer… not something you want. So I had the same two pairs of socks, and I’d wash that day’s pair in the sink, let it dry, and wear my other pair to school the next day. The toes got so holy, so thin, I just started folding them under so my toes wouldn’t poke through them inside my shoes. I hate the way that feels.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

“My second robbery, right after I paid off these medical bills that were stressing Mama out, I went to Target and I bought all these different socks. Packs of them. I still do it. I have all different colors, weights, lengths. If you were to open my dresser, my sock drawer looks like a sock store went out of business or something, all of these socks, lined up in perfect little rows. And I feel a little nuts every time I open that drawer, but only for a second because right after, I just feel relief. I have socks. How bad can life really be?”

He leaned over and bumped my arm with his, and then we sat in silence for a few moments. Then he stood up, and I looked up at him in surprise.

“I should go,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I mean… I don’t want to, especially.” He looked down at me.

“Okay.”

“But I have this thing I have to do.”

I nodded. “Does it involve bringing a team to come and take me in now that I’ve confessed my crimes?” I asked.

“Not even close,” he said. His tone was serious, even though I’d been joking.

We stood in awkward silence for a while, and he didn’t seem like he wanted to go.

“I’m glad you told me that,” he said in a low voice, and I nodded, face flushed. I felt like a moron for opening up to him like that. “Hey,” he said.

I looked up at him.

“I’m glad to know you better. I want to know more.”

I didn’t know what to say again, which was new to me. I’m the one who’s always ready with a wisecrack.

He stepped closer, and my heart started beating wildly in my chest.

“I’ll see you around, Jolene,” he said, and my body warmed. The way he said my name… unf.

I realized that I was nuts. In that moment, I just couldn’t seem to care.

“Okay,” I managed.

“Well. Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“I’ll walk you home.”

I let out a small laugh. “I’m the super villain here. I don’t think I need an escort.”

“Well. Then humor me. Let me feel useful for a minute,” he said, and it sounded like he was smiling.

“You just want to know where I live so you can keep tabs on me.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked as we walked.

I shrugged. “Though I guess that based on everything you already know about me, you probably know exactly where I live and what apartment I’m in.”

“No,” he said.

I glanced over at him.

“I stopped tracking you well before that night. It was luck that I ran into you that night. Saw you leave the coffee shop,” he added.

“And this was luck, tonight?”

“I’d call it lucky, yeah. Unless you’re regretting talking to me?” His accent was more pronounced, somehow, when he asked questions. Maybe that was why I’d answered so easily.

Yes, that’s it. Blame anything other than my own stupidity and the way I’d fantasized about what was under the mask. Perfect.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said quietly, and we walked in silence until we reached my apartment building.

“This place is almost as pathetic looking as my apartment,” he said.

“Rent’s cheap,” I answered with a shrug. “Um. Take care. Don’t suppose you want to tell me your name, or anything like that?”

He shook his head. “Not likely. It’s no fun telling you everything up front. Besides, it’ll give you a reason to want to talk to me again,” he said, and I could tell from his voice that he was likely smiling. Stupidly, I found myself smiling back.