Darkest Day (StrikeForce #3) (5 page)

“I seriously don’t like this,” Ryan said.

“Duly noted,” I told him. “But it needs to get done, and only one of us has the unique skill set to get into the place unnoticed and then be sneaky enough to do what needs to be done without getting caught. So there we go.”

He didn’t answer, and after a few moments, he just gave a terse nod.

“So we’re go, then,” I said. “I’ll hit it and we’ll see what we find. And then we’ll decide where to go from there.”

“From what we’ve gathered watching the house, he hasn’t been there in over a week,” David said. “My guess is he’s sticking close to Killjoy and his pals. Anything you can find… records, bills, anything like that would be a help. Specifically, anything of a personal nature. Family, friends, partners. Anything we can use against him. And once we have intel on him, our next move will be bringing him in and making him talk.”

“Uh, question?” Dani said, glancing around. “I just had a thought and it’s creeping me the hell out. We have Caine here, who has super senses. We know Killjoy can turn invisible from our last fight against him. How do we know someone’s not listening in right now?” she whispered.

“I’d know. I’ve been tuned into everything since we walked in. No familiar scents, no increased heart rates, nothing like that,” Ryan answered.

“You’re a little creepy sometimes,” I said, and he gave me one of his usual deadpan looks.

We finished eating and made our way back out to Jenson’s car. Ryan held his hand up and walked around it. Smelling, listening. Mama’s death had seemed to awaken some extra paranoia in him. He seemed like he was always waiting for the ax to fall now, and on one hand, I appreciated that at least one of us seemed to have their shit together enough to get ahead of stuff like this. On the other, I hated that this was my life now. Wondering when some bastard would try to blow us up or poison us or who knew what else. I hated it, and I thought all the time about what my life would have been like if I’d just done a few things differently. If I hadn’t agreed to team up with Damian. If I hadn’t flown in to save him when I thought StrikeForce had him. If I’d been a whole lot smarter about who I trusted. If I’d done things differently, my life would be a lot simpler now.

My mother would still be alive.

I shook myself out of my thoughts when Ryan opened the door and waved me in. I sat between him and Dani on the ride back to Command, listening to Jenson and David murmuring quietly in the front seat about tweaks David wanted to make to my equipment for the mission. I looked out the window, at the streetlights we passed, and it lulled me into an almost hypnotic half-sleep. I blinked my eyes hard.

“Tired?” Ryan asked, and I nodded.

“Slept like crap last night. Too sore, couldn’t stop thinking.”

He nodded. “You can probably take tomorrow off. I can see if David’ll patrol with me or something.”

I shook my head. “I’d rather work. Otherwise I’ll just sit in my room obsessing.”

Once we got back to Command, we all went to my suite and planned for our little ops mission, then sat around watching hockey and talking. They did a good job of taking my mind off of my guilt and anger over Mama for a little while, and I laughed more with the four of them than I did around anyone else. In the back of my mind, I wondered which one of them would betray me eventually, and hated myself for thinking it. It was one more thing to hate Killjoy for. My trust in everyone and everything was shaken, and I hated that he’d managed to do that to me, that I let him do it.

I shook it off and tried to focus on Jenson and Ryan complaining about some call the referees had made. They had my back. I had to trust in that, because all four of them had been there for me in ways that I never would have expected. They’d had my back, and I was determined to keep every single one of them safe.

Chapter Three

The next night, I was in my suite getting ready for my ops mission at Daemon’s place. I’d done my usual patrol with Ryan that morning and spent the afternoon locked in Jenson’s room with her and David talking about the equipment they’d put together for me.

But now I was alone. I guessed I should have felt at least a little bit nervous, but this feeling, at least, was familiar. It was the same feeling I used to get before hitting one of the mansions I’d loved robbing so much. The adrenaline, the excitement. The thrill, the edge of danger. Knowing that I was about to do something I probably shouldn’t be. All of it made me feel centered and at home, somehow.

I hadn’t been a good thief because I was exceptionally sneaky or better equipped than others. I’d been a good thief because I was obsessive. Because I watched for every detail. I’d lost some of that in my time at StrikeForce, first because everything was chaos and I was focused on just trying to get out, and then because I was sidetracked by the responsibilities I had once we’d taken it all away from Alpha. This felt, in a small way, like getting back to my roots.

And, of course, there was that nagging little voice, telling me that maybe if I’d been more careful, more obsessive, Mama would still be alive.

I shook it off as I zipped myself into the black body armor Jenson had managed to get from Equipment. All black, not like my gray and black official uniform. Armored everywhere, with a full mask that protected my eyes and had all of the bells and whistles my StrikeForce mask had: night vision, air filtration, sound deadening. I set the mask on the bed, then sat on the edge of the mattress to pull my boots on and lace them up. I had my stereo on. Eminem, which never failed to remind me of my time in the detention facility. Of Dani and Amy and Monica and Marie.

In a small way, this was the first step toward avenging Monica and Marie’s deaths. And Mama’s.

I bobbed my head a little as I finished lacing up my boots, then I stood up and pulled my crazy hair back into a messy bun that would fit under my mask. I clipped my bangs off of my face so they wouldn’t fall into my eyes. Then I double-checked the pouches on my belt. Dampener and cuffs, just in case. Emergency first aid supplies, again, just in case. Extra comm in case mine failed somehow, which I doubted would ever be a problem but Jenson was insistent. The last thing I needed was in a box in the closet in my bedroom. I rummaged through it and came out with the small jammer I had used so often to deactivate security systems and alarms. It had come in handy at the lab where Death had been cooking up his crazysauce and it would likely come in handy fairly often again. I was double-checking the jammer when there was a knock at my door. I walked through the living room and opened it, and Jenson, David, Ryan, and Dani were there. My apartment had been designated “mission control,” and David started setting up the laptops they’d be using to monitor me. Ryan handed me a comm.

“That’s a direct line comm between you and Caine,” Jenson said. “You don’t have to press it. He’ll hear you.”

I nodded and put it in my ear. “Testing,” I said after he put a comm in his ear.

“Copy.”

“Good. You’re loud and clear, too,” I said.

“Okay. So Caine will be set up here at the laptop monitoring your feed. We’ll have it up on our screen as well,” David said. “Let’s test your cameras and all that again.”

I nodded and pulled my mask on. They’d embedded several tiny cameras in the mask, as well as a bunch of other sensors.

“Okay. Walk around a little,” Jenson said, and I did. They all leaned over, looking at Ryan’s monitor, which, I could see, showed a bunch of different angle views of my kitchen, which was where I was walking.

“Environmental sensors are working as well,” David murmured. “I think we’re ready.”

“The flight bay on ten is probably the best option now. It’s closest and that’s the one you usually use, right?”

I nodded.

“Okay. So everyone’s pretty used to you taking your night time flights. We’ll just go with that,” Jenson said.

“This is probably all overkill. I doubt I’m going to find anything.”

“Probably,” Jenson agreed. “But in that case, we can consider it a good practice run.”

“Right. Okay. See you all in a bit.”

I let myself out of my apartment and took the flight of stairs up to ten, then to the flight exit there. These special exits were scattered throughout Command to make it convenient for those of us who could fly to come and go easily without having to get up to the roof. I got there, pressed my thumb to the pad so the door would open, and then took off into the darkness.

The neighborhood where Daemon’s house was located was over on the East Side of Detroit. Not a long flight for me, but long enough to go over a few things, visualize how I wanted to handle it. It wasn’t long before I was over his neighborhood. His house was the fifth one off of the corner. No porch lights on, no lights on inside the house. The night was moonless and still, and I came in for a landing under cover of a huge pine tree near the back of his yard. It was a good spot. I could jam the security system from there and still be in decent cover. I dug the jammer out and powered it up and let it start doing its thing. It would take a few seconds. Once I was sure it had worked, I went to the back door, looking around for cameras or anything like that. Nothing.

I picked the lock and pushed the back door open, and I was in. The kitchen had a sparse, unused look, but I took a moment to look through the cabinets anyway. A few cans of chicken noodle soup, a few dishes. I moved on.

The living room was actually decorated pretty nicely. Modern, clean. I started rummaging through drawers and cabinets. What I really wanted was some evidence of family or a girlfriend or something. And yeah, there was a weird little twinge of something that felt an awful lot like guilt that I was even considering using innocent family members against him, but they certainly hadn’t had the same concern when it had come to getting to me. I pushed it away and kept looking. No photos or anything in the living room. I rifled through the drawers of a table near the front entry, trying not to move anything too much. There was an envelope with a handwritten envelope. It looked like a child’s handwriting.

I quickly flipped past it and looked for something else.

“Jo, what was that last one?” Ryan asked over my comm.

“We’re not sinking that low,” I said quietly. He didn’t answer. There were a couple of old utility bills and I made sure I held them up so our video capture could see. I didn’t think they’d help much, but it was something, anyway. I finished up in the hallway and headed toward the back of the house, where the bedrooms and bathroom were located. The bedroom on the left was empty, but I checked out the closet anyway. Empty. The other bedroom had a bed and dresser in it. Two nightstands. Everything matched, and there were no decorations or personal items of any kind on display. I went through the nightstand nearest to me. Two boxes of condoms, lube, a paddle.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said, still rifling through way more of Daemon’s sex life than I wanted to know about. Ryan laughed over the comm. I gave up on the first drawer after it was clear that it was nothing more than his own little personal arsenal, and opened the bottom nightstand drawer. At first it looked like more of the same, but I pushed aside some thing I didn’t want to think about too closely, and found a box underneath. I crouched and pulled it out. It was a dark brown cardboard box with a lid. Kind like a shoebox, but fancier looking, little swirly designs stenciled onto the lid. I opened it and set the lid down on the bed.

Photos. Letters.

“Jackpot,” Ryan said. I started looking through them, holding the photos up for a few seconds so my team back at Command could do screen captures of my feed. Some of the photos were pretty old. 1990s, maybe early 2000s from the look of it. It’s not like many of us bothered with printed photos anymore. Maybe moms did, I thought as I held up another one, a family at the beach.

“Wonder if that’s Kid Daemon,” I murmured.

“Could be,” Ryan said.

The letters were… they kind of made me want to hit someone. Love letters. Lots of them, all in the same feminine hand.

“Looks like maybe we found something he cares about. Keep looking,” Ryan said. I quickly put the box back and then put the whatever-the-hell-it-was back on top of it. The other nightstand held a few paperbacks, which I flipped through quickly. Tissues, aspirin. Nothing else of interest.

The dresser didn’t turn up much more other than that Daemon bought expensive-ass clothes. I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Normal crap, a prescription bottle that I held up so they could see it through the feed.

“Jolene, be still a second,” Ryan said, and the tension in his voice made me freeze. I stood silently, listening. I didn’t hear anything, but I stayed silent, knowing that even through an audio feed, Ryan could hear things I couldn’t.

“There’s someone outside,” he said. I slowly put the prescription bottle back and closed the medicine cabinet. “More than one person.”

Was it sick that I hoped they were someone I could fight? Someone other than a nosy neighbor or (ha) a burglar?

What it horrible that I wanted somebody to hurt? In the weeks since Mama’s death, my sadness had slowly twisted into something easier to deal with. Revenge was beginning to cloud most of my waking thoughts, and my adrenaline spiked at even the possibility of being able to fight one of Killjoy’s people now.