Villainous (22 page)

And Daniel had seen Hunter teleport Eric thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. How many people could he take with him? Two? Three? Could he teleport enough people to set fire to a tree fort, or vandalize an ice cream shop? Enough to destroy a school?

Up until now, Daniel had been fairly convinced that Drake and his gang were responsible for the attacks on the ice cream parlor and the school, but he’d assumed those attacks had been random. Just Drake and his stupid friends causing trouble. But now he was sure Nobles had been at the tree fort and the bridge. Those attacks couldn’t have been random. They had both occurred at the Supers’ most secret places.

That day at the junkyard, Drake had acted like he’d never seen Daniel and Mollie before, but that had to have been a lie. They’d been watching the Supers for some time.

Just what were they up to?

Daniel stood and looked at the corkboard over his desk. He’d posted articles about every major attack, and now he took two note cards and added the names of two more. He wrote “Tree fort fire” and “Tangle Creek Bridge” and pinned them up on the board. Next, he took down the names of Clay and Bud from the list of suspects. Bud was certainly not involved, and Daniel had seen how dismissive the Nobles were of Clay. He doubted they’d even let him tag along on one of their crime sprees. For now he’d leave Clay off the board as well.

He grouped the Nobles all together, pinning them to
the board. Beneath Skye’s picture he wrote “POWERFUL telekinesis.” Under Hunter’s picture he crossed out the question mark where his power should be and wrote “Teleporter.” Then, using a spool of sewing thread he’d found in the kitchen junk drawer, he strung lines from the Nobles to the tree fort fire, the Tangle Creek Bridge, the ice cream shop, and the high school. The only event that he couldn’t possibly tie them to was the fire at the Plunketts’ mansion. There had been too many witnesses who saw them in detention at the time of the fire.

Daniel stepped back to take in the entire board, the web of connecting threads. With Clay and Bud gone, there was only one name still on that board not tied to any attack, and only one attack not tied to any name. It didn’t make sense on the surface, but unless there was another unseen suspect lurking out there somewhere, there had to be a connection. Daniel closed his eyes again, trying to follow the threads in his mind—looking for anything that he might have missed.

The experience was not unlike that of flying. He felt weightless, and his heart pounded and his fingertips tingled. Quickly he grabbed a notebook from his desk and began writing. One image, one memory, per page:

And last, there was the memory of Theo stopping Ms. Starr before she could finish a sentence. He’d used his father as an excuse, but was that the real reason? What exactly had Mandy Starr been about to say? That moment had struck Daniel as wrong then, and he hadn’t been able to let it go since.

He needed more space, but since he didn’t have another corkboard, he tore down his
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
movie poster and began pinning pieces of paper to the very wall itself. His mom would be furious, but he’d deal with that later. Right now, he needed to see them all at once.

Together, all the random memories he’d written down started to seem a little less random. He began rearranging them into groups—images that belonged with one another, explained one another in a way that would only make sense to him.

What was it Johnny had said to him up at the academy, when Daniel had reminded him that he, Daniel, wasn’t a Super?

I think we both know that’s not true
, he’d said.
You’ve proved it, time and again
.

Daniel’s detective work had saved his friends in the past,
and each time there had been a moment like this, a breakthrough when the clues snapped together in his mind. He couldn’t stop it if he tried. It was a rush when it happened, and it felt like … well … like a superpower. Was that what Johnny was hinting at? Was he trying to tell Daniel that, like his grandmother and his brother, Georgie, he too was a Super and that he had been all along? That he was some kind of super-detective?

Daniel had dreamed about it. He’d wanted to be a Super so badly for so long, and for a brief time last year he’d been tricked into believing it was true. But now, as Daniel stood there staring at the board of suspects, at all those faces, he decided at last that he didn’t care anymore. It didn’t matter. Was a star basketball player a Super because he could jump higher than ninety-nine percent of the population? Because he could move so quickly that he appeared to defy gravity? Or the Olympian who could swim faster than anyone ever had before? Was she a Super? What about Albert Einstein, or Leonardo da Vinci or Rosa Parks or any of the other remarkable people who, through intellect or talent or just sheer bravery, had done something exceptional?

Daniel couldn’t tell whether his knack for investigation, his ability to catch connections others missed, came from a meteor that fell to earth nearly a century ago, or from reading too many detective stories, but he knew how to use it.

Standing back, he admired his handiwork. It wasn’t
complete, his wall of clues, but enough of them now made sense that he was sure of one thing at least.

He walked over to the corkboard and threaded a line from the mansion fire to the last remaining name—Herman Plunkett.

“Gotcha,” said Daniel.

Drake had let slip that the Nobles hadn’t been his idea, but if not, whose was it? Herman’s? He’d played dumb when Daniel had mentioned the Nobles by name, but then again Herman lied as easily as he breathed air. If he had put the Nobles up to the attacks, he’d have had the perfect tool to stir up antipathy against the Supers. Set a group of superpowered juvenile delinquents loose on the town and see what happens. And when Daniel started getting too close to the truth, Herman would’ve needed to do something drastic to throw him off the scent. A grand spectacle where Herman was the star—an attack on his own mansion.

When Herman showed up that day after the first attack on the school, he’d had two hulking bodyguards with him, but on the day of the mansion fire, Daniel had only seen one. Where was the second, the man with the dreadlocks?

Daniel thought he knew. After all, it didn’t take superpowers to set fire to a house.

The “inside source” everyone was quoting had to be Herman too. By cleverly manipulating the fears of ordinary people everywhere, Herman had turned much of the public against the Supers. But why? What did Herman gain from it, other than making his enemies’ lives miserable?

The one immediate effect of all this hysteria was that nearly every Super in town was now locked down in the academy with Johnny. Was that what Herman was after—to get all his enemies and potential enemies in the same place? If so, what was special about the academy? Why there?

Daniel had an idea, but he needed to know for sure. He needed to speak to Theo again.

He considered for a moment using the window. He could climb down the drainpipe; he’d done it before. He could sneak his bike out of the garage and be at Mercy General Hospital in an hour. That was where Theo was now, still recovering from the fire.

He could do that, even though he’d just made a promise to his mother that he wouldn’t. He’d snuck out of the house many times before, always with the justification that what he was doing was important. People’s lives had been at stake. But he’d never done it at a time like this, when he could see the worry and fear etched into his mother’s face, on a day when so many parents in this town were afraid for their children.

Daniel chose the staircase instead.

The TV was, thankfully, switched off, and Georgie was playing with his trucks in the middle of the living room floor while Daniel’s mother sat on a chair nearby, staring at the phone in her hand. She looked tired and anxious, and a million miles away.

“Mom,” said Daniel. “I have to ask you a question, but I want you to promise you won’t get mad.”

Parents hated it when kids said that, Daniel knew. It was an assurance that, absolutely, what was about to come next was something worth getting mad about, but it forced them to act like they weren’t angry. A dirty trick, but this was serious business.

Daniel’s mother set the phone on the table and took a second to compose herself.

“All right,” she said. “Ask me.”

“And you won’t get mad?”

“Daniel, just ask!”

Daniel took a deep breath to brace himself and asked:

“Can I get a ride?”

Daniel had been in this situation before, chasing one final piece of evidence, one last clue that would blow the case wide open. In past adventures he’d always been flying through the air with the Supers, or charging along hidden paths through the woods in a desperate race against time. But he’d never done it in his mother’s minivan, going five miles below the speed limit with his baby brother belted in behind him.

He should’ve snuck out the window.

There weren’t many moments in Daniel’s life when he had regretted taking the honorable route, but this was
beginning to look like one of them. And Daniel suspected that his mother was driving like someone’s grandparent just so that she would have extra time to interrogate him along the way. He knew he’d been infuriatingly vague as to why it was so important to see Theo today, but she seemed to think getting out of the house was a good way to get Daniel’s mind off his friends at the academy, and so she agreed. Even if Theo
was
a car thief.

But when he asked her to wait in the hospital parking lot for him, she shook her head and unbuckled Georgie from his car seat instead. She was coming too—she was determined to keep an eye on him. If she couldn’t keep him locked up in one place, she would make sure that she was with him wherever he went.

Together, the three of them took the elevator up to the eleventh floor (after Georgie had accidentally leaned against the buttons for floors eight through ten). On the way to Theo’s room, they passed the intensive care unit, where Mr. Madison was lying, still recovering from his own more severe injuries. Daniel was surprised to see a uniformed police officer sitting outside the unit, reading the paper.

“Hey, buddy!” said Theo as Daniel poked his head into the younger Plunkett’s room. He was waving his bad arm, which was wrapped in a fresh bandage up to the elbow. The burns hadn’t been too bad, thank goodness, and Theo looked more than ready to go home.

“Hello, Mrs. Corrigan,” Theo added as he saw Daniel’s
mom lurking outside his door. “It’s such a pleasure to see you too.”

Daniel’s mother gave Theo a small smile and asked how he was feeling, after which she quickly excused herself to take Georgie to find a water fountain. Daniel’s mother could only take Theo in very tiny doses.

Daniel watched his mother go. “She’s like my own secret service,” he said. “Won’t let me out of her sight.”

“You see all that academy business?” Theo gestured to the TV on the wall. The sound was off but the picture was of the locked-down academy. The images flipped back and forth between a news anchor and the closed school gate.

“I was there,” Daniel said.

“Seriously? This has really gotten crazy.” Theo held up his own copy of the
Noble Herald
, which had been sitting next to his untouched dinner tray. “All over the newspapers too.”

“Yep,” said Daniel. “This is really bad, Theo. You know, when Mollie was worried about that school, when she was spouting off all her crazy conspiracy theories, I thought she was just being paranoid. After all, the place had been built by my friend Theo’s family, and surely if there was anything strange going on, my friend Theo would know about it, right?”

“Uh, right.” Theo was licking his lips.

“You need a drink?”

“Yeah,” said Theo. “Water pitcher’s right over there. Should’ve offered some to your mom, come to think of it.”

“I’ll get it for you, Theo,” said Daniel. “Just as soon as you answer one question. Who’s running Plunkett Industries now? It’s not your dad anymore, is it?”

Theo glanced around the room, as if someone might burst in any second and rescue him. Then he slumped back onto his hospital bed with a sigh. “Oh, this is stupid. Feel like I should be asking for my lawyer!”

Daniel walked over and poured water from the pitcher into a little paper cup, and handed it to his friend. Theo nodded thankfully as he drank.

“Just tell me the truth, Theo,” said Daniel. “It’s important.”

Theo finished the water in one gulp, and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “Fine,” he said, tossing the cup at the wastebasket and missing. “Three points.”

“Theo!”

“Okay! After Herman reappeared last year, he reasserted his share in the company, and secretly bought out the rest. It was a hostile takeover, and my dad didn’t even see it coming. Herman let us stay in the house as long as we promised not to make a big deal about it.

“I didn’t tell you guys—I didn’t want Ms. Starr to tell you guys—that Herman’s in charge of the company again, because I was embarrassed. The truth is, we’re totally broke. My dad made a lot of money but he ran up even more debt. Without Plunkett Industries we’re sunk. There’s no way we
can keep up with what we owe. My dad’s overseas trip with Granddad is just an excuse to look for another job.

“I’ll have to sell my car for sure.”

So there it was. What Mandy Starr had really been about to say that day was that she’d recently met the academy’s chairman of the board—
Herman
Plunkett—but Theo stopped her just in time, and covered it up with a ridiculous story about his dad being some kind of womanizer. So Herman now controlled Plunkett Industries, a billion-dollar company, with all its connections and influence. Which meant …