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“Let me know if I can help. With whatever you’re looking into, I mean. ” She shifted in her seat. Should she ask him why he’d kissed her? The timing seemed so inappropriate and the question so inane. No, it didn’t matter how much she wanted to know. She couldn’t talk about it. Not right now.
“I will,” he said, and then pushed back from the table and stood. “I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, try to keep a low profile. ” He bent to kiss her cheek before she realized his intent. Hand on her shoulder, his lips were hot against her skin. “Stay out of trouble,” he whispered into her ear.
Before she could think of a suitable reply, he was gone.
***
The scratching woke her, like nails on a chalkboard. The sound grated at her and drew her from a troubled sleep. Confused, she rolled around on the bed to glance at her alarm clock. It read three o’clock, but outside it was still dark, as dark as it ever was in the city, anyway. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, mind still muddled. What was that? It was the middle of the night.
Light from the streetlamps shone through the curtains, seeming bright to her well-adjusted eyes. But the light was wrong somehow. As she stared at it she saw the shadow; it stretched across her room from the sliding glass door that led to her balcony.
The sheer curtains weren’t easy to see through when she changed, and a person would have to be clinging to the windowless side of the building next door to have a chance at a look, but they did allow enough light through to get around, if her eyes were dilated from the darkness. They weren’t shadowed; on the second floor there were no trees to block the light.
So what was that?
Brenda jumped up from the bed and grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand. She hit Justice’s name, but her finger paused over the send button. What was she going to tell him? That a scraping sound woke her up? That there was a new shadow in her window? What if he showed up and there was nothing outside?
She swallowed and shut her phone, and then gripped it tightly in her palm. As she edged toward the window, the shadow stayed put.
It’s probably nothing, she reassured herself. But when she got close to the window, the scraping sound stopped. Hand shaking, she pushed the curtain aside.
Howler.
A knife scraped on the glass as she watched, and he stared up at her with a strange expression on his face. Fascination, like she was a bug under his microscope. His other hand pressed against the door as if he could push it open.
She let out a scream and jumped back, touching the place in her mind that turned on her power as she moved. What was he doing here?
Frantically she looked for Justice on her phone and hit send. She didn’t bother putting it to her ear, but turned her attention back to Howler.
He smiled at her, mouth wide and teeth glinting garishly in the yellows and oranges and blues of the city lights. And he spoke, but she couldn’t hear him. Turning off her power would be suicide, but she was tempted, if only to reassure herself that he wasn’t talking about murdering her or wearing around her skin.
She shuddered. No more horror films for her.
Backing up, she kept her eyes firmly affixed on Howler until she cleared her bedroom doorway, and then she turned and ran to the front door. The knob was solid in her hand, real. And she clutched that piece of metal like it was the only real thing in the nightmare she’d become lost in. She wanted to turn it, unlock the deadbolt, run across the hall to her neighbor’s.
But what if he was out there? What if he’d driven her to the door for this very reason, to get her to open it?
No, that was silly, wasn’t it? If he wanted in, it would be easier for him to break the glass on the sliding door that led to the balcony he squatted on. Wouldn’t it?
With her hearing shut down, she couldn’t tell if he’d already broken the window, if he was sneaking up behind her as she struggled to make the right decision. She shouldn’t be running, she should be turning around, fighting him. But she’d never really fought anyone before. And he had that knife.
She shot a glance over her shoulder. No one crept through the shadows. She muttered a curse under her breath, turned the deadbolt and then threw open the door.
Running for her neighbor’s apartment, she crashed headlong into Justice’s chest.
***
The second he’d seen her number, he’d been out of bed and on the phone with Porter. The silence on the line was deafening, and he hadn’t been able to hang up or drop it from his ear. Instead, he grabbed the landline off the wall and called in a favor. He hadn’t even considered the Porsche, fast as it was.
Porter was faster.
A minute to wake him up, thirty seconds for Porter to dress. Another half a second and he was at Justice’s door. A second to grab his hand. Less than a second later and he was at her door. The whole process had taken less than two minutes.
It was the longest two minutes of his life.
Just as he approached her door, ready to kick it down, she burst out. Straight into his arms. She wore an old T-shirt that was several sizes too big, and flannel pajama pants. Not what he’d imagined her sleeping in, but still pretty damn sexy.
“What happened?”
She mumbled something. He couldn’t make out the words.
“Bren? Brenda?” He forced her face up so he could look at her. She didn’t appear injured, but tears streaked down her skin and her eyes were bright. “Can you tell me what happened?”
She shook her head, brow furrowing, before she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like one of his favorite four-letter words.
“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot. ” She waved a finger at her ear. “I still had my power on. ”
“What’s going on?”
She glanced back at the apartment, face suddenly serious. “He was here, Justice. Howler was here. Out on my balcony…with a big-ass knife. ”
“Stay here,” he said, and then stepped past her to scan the apartment. More than anything, he wanted to stride in and beat the hell out of Howler. Not on general principle because he was a super villain. Not for robbing banks or kidnapping mayors. But because he’d scared her. Because he’d put that look on her face.
But if he went in there—no. Then she’d be here alone, unprotected the second Howler used his power. Porter was already gone and wouldn’t go for help, wouldn’t call anyone. He wasn’t a superhero. He was a mercenary, barely living on the right side of the line.
Justice flipped his cell phone open and pressed the number one until it dialed. StrongArm’s voice came on the line, clear, like he’d been awake. “Yeah?”
“Silencer’s apartment has been compromised. ” He hesitated before giving the building address to StrongArm. Giving out any superhero’s address was serious. But StrongArm led the superhero council in the Chicago area, which meant he could pull her address anytime he wanted. He ran his hand through his hair, rattled off the address, and then snapped his phone shut.
“Let’s go. We’ve got people moving in. ”
Brenda nodded and let him lead her to the stairwell with his hand gripping her upper arm. She was surprisingly obedient, but he guessed she had every right to be shaken up. The idea of that freak hanging out on her balcony while she slept….
“Are you okay?” she asked when they reached the lobby.
He grunted, hoping she’d take it for assent. He was far from okay. “I should be asking you that. ”
“I’m fine. He just startled me. I shouldn’t have run out of there like a damn chicken. ” Disgust laced her voice.
Unable to help himself, he reached out and tucked a wayward piece of her hair behind her ear. “You did the exact right thing. ”
She shook her head. “If you say so. ”
The image of that creep peeking through her window with a damn butcher knife hit him, and he took a deep breath to calm the sudden rage rolling through his body. Brend
a could have been hurt. And it would have been his fault for dragging her into this fight.
He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. He had to deal with the situation they were in right now. Make sure she was safe. That’s what mattered.
“Do you have keys?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Car keys?”
“Oh. Not my main set, but I have a spare in one of those hide-a-key things. ”
He grunted again. After all of this was over, he’d talk to her about how she was inviting thieves to take her car off her hands with that thing, but for now it was damn convenient so he wasn’t going to argue.
“We’re taking your car. ”
She crinkled her brows and shot him a glance but didn’t ask him how he got there. “Where are we going?” she asked instead.
“My place. ”
Chapter Five
Justice lived in a house so close to the ’burbs she figured it barely counted as the city. But the home was cute, brick, and one-story, a ranch style typical of the seventies. It stood proudly between two McMansions that had replaced the older houses on either side of it. It didn’t look like the house of someone who drove a Porsche, and she wondered for a moment if he spent more money on the car than the house, and then dismissed the idea. A home in a nice neighborhood at a convenient location near—but not too close—to Metra and redline access didn’t come cheap.
He came around and opened her door and she realized she’d just been sitting like a dope, staring at his house through the window. “Sorry,” she muttered and looked away from him to hide her embarrassment.
Justice strode up to a door on the side of the house and unlocked it, letting them in to a small kitchen, not much bigger than the one in her apartment.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” he explained as she glanced around. The sink had his dishes from the night before, maybe from a couple of nights before, by the size of the stack. Or perhaps he hadn’t eaten alone.
She frowned and turned her attention back to Justice. “No problem. ”
“I’ll show you the guest room. ”
He led her to a small room off a narrow hallway that sported a twin bed and a small dresser.