***
The sound of the television turning on sometime later roused her. Reader’s eyes opened. It took her sluggish mind a minute to remind her of where she was. The clock on the box serving as a nightstand read close to six in the evening. Judging by the brightness pouring in from the hallway, all the lights in the apartment were on.
She checked her wounds, disturbed by how slowly she was healing. Was it because the doctor fed her like she was a rabbit instead of the predator she was? Pushing herself off the bed, she decided real food was in order.
Reader exited into the hall, paused to ensure her body would support her, then continued. She felt stronger, her balance improved and muscles responding as normal, even if her wounds hadn’t finished healing.
Kimber was in the living room, stretched out on the couch, watching a movie. Reader went to the kitchen and opened his fridge.
“What is this shit?” she asked, frowning as she picked up a box of almond milk from its place next to a container of hummus. She searched through everything, looking for meat, before slamming the fridge closed.
“What’re you doing up?” Kimber asked, moving into the doorway. He crossed his arms to display muscular forearms.
“I need real food not this weird vegetable shit.”
“I can make you something.”
“Pizza?”
“Call the pizza place downstairs.” He lifted his chin towards a landline that appeared to be from the seventies and the menus pinned to the bulletin board beside it. “I’ll give you my credit card.”
“I have it.” She pulled his wallet from her pocket.
He released a slow breath. “Why do you have my wallet?”
“In case I needed a pizza.” She plucked the credit card free. “I grabbed it two nights ago while guarding the apartment so no one would attack us because you left the door unlocked.”
Leaning forward, Kimber snatched his wallet. “This is one of those lines you’re not supposed to cross. If you need money, you should ask me first.”
“As if you’d just give it to me,” she said with a snort.
“If you needed it, I would.”
Reader’s eyes narrowed. “This game … it’s not funny, Doc,” she warned him.
“What game?”
Turning her back to him, she called the number listed on a flyer and ordered a large pizza with the most meat toppings she could. Reader hung up the phone and faced the do-gooder. He was leaning against one side of the doorway, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, watching her.
“Why are you here, Doc?” she asked finally.
“To make sure you don’t fall on your ass or bust a stitch.”
“No. In Sand City. You don’t believe in supervillains, and you’re a long way from your crippled-but-not-really-crippled dad.”
“That’s none of your business.”
Reader sat down at the rickety table in the center of the kitchen, starting to feel the strain of standing too long.
“What are you doing here?” he asked after a moment of quiet.
“In your kitchen or Sand City?” she returned.
“Sand City.”
“I’m competing against my brother to become a successor to my father.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happens when you become his successor?” Kimber asked.
“That’s it. I become a supervillainess.”
“What if you didn’t, and your father left his current occupation with no successor?”
Reader blinked, not expecting the question. “Why would either of those things happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you all decided to give up crime and find better uses of your time or … became artists, attorneys or … maybe you write a book about your experiences. You’re beautiful enough to be a model or actress, if you wanted.”
Her mouth dropped open.
Kimber was serious, and she had to remind herself he was from a different city, where the super community was secret.
Beautiful? The compliment was as foreign to her as the idea of not fulfilling her destiny.
“Why are you a doctor?” she asked.
“Because I want to help people,” he replied.
“What would you do if you weren’t?”
He shrugged. “Never considered it. I’ve always felt this was my calling.”
“Same here. I’m meant to take my father’s place.” She tilted her head, wishing she could read his mind and beginning to suspect he was either blocking her, or her ability was wounded as well as her body. “Are you recording this conversation? Trying to slip me up so you can blackmail me?”
“I’m curious,” he replied, trying not to smile. “I’ve never met anyone with your level of unorthodox conviction.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment. “I’ve never met a real do-gooder,” she said. “How do I know you won’t turn on me and accept my brother’s offer?”
“Faith, I guess. You can’t assume the worst about everyone you meet. Well, you might be able to, but it’s not the way it’s supposed to be,” he answered. “Some things are more important than money. You can trust me.”
“Would you do this for anyone?”
“Yeah. I help people. It’s what I do.”
“And do you tell others they’re beautiful?”
Kimber hesitated, gazing at her. “No.”
Uncertain what that meant, or why it made her pulse quicken, Reader fell silent. She was struggling to figure out the doctor’s hidden agenda but coming up with no potentially nefarious reasons he was helping her. He truly seemed serious about caring about others.
How did such a person exist in this world?
A knock sounded at the door.
Reader was on her feet before the second knock came. She snatched a knife from the block on Kimber’s counter and breezed by him.
“No weapons.” Kimber said with a sigh and caught her wrist in one of his large hands.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked, pulling at her arm.
“Never.”
Why am I not surprised? “That makes one of us.” Reader switched the knife to her left hand and tugged free from him. “Stay here, Doc. I’ll make sure no one but the pizza guy gets through the door.”
She went to the door and cracked it open, ready to stab anyone who came through it. That is, until she smelled pepperoni and cheese. Reader tossed the knife and opened the door, welcoming the food with open arms. Closing and locking the door after accepting her precious dinner, she faced Kimber.
“Hopefully, this pizza cures me and then I’ll be on my way. My brother and his henchmen should never bother you. In case they do, I’ll leave you with the address to my compound, where you’ll be safe.”
His eyebrows went up. “Sounds like a very un-evil thing for you to do.”
He was not only good but naïve about how badly his life could become, if her father or brother found out about him. But why did she care at all what happened to him?
“I don’t hate you,” she said after a pause. “And I don’t want you dead.”
Without another word, she took the pizza into her room and sat down to eat every last piece.
Five: Villains are murdery
Keladry Savage was insane.
So why did Kimber find himself returning to her wiki-page to finish reading it after she disappeared into her room with the pizza?
On his second day off in months, he didn’t know what else to do with his free time except watch movies, surf the internet and spend two hours at the gym. His parents’ visit had done nothing but make him wired, edgy, and upset, while Suzanne’s appearance left him questioning his entire existence.
And yet, it was the alleged supervillainess-in-training he couldn’t get off his mind. What was it about Keladry he found compelling, in a very twisted way?
He sat with his dinner on the couch, scrolling through the information page about her before he be
gan random searches. She had a dedicated page on her father’s website and several fan sites and social media accounts obsessed with her and everything she had ever said or done or worn. A rabid fan had even started an animated WebTV series about her.
She was a celebrity, similar to her father, except she had a more fanatical cult following consisting of sex-deprived teen boys who spent far too much time creating sexy pictures of her and posting them online.
It wasn’t that Kimber didn’t see the appeal. She was beautiful, with the kind of hourglass shape only found on women in comic books, and her father’s website listed her martial arts and other weapons training. She was probably pretty badass in a fight, assuming any of it was true. Her personality was a challenge, but she wasn’t a completely delusional asshole like he first thought. She seemed almost … naive, as if she had never been exposed to the world outside of her warped reality.
Kimber had seen genuine hurt in her eyes when she mentioned her brother. Was this why he couldn’t expel her from his mind? Because, for a moment, they had shared a sense of loss and heartache he had never let his guard down long enough to experience with anyone else?
Or was it the confusion he saw cross her features when he called her beautiful? While true, it had slipped out, and her reaction was not what he expected. Why did he have the feeling she’d never been complimented before?
“Drop it, Kimber,” he ordered himself and closed the open browsers on his laptop. As far as he was concerned, she was a patient, like any other. There was not meant to be any lasting personal connection between them once she was healed. It was for her sake as much as his.
He set his laptop aside and searched his depressing apartment visually for something else to do. If he had games, they were in the guestroom, and he wasn’t venturing there again. Their conversation earlier left him uncomfortable for more reasons than because she was clearly disturbed. He was unwilling to think about what else bothered him.
Never had Kimber been so anxious to return to work. He turned off the television and went to his room. He was about a year short on sleep; if nothing else, he could slumber the downtime away.
Sometime later, past midnight, glassware shattering against the hard floor of the kitchen awoke him with a start. He lay in bed, disoriented as he tried to make sense of the sound. It was soon followed by the wall at the head of his bed trembling as something heavy was thrown into it.
Now what? Kimber launched out of bed, determined to save what he could of his miserable apartment from Keladry’s insanity.
He opened the door to his bedroom and flipped on the hall light.
A body garbed all in black was on the floor at the end of the hall.
He turned off the lights, thinking he had to be mistaking, and then turned them back on.
The body remained.
Alarm shot through him, and he hurried down the hallway, kneeling to check on whether or not the man in black was hurt.
Kimber felt for a pulse before the angle of the man’s broken neck fully registered. It wasn’t possible for anyone to live through that, and the lack of pulse confirmed his hunch.
Returning to his room, Kimber grabbed his phone off the nightstand to call the police, only to see the battery was out again.
“Fuck!” he muttered. He plugged it in and tried to turn it on. The dead battery symbol popped up.
The wall shuddered again, and his thoughts shifted from dialing for help to wondering who the hell had killed the man in his hallway.
Grabbing the baseball bat he kept under his bed, Kimber left his room and strode once more down the hallway. His body assumed the tension and light stance he learned in college, preparing to absorb a tackle by an offensive linebacker.
He reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner. It was impossible to tell what was going on in the dark, but it appeared as if there was a violent dance party in the middle of his living room. People were thrashing into the walls, the sofa, knocking over lamps …
Who the hell is fighting? He went to the kitchen and turned on the light. Glass shards sparkled on the floor, where Keladry’s makeshift alarm had smashed into bits. The light was enough to illuminate what was happening in the living room, and he froze, beginning to suspect this was a dream.
Dressed in his boxers and a t-shirt, and wielding a screwdriver in one hand and the broken shaft of his broomstick in the other, Keladry was battling two men in black. As he watched, she plunged the screwdriver into the neck of one of the men, who fell to the ground, clutching his wound.
The other kicked her hard enough to send her smashing into the wall.
Kimber started forward, baseball bat raised.
Keladry rebounded easily and drove her knee into the man’s groin then jammed the broken broomstick through his abdomen. He fell to the ground, and she yanked the weapon free before ramming it through his eye socket into his brain.
Kimber stared, his jaw slack and eyes wide. He had treated people suffering from injuries caused by fights with others, vehicular accidents, mauling by animals, and other dreadful ways to be hurt. But he never witnessed firsthand the actual events causing the injuries.
Keladry leaned over the first man, the one with a screwdriver through his neck. She gripped his head and snapped it to the right, effectively answering Kimber’s unspoken question about who had killed the man in the hallway.
This is a nightmare, he thought, unable to comprehend witnessing Keladry brutally murder two men.
“This is why you lock your door,” she said, looking up at him.
“What the fuck is going on?” he managed.
“My brother sent his henchmen to find me and probably kill you for hiding me,” she answered.
“No. What. The. Fuck. Just happened?” he demanded. “Did I just become a witness in a triple homicide?”
“I could’ve used this.” She approached him and took the bat from his wooden fingers. “Stay here. I’ll check the hallway.”
Kimber couldn’t have moved if he wanted to. He was staring at the second man she had killed, who was bleeding out all over his carpet. He heard the front door open and then close a few minutes later but was frozen in place, convinced this was a dream and waiting for it to end.
“Found another one.” Keladry reported. She handed him the bat, whose tip was bloodied.
“Stop murdering people!” Kimber dropped the bat, horrified.
“It’s okay, Doc. I took care of it. Here. There’s glass everywhere.” Keladry planted his shoes in his chest. She had pulled on a pair of his sweats, along with what appeared to be several layers of socks in place of shoes. She disappeared from his stunned sight into the kitchen.
“We have to do something,” he said at last.
“I know. We can’t leave the bodies here or they’ll know you’re involved.”
“No, I mean, we have to call the … involved? As in, I helped you do this?” he demanded, facing her.
She left the kitchen.
“I had nothing to do with this!” he exclaimed.
“You sheltered me against my father’s directives.”
“We need to call the police!”
“What we need to do is leave. Quickly.” She pushed him towards the door.
Kimber went, more because he was too shocked to resist than because he understood why they were leaving. “Wait. I should help them. I need to help them,” he mumbled, eyes on the body in the hallway.
“They’re dead, Doc. Trust me, I know. I’m the one who killed them,” she replied and pushed him harder. “You will be, too, if we stay here.”
Seconds later, Kimber stood in the hallway outside his apartment, staring at the door Keladry had closed.
“C’mon, Doc!” she said and took his arm, tugging him away. “We have about five seconds.”
He blinked out of his stupor and shook his head to free it from the lingering effects of sleep and surprise. “What do you mean five –”
An expl
osion tore the door off his apartment and threw it across the hallway. He ducked instinctively and looked back. Flames darted into the hall. Understanding Keladry’s urgency, he ceased dragging his heels and hurried after her.
The elevator wasn’t working again, so they went to the stairwell across from it and raced to the ground floor and outside the building. Kimber twisted to see his apartment as he exited into the cool spring night. Flames leapt out of the windows and had begun to crawl towards the neighboring apartments.
“No bodies, no crime,” Keladry said, satisfied.
Dazed, Kimber couldn’t look away from the dancing fire. “Did you pull the fire alarm on the way out?” he heard himself asking.
“No. Why?”
“Because there are hundreds of people in the building!”
Keladry was quiet, and he glanced at her then back. Her brow was furrowed, as if she didn’t understand the connection between the people and the fire. One of her hands was pressed to her abdomen, and he saw the blood leaking between her trembling fingers.
“You are determined to bleed to death,” he said. With no other form of bandage available, Kimber peeled off his t-shirt and pressed it to her stomach.
She gave a small sound of pain but didn’t otherwise object.
He met her gaze, uncertain what to think of her. She lived up to the brag rights posted on her father’s website, battling four men while horribly wounded. And she had murdered them in cold blood, without any sign of remorse.
She was, in every way, the most fucked up individual he had ever met.
So why was he gazing steadily into her dark eyes, unable to avoid the strange connection lingering between them? He was trying not to allow the signs of pain on her face to affect him and not to be concerned about the homicidal maniac she clearly was. Every fiber of his being screamed for him to run as far from her as possible and turn her into the police or better yet – a psych ward.
All he could think about was how the light of the fire brought out flecks of burnished gold in her eyes and how soft her skin had been when he placed his shirt against her abdomen.
Is lunacy contagious? He thought, appalled by his own thoughts. Blinking out of the trance, Kimber took a step back.
“Stay here. I’m calling the authorities. You’re going to the hospital, where I should’ve sent you long before this,” he added firmly. He knelt and pulled on the shoes still clutched in one of his hands.
Without awaiting her response, Kimber ran to the market at the bottom of the building and shouted for the friendly cashier to call the police. He entered the building next and pulled the fire alarm.
Retreating outside, he studied the path of the flames inching from his apartment to the one below and above. If the residents of both apartments were asleep, it was likely they’d end up trapped before the fire department could set up, let alone put out the flames.
Without hesitating, he plunged into the stairwell and took the stairs three at a time as he ran up fifteen flights to his floor.
Adrenaline and concern replaced his shock. Kimber was soon consumed in saving lives except, this time, he had the knowledge of being the one to place them in danger.
I can’t live with hurting anyone else, he thought.
Six: Villains are always wealthy
No one died that night, aside from the men Keladry killed, whose bodies were either never discovered or not reported on. Keladry Savage vanished just as mysteriously.
Kimber stared at the photo on the front page of the newspaper in his hands. Every day for the past week, since the night of the fire, the papers had featured him and one of the pictures snapped by bystanders with smartphones. Today’s photo left him self-conscious and frustrated. He was photographed after his last trip into the burning building, streaked with soot and glistening with sweat, his sweatpants tugged too low for his comfort and the muscles of his exposed upper body bulging from the strain of carrying an elderly couple down the stairs.
The Hero Our City Needs, read the headline.
“You’re so wrong,” he retorted under his breath to the ridiculous photo and byline.
Heroes didn’t shelter villains who set entire buildings on fire after murdering home invaders.
The flames had spread fast and engulfed the upper half of the building before the fire department was able to extinguish them. Fortunately, it didn’t spread to the neighboring building, but it did leave dozens of families homeless and destroyed everything they owned.
Kimber balled up the paper and tossed it in the recycle bin on the other side of the locker room. He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and rubbed his face.
He hadn’t seen Keladry since ordering her not to move. She was gone long before the police and fire department arrived, and none of the pictures from the papers featured her at all.
Not that he was concerned about what happened to her.
Except he was.
Sort of.
I just want to see if she survived, he told himself for the tenth time. He wanted to think it was professional courtesy to follow up with a patient and ignored the protective instinct that flickered to life whenever he thought of her.
Shaking his head, he stood. Keladry didn’t deserve any such courtesy, not after how she’d murdered four men and burnt down his apartment building without so much as a thought about the consequences of her actions.
Such as the fact he, too, was homeless.
“Hey, hero,” called one of the ER nurses as he entered the locker room.
Kimber forced a smile.
“Basking in the glory of the city’s gratitude?”
“Hardly,” Kimber replied. “Pulling double shifts, as usual.”
“Same,” grunted the nurse as he opened his locker. “Tish is looking for you.”
“What’s she doing here at this hour?” Kimber glanced at his watch. The administrators were normally home by five or six, not eleven.
“No idea. Hey, you wanna go out with a few of us tomorrow night?”
“Probably not.” He had fielded several requests for drinks or weekend events since appearing in the newspaper and turned down everyone.
“Why not?” the nurse, Gary, pressed. “Don’t tell me you have to work. We’re both scheduled to be off at six tomorrow.”
Kimber hesitated. How did he tell anyone he didn’t want to get too close, in case he fucked up his life again? Or someone found out about Chicago?
“Think about it. I’ll ask you again tomorrow,” Gary said with a smile. “It’s just three of us for drinks.”
“I’ll let you know,” Kimber replied. On the surface, he had no real reason to refuse. If someone asked him about his past, he could defer or respond vaguely, like he’d practiced in his head. Sometimes, he did miss human interaction. “See you tomorrow.”
Kimber left the locker room and made his way through the hospital to the administrators’ offices. The hallway was dark, and only one office’s light was on. He tapped the door of his supervisor.
Tish waved him in. Her nose was red, and she clutched tissues in one hand.
“Hey, Kimber,” she said.
“You’re here late,” he replied.
“I’ve been fighting a bad cold the past couple of days, but duty calls. Someone’s gotta approve the timesheets.”
He sat down. “What can I do for you?”
“Melissa says you’re in need of a place to stay?”
“Sort of. I just haven’t had the time to find a new place yet,” he replied. “If it’s a problem I’m sleeping in the –”
“It’s not a problem with the hospital. It’s a problem with me, because I don’t want to see a good person living in a miserable hospital,” Tish said. She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope, handing it to him.
“What’s this?” Kimber asked, accepting it.
“Open it.”
He did so. Two house keys fell into his hand.
“I have a friend who’s out of town for a whi
le. I asked if I could loan her place out, and she agreed.”
His gaze lifted, and he stared at Tish, surprised.
“But it’ll give you a place to stay until you’re back on your feet.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Kimber replied. “This is incredibly generous, Tish. It’s almost too good to be true.” He ran his thumb over one of the keys in his hand. The offer was needed – he was tired of sleeping in a hospital bed – but also sent an uncomfortable flicker of emotion floating through him. He didn’t want to become attached to anyone, didn’t want to take the chance of disappointing someone he admired in case he slipped up here as he had in Chicago.
At his hesitation, Tish’s smile warmed. “You deserve a place to sleep, Kimber. Directions are in the envelope. Just give the address to a cabbie. If you need a day off to get oriented, let me know.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Are you sure? Is your friend sure?”
“We insist. You’re a hero, after all.” She tapped the newspaper on her desk.
“I wish they would stop that shit,” he said with more emotion than he intended. “I’m no hero.”
“You are to the seven people you saved.”
I’m the one who got their homes destroyed in the first place. Kimber was quiet.
“Go home tonight,” Tish said. “There’s nothing better than a nice shower and bed after a double shift.”
It was true. He hadn’t spent much money on his apartment – but he did buy an expensive bed. After being on his feet all day, he needed it.
“Only until I find my own place,” he said firmly.
“Take your time. She’s out of town until fall.”
“Thank you, Tish. Really. This means a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome. Go home.”
Kimber rose, clutching the keys in his hand. Uncertain what to think about Tish’s kindness so soon after Gary asked him to hang out, he felt both a longing to try to fit in and the urge to flee, lest he fucked it all up again. He couldn’t bear the kind of pain that came with not living up to the expectations of people he respected.
“Thanks, again,” he murmured, torn.
Kimber left her office. He had planned on going for a run, but the thought of a hot shower, after a week of lukewarm ones at the hospital, sounded too good to pass up. He returned to the locker room and gathered his meager belongings. He had exactly two sets of running outfits, five sets of scrubs and a pair of jeans and sweatshirt remaining from the fire. The clothes had been at work – everything else was gone.
He called a taxi and then waited several minutes before it arrived. Uncertain what to expect from the invitation to stay in a stranger’s house, he debated whether or not he should return the keys and find his own place. The driver whisked him all the way across town, out of the city’s center and into one of the quiet neighborhoods he didn’t know existed.
Millionaires’ Row, read the street sign. The taxi turned down a cobblestone street lined with historic, towering townhouses on either side. The hedges and gates in front of each building were meticulously maintained. Not a single crack was to be seen in the sidewalks, and no cars parked alongside the curbs to obscure the views of gorgeous bougainvillea that clung to wrought iron lattices and arches in each gate.
Behind the gates, the townhouses were a mixture of brick and stone front, ranging in size from four stories to six, and each wider than a city bus was long.
The driver stopped, and Kimber looked from the address written on the paper to that displayed on the arch.
You can’t be serious, he thought, tired enough he almost laughed at the beautiful townhome with its stone facade.
He paid the taxi driver and got out, gazing upward in curiosity as well as surprise. He had a feeling his supervisor had been the one to broach the idea of him staying there. He couldn’t imagine someone voluntarily offering up a multi-million dollar property to a stranger.
He unlocked the gate and entered, closing it behind him. A small courtyard shrouded by ten feet tall hedges contained a garden and stone seating areas. He walked up the stairs to the front door and unlocked it.
A chandelier came to life as the door opened. The ceiling of the foyer rose three stories high. Dark, wooden floors were offset by lighter, neutral walls, black fixtures and rugs, and modern furniture in dark woods.
Resting his belongings on the floor, he walked through the bottom floor of the townhome, past a formal living room, home theatre, and large kitchen. When he reached the sliding glass doors on the backside of the house, he understood why this was called Millionaires’ Row.
Kimber opened the doors and stepped onto a large deck overlooking the river. A patch of green grass ran from the edge of the entertaining area to a private pier. Far across the expanse of water, stately mansions rose up from the banks.
He leaned against the railing of the deck, gazing at the lights reflecting off the glossy surface of the river. The air smelled of water, and giant hedges rose on either sides of the property to create a sense of privacy. The patter of rain on the roof and awning overhead was soothing, soft.
It was by far the nicest house he’d ever seen. After several deep breaths, he returned to the interior.
Kimber explored three out of four floors, until he was satisfied he knew the location of everything he needed.
“Maybe I’m glad I didn’t refuse,” he said to himself, observing the large guestroom he had selected. It was the size of a hotel suite, complete with its own kitchenette.
Too tired to venture to the fourth floor, he stripped and took his first hot shower in a week, and then sank into a plush bed to sleep.