Nightingale (27 page)

“He said he’d saved you from an ubervillain. That you were fine and you’d wake up in a few hours,” Piper said, sipping her hot chocolate. “He was even nice enough to give me his autograph to add to my collection.”

I glanced at the TV. Just after seven in the morning. The anchors on SNN did their usual early morning banter before sending things over to the news desk.

“Now, you want to tell me what you did last night, Abby?” Piper asked. “I already know
who
you did.”

“Shut up,” I growled. “It wasn’t like that.”

Even though I’d wished it had been.
 

I told her about Bandit confronting me on the street, then chasing me. How Talon had come to my rescue, taken me to his superhero lair, and agreed to let me help him find the missing flash drive.

Piper’s brown eyes grew brighter with every word. “How romantic!” she squealed.
 

I winced and gave her a pointed look.

“Sorry. And they say chivalry is dead. Not when Talon’s around, it’s not.” Piper stared at me. “So, did you use this opportunity to tell him who you really are? That you’re his much-sought-after mystery lady? His one, his only Nightingale?”

“Of course not,” I said, horrified she’d even suggest it.

“You’re going about this all wrong, Abby.”

Rascal rolled over. Piper sneezed and scratched his snow-white belly.
 

“You should just tell Talon who you really are—and that you know his secret identity too. That way, the two of you can figure out what Bandit is up to together—and see if you have enough chemistry for more than a one-night stand. Besides, it’s not good to lie to people. It’s just not good karma.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve been looking at your Mr. Sage thought-a-day calendar again.”

She shrugged and sniffled into a tissue. “We can all learn a thing or two from superheroes.”

Piper lived her life like she was a superhero. She firmly believed in truth, justice, and all that jazz. Lying, fibbing, or telling half truths to make things easier wasn’t something Piper approved of, although she’d do it when absolutely necessary.
 

“You should tell him, Abby,” she said, her voice softer. “I know how much you like him. You practically glow whenever you talk about him.”

“I know, I know,” I muttered. “I do like him, but I just can’t bring myself to tell him the truth. That I’m Wren. What if he takes one look at me and wonders what he was thinking the other night? What if he’s like Ryan?”

“Then Wesley’s not worth your time or energy—leather suit or no leather suit,” Piper pronounced.
 

I bit my lip and looked away. On SNN, men dressed in white protective suits and masks hauled body bags out of an alley and put them into a van bearing the words
Animal Control
on the side.

“Turn the TV up,” I said, my eyes fixed on the screen. “Right now.”

Piper grabbed the remote and hit the volume button.

“… And we go out to Kelly Caleb, who’s on the scene of a breaking story. Kelly, what’s the situation?” the anchor said.

Kelly Caleb stared into the camera, her blue eyes dark and serious. “A city sanitation worker made a gruesome discovery this morning. While collecting trash from this alley, he stumbled across the bodies of about fifty cats and dogs, many of them only a few weeks old. Officials don’t know where the animals came from, but Chief Sean Newman of the Bigtime Police Department said they believe the bodies have been here for a few days, hidden by the snow ...”

As Kelly provided more background on her story, the screen showed footage from earlier in the morning. The camera zoomed in on the body of a puppy who looked a lot like Rascal. The puppy’s eyes were closed, and it almost looked like it was sleeping. The sight sickened me.

“That’s right around the block from my office, from Fiona’s store,” Piper said.

“That’s where you found Rascal, isn’t it?” I whispered.

The puppy barked at the sound of his name. I picked him up and hugged him to my chest.
 

“How did you know?”

I told her the rest of the story. How Talon had broken into Tycoon’s headquarters. How he’d discovered that the mob boss had been experimenting on animals. The interest Bandit had shown in Rascal and the puppy’s vicious reaction to him.

Piper eyed the puppy, who’d decided to go to sleep in my arms. “And Talon thinks Rascal is one of those dogs?”

I nodded. “He said he was going to take some blood to try to confirm it. Although he said he didn’t know if he could without the information on the flash drive.”

“The drive you picked up in the alley.”

I nodded.

“Do you still have it?”

“Let me check.”

I handed Rascal to her. Piper sneezed violently three times, but the puppy slept on. I retrieved my coat and dug through the pockets. The silver flash drive was inside, just as I’d left it. I couldn’t quite believe that I still had it and that Talon hadn’t felt it when he’d put my coat back on my body.
 

“Is that it?” Piper asked.

I nodded.

“Well, let’s see what’s on it, and why everyone wants it so badly.”

#

Piper flipped on her laptop, stuck the flash drive in the appropriate slot, and hit a few buttons. The computer’s gears ground together as the machine tried to read the flash drive. Piper typed in some commands. Numbers, letters, and other coded gibberish flashed on the screen, and a window popped up wanting a login and a password.
 

She shook her head. “It’s encrypted. There’s no way I can open it.”

I sighed. I’d been dreaming when I thought it would be this easy. That we could just read the information on the drive, find out who Tycoon was, and anonymously give the information to Talon and the police.

Maybe I should just tell Talon who I was. Maybe I should take a chance he was really the great guy he seemed to be. Maybe I should do a lot of things. I wrinkled my nose. Like take a shower. I smelled like sleeping gas and dried blood, and Rascal’s tongue bath hadn’t helped. Plus, the warm water would help soothe the aches and pains I’d gotten from my adventures last night.

Piper tapped her fingers against her lip. “But I might know someone who could open it for us. Or rather, Fiona does.”

“Fiona? What does Fiona know about computers?”

The only things Fiona seemingly cared about were her clothes, food, and her fiancé, Johnny Bulluci. That was all she’d talked about a few weeks ago when she’d come in to discuss plans for her engagement party and upcoming wedding.

“Not much,” Piper said. “Although she can break plenty of them. The woman’s stronger than she looks. I asked her to unplug a cord for me, and she ripped it right out of the wall—along with the outlet. But Fiona has a friend, Lulu something. She came in the last time our system went down. Our tech guy worked on the problem for two hours and got nowhere, but she had it up and running in ten minutes. It was amazing, especially when Lulu told Fiona the whole system was a piece of junk—and Fiona didn’t throw her out of the store.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Fiona didn’t let her have it?”

Piper shook her head. “Nope. She just let Lulu talk to her like that. I couldn’t believe it either.”

Fiona never let anyone get the best of her. If you pissed her off, she let you know about it—in a hurry.
 

“Can you call Fiona and get Lulu’s number?”

Piper glanced at her Swifte clock. “Are you kidding? It’s not even eight yet. Fiona is
not
a morning person. She usually doesn’t roll into the office until after ten. Even then, I normally don’t speak to her until lunchtime. At least, not without food in hand.”

I tapped my fingers against my knee, more than a little impatient. I wanted to know what was on the flash drive—right
now
. But calling Fiona and bugging her wouldn’t do any good. I knew from past experience that the fashion designer did things when she wanted to. Like Kyle Quicke, she had a remarkable ability to tune me out.

“It’s just as well,” I said. “We need to go by my loft first anyway. I want to see how much damage Bandit did.”

Chapter Twenty

I took a shower, threw on some clothes I kept at Piper’s, and went over to my building.

Bandit had been telling the truth when he said he’d ransacked my loft. Actually, ransacked wasn’t the right word. Decimated was more like it.

Standing in the doorway staring at the mess, I was shocked and horrified. Bandit had ripped the furniture to pieces. Drawers had been yanked out of my desk; their contents upended on the floor. He apparently put his fist through all of them, searching for secret compartments. The couch cushions had been shredded. Down feathers and cotton stuffing covered the floor like soft piles of snow. The light fixtures had been ripped out of their sockets and smashed, and the floorboards pried up. He’d pulled the doors off my closet and rummaged through my clothes and shoes. Several of my vests lay crumpled on the floor, the khaki fabric crisscrossed with cuts where he’d slashed into them, trying to see what was inside.

Bandit had even dug into the boxes I hadn’t unpacked, dumping their contents on the floor. Books, papers, dishes, towels. It was a broken, jumbled mess—one Rascal found to be the perfect playground. The puppy grabbed one of my socks and wrestled with it while Piper stood aghast in the middle of the destroyed loft.

I’d sunk almost all of my money into the loft, to have a soundproof oasis shutting out the rest of the world, but Bandit had destroyed my peace, ripped it away from me. I felt sick and violated.

The worst thing was what the ubervillain had done to my music collection. Bandit had tipped over my entertainment center, spilling CDs across the floor. He’d opened every case; I guess to check and make sure they held what they were supposed to and that I hadn’t copied the flash drive onto one of them.

Then the bastard had broken the discs—every single one.

All my rock music. My jazz collection. The pop tunes, the disco beats, the classical arrangements. All gone. He’d even smashed my laptop and iPod and the albums I’d collected over the years. The bastard.

“Well, look at the bright side,” Piper said, her voice far too cheery for my liking. “Bandit did your unpacking for you.”

“Yeah, great,” I muttered and kicked a cracked CD case with my boot.
 

“He actually did you a favor dumping everything out in the open like this. It’s no problem. We can have this place clean in a few hours. Sparkling. Spick-and-span. It’ll be fun!” Piper chirped.

I gave her a sour look. Neat freak didn’t begin to describe the depths of Piper’s depravity. She organized her underwear by size, color, and frequency of use.
 

I, on the other hand, had better things to do, like find out what was on Talon’s flash drive and finish planning the event for his alter ego, Wesley Weston. I whipped out my cell phone and called Chloe.

“Hey, Abby,” Chloe said.
 

“How did the party end last night?”

“Everything went fine,” she said. “There were a few incidents, but I handled them all.”

I gripped the phone tighter. “Incidents? What sort of
incidents
?”

“Well, Fiera started juggling fireballs and accidentally toasted the banner strung up in the jail. But Chief Newman grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it out before it spread, almost like he knew she was going to light it up. Peter Potter got sloshed and had a few words with Octavia, but I broke it up before it got too out of hand, stuffed him in a limo, and sent him home. A few people started saying catty things about Berkley, complaining his name was on everything in the city. Joanne didn’t like that. I thought she was going to leap onto one woman and punch her, but this tall guy with an earring pulled her away before too many feelings were hurt.”
 

Out-of-control superheroes. Drunken businessmen. Catfights. Pretty typical stuff. “I’m sure you did just fine.”

“Where are you?” Chloe asked. “It’s after nine. You didn’t call and tell me you were going to be late. I was getting worried.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t been at the office by nine, but I figured I’d earned a break after almost getting killed last night. “I’ve had a bit of a situation.”

I told Chloe I’d spent the night at Piper’s, and someone had broken into my apartment and made the biggest mess ever. I asked if she could call Clean Dreams and have them send over a crew to help get things straightened up and to haul away what couldn’t be salvaged. Chloe agreed to phone them, and we hung up.
 

Piper was reluctant to leave the cleaning to someone else, but I told her we had a fashion designer to bribe—and a flash drive to decrypt. I grabbed the few clean, undamaged clothes I could find and the two vests that had survived Bandit’s rampage. Then, I dropped to my knees and sorted through the broken CDs on the floor, trying to find one that wasn’t snapped in two.
 

Nothing. I sat back on my heels and blew out a breath. I pushed my hair out of my eyes, and my gaze landed on my CD changer. Maybe he hadn’t thought to look in there. I scooted forward and hit the button. The drawer slid open, revealing another broken disc. Okay, maybe he hadn’t thought to check if there were any more discs. I pushed the button again.