Blindside Read online

  “She’s going to kill Williams.” Mac figured her powers must have come back, for the same inexplicable reason she had been able to retain them.

  Beside him, Wojo signaled for a real drink, pointing at Mac’s empty whiskey shot glass and requesting another. “You know that for a fact?”

  “Dead certain.”

  A glass of liquid gold appeared in front of each of them, as if by magic. “Then you know what you have to do.” No other questions, no demands for explanation.

  Against Mac’s ribcage, the vials pulsed with ice. “I’ll cut off both hands before I hurt her.” Again. He didn’t say that last part. He didn’t have to.

  That cop’s flat gaze was direct on his. “You do what you have to, son. We all do.”

  A rise in volume jerked his gaze back to the screen just in time to see a motorcycle helmet bouncing off the camera. The shot cut off, white static filling the television for a quick, tension-filled moment. Dying daylight shimmered on the water before the camera jerked up to focus on the Jet Theater roof.

  “We aren’t sure what happened,” a woman shouted over the noise, the letters on the ticker tape spelling what she was saying. “The feed cut off, and some of our equipment was thrown down. I thought I heard someone say it was the Rook. He left a message for Amy specifying no cameras.” The view panned to show long metal rods bobbing in the water.

  “We aren’t able to reach the crew. Amy’s cell phone is going straight to voicemail. Wait…Oh, my God!” The camera zoomed in to catch an eerie shot of someone in a motorcycle helmet clutching a dangling man by his toothpick-thin wrist. Then time stopped and the man plummeted off a seven story building, gravity taking hold to slam him at the water’s edge.

  ***

  Grief ravaged Lana’s chest; anguish shot up with desperation. A man had died for nothing, simply to prove she was no threat. She had no power save for this helpless burning rage.

  The small bubble of lava zinging through her veins fizzled before she could stop a senseless. death.

  “I told you, I have nothing.” Scream through the wind, raw shouts of pain.

  “Or you’re holding back.” Williams’s voice reached her from under a mask of a black motorcycle helmet. Beside her, Amy Avalon kept screaming.

  A .40 Glock glistened in a steady, leather-bound hand. For a short moment she thought she was sleeping, seeing the Night Rook as though through previous nightmares, a dark, destructive figure, a rage-polluted villain.

  “Jonny....” Wide shocked eyes, trembling hands, red hair whipping around lips smeared with crimson lipstick. “You killed him.” As if someone jolted her, Amy lunged at the gun, high heels clicking on the concrete. “You bastard, you killed Jonny!”

  Lana hadn’t been on time. The Night Rook backhand Amy with heavy grace, sending her sprawling on the roof, one red shoe flailing through the air.

  Power was pointless. She could do nothing but watch, letting the rain sluice over her face, her naked face because Williams had made her take off her helmet. The useless plastic weight lay under the far ledge of the roof, where she’d tossed it. And though she had revealed herself, Jonny was dead.

  “I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out.” The Glock was aimed square at her chest.

  “I’m surprised you hadn’t blasted it over the news.” Lana had to scream above the wind. Amy lay on her side, face down, unmoving.

  “And make everyone feel bad for a blind cop driven by this quest for justice? I don’t think so.” She couldn’t see his face under the mask, couldn’t judge what he was thinking. Her own reflection stared at her in blinding waning light, hair standing on ends, her face a twisted grimace.

  The Night Rook stood less than four feet away, a vision from her nightmares, a shiny menace in black leather. “Your brother was a good cop. Maybe too good. Couldn’t see the gray between black and white.”

  Breath stuck inside her throat. “But you could?”

  The gun blended with leather when he waved her to step closer to the edge. “You know why they call me Doc? Wasn’t because I got more than my share of stiffs on duty.” He stepped closer, the helmet muffling a voice already choppy from the wind. “You know how many ODs I got, how many of them children? Drugs are killing San Mike. I don’t have superpowers, and I’m not a hero. But I’m not going let this city drown in that drain.”

  “I get it. Believe me, I get it.” She took a small step forward, inching closer to the gun. The rain started up again, running frigid fingers over her wet hair. She had to think past the fury, beyond the pain and rage. “That’s why I wanted to be a cop.”

  “I thought you got it.” For that short phrase, the Night Rook sounded sad under the helmet.

  Amy groaned somewhere in the shadows. To keep the Night Rook’s focus on herself, Lana stepped closer.

  “Stay back.” But there was no heat in those words, zero passion. Just cool determination, strong tired resolve. “I hated bringing Gamble to San Mike—though after this, the city will implore him to get out. You and me, we did what was right, kicking drugs out of our city. But you had to have more.”

  “I didn’t care about the drugs, Doc.” Another step as she called him by the name he used to ride with.

  “I know that, Lana.” Regret rang in his voice before he squeezed the trigger, slamming her down on wet concrete. She tried to breathe past the dull ache, the blooming fire. Kevlar kept her alive but didn’t stop pain.

  Another shot, a dry pop somewhere to her left, a muffled scream, a dawning ruby-red haze of horror. Amy lay on the concrete with blood oozing black under her still body.

  “I thought you and I were the same,” Williams continued, already having dismissed the dying or already dead reporter. “Seeing shades of gray and doing what needs to be done. You wanted vengeance, hell, I get that. I would want the same. But then you had to call her.” He jerked the gun at Amy’s limp form. “Had to do the right thing. I would’ve had more respect for you if you had simply tried to wring my neck. It was what you wanted wasn’t it? That night? Before that righteous idiot saved you?”

  No power, nothing to protect her. Less than a yard away, Amy had shown no signs of life.

  “I am sorry for this, Lana. There’s no other way.”

  With the sun dying, she could lift up her gaze without tears to see Williams strip off his helmet. Not as high tech as hers, but close enough for what he planned.

  The black cape pooled down at his feet, the leather flaps hanging loose to reveal an opened zipper of a jacket. And as she lay there, fighting to breathe, helpless to move, he brought her helmet back.

  “You do wear a vest. Officer safety.” Last rays of daylight drowned in the dark, the red and blues below cutting into the sky with razor-blade precision. He knelt beside her and, still fighting for breath knocked by the punch of a bullet into Kevlar, Lana couldn’t find strength to crawl away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” Above the roar of her pulse, a door slammed shut under the pressure of the wind. Williams’s lips stretched into a grim smile. “The loss of life is necessary but not easy. I hated killing Nicky. Maybe, after tonight, you’ll find peace.”

  Pressure and pain ravaged her chest as she struggled to think, to move, to warn the figure coming toward him. Over Williams’s shoulders, her blurry vision revealed Mac.

  Clutching the gun aimed at her head, Williams backed away, his posture tense and steady. “I shot the Rook. Avalon’s down!”

  And Lana focused on a naked needle of a syringe glinting with rhythmic red and blues.

  Mac’s fingers clenched over the vial with the serum. He forced himself not to snap the plastic into pieces, feeding the precious poison to the night. “She doesn’t need the serum.” He didn’t look at the reporter lying on the concrete. All he could see was Lana, her face pale, shocked with tears in her eyes.

  She had to face the consequences of her actions. Power, his or hers, made no difference now.

  “We have to take her in while her shield
s are down.” With his gun aimed at Lana’s head, Williams produced a pair of handcuffs. “She pushed that guy off when he rushed her. Shot at Amy. I’m going to need help taking her in.”

  Lana said nothing, her blonde curls a dirty halo in the approaching night. No sign of injury and, somewhere under the ice freezing Mac’s heart, he found he could still be grateful.

  Amy Avalon sprawled less than a yard away.

  “She doesn’t carry firearms.” Violence, yes, sometimes excessive. None of the reports he’d combed through mentioned her carrying guns.

  Williams crouched by the reporter, his hand gloved in black leather, searching for a pulse under her wet mass of hair.

  Mac frowned at that hand, the shiny leather. A whistling breath as Lana’s pale lips shaped words she wasn’t yet able to speak. She looked at him, blown out pupils wide and begging. Then she glanced Amy and, silent, wordless, shook her head.

  His gut churned while the water sliced him with lashes edged in crimson. Amy Avalon scrambled to crawl away from Williams’s grip.

  “Get”—cough—“away from me. She didn’t do this.” Raw savage whisper while Williams got up on his feet.

  “You’re hurt, Ms. Avalon. Stay calm, help’s on the way,” Williams shouted over the hum of an incoming chopper.

  “No…Narc.” Avalon tried to push Williams away, clutching her side as if to staunch the blood flow. Under the whip of wind, the chopper split the air with eye-searing lights.

  “She didn’t do this.” Barely whispered scream.

  “And you should’ve stayed dead.” The gun was shoved into Amy’s ribs. “Go to him. Slowly.”

  Shocked wide eyes full of pain met Mac’s, a begging plea, a silent question. He shook his head. He had no powers.

  “Guess that means you’ll be playing hero,” Williams boomed a desperate laugh as the roar of the chopper grew stronger.

  When Avalon reached him, Mac pushed Lana behind his back and heard leather scraping against the roof.

  He willed the heat into his veins, searched for it, begged. Found nothing.

  “Self-sacrifice. A true mark of a hero.” Disgust marring his features, Williams shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “You asked me to.” Nothing but ice in his useless, shuddering veins. He’d shot up poison at four in the morning, with a dosage specifically calibrated to last twenty-four hours.

  About eight hours to go. No fire in his veins, not even a whisper.

  “You delivered, as promised. Unfortunately, the game changed.”

  For all purposes naked, Mac took a step toward the gun. He made himself the target, protecting Lana and the reporter while the gleeful wind slapped his cheeks. Ice floated through his veins, his power dead, his shields non-existent. The gift he’d cursed for the past three years became the one thing he craved.

  “I have no shields, if you fire.”

  “Tempting.” But he was nervous; Mac could see the strain around his mouth—the tick of a tight jaw, steady clench on the wet gun.

  Judging from the scrape of sound behind him, Avalon managed to get Lana up. Under the lash of helicopter blades, Mac took another giant step toward the gun, the dripping metal aimed at his naked forehead.

  “There’s still a way out.”

  A thoughtful nod under the chopper blades. “You’re right.”

  He had no power. He was nothing. All he could do was rush the loaded gun.

  Lana gasped and clawed for air. Immense heat punched through her lungs and lights from above blinded her with fire.

  “Oh God! Oh my God!” A woman’s voice made the past two seconds rush back. Mac running at the gun; Amy kneeling beside her. Lana’s body a mass of burning muscles as she shoved Amy out of the way.

  She couldn’t see under the burning floodlights, her eyes, tightly closed and burning from the avalanche of pain. Something round and smooth was shoved into her palms. Her helmet.

  Amy’s hoarse breath came at her over the snarl of vicious air. “You saved my life.”

  With light exploding in her head, Lana shoved the helmet on.

  “Mac?” Pain screamed out from her lungs, she couldn’t make out his shape in this razor-bright night, despite the face shield.

  Somebody clutched her right over the cut stinging her elbow. She didn’t realize Amy was pulling her away until she banged her knee on concrete. The wind shrieked, teasing them with pushes to the edge.

  “Where’s Mac?” No power, not even a glimmer. Empty veins, ; empty, terrified heart.

  “I…I think he’s shot. Williams is waving down the chopper.” Steady voice and shaking fingers, as if thin willpower held the reporter together.

  “I have to help him!” She barely heard herself over the chopper blades.

  Amy dug into her forearm. “Come on.”

  She was the Night Rook, with her helmet and the augmented voice and tinted vision and depleted power. As shadows twisted with the tears, she ran forward, only to be jerked back.

  “Get your arms up!” The chopper snatched away the words but not the grim intent behind them. Stumbling toward the cutting lights, she made out two shapes fighting over a gun. “Stop! You’ll be—” The wind cut off the rest.

  Pointless to scream, useless to fight without power. She raised her hands above her head under the guiding beams of rifle sights.

  “The Rook!” Another gunshot went off wild into the air, and she struggled to see, to scream for Mac. “Control the Rook!”

  Shadows slithered around her, lasers refracting in the spit of water. “Don’t move,” a voice yelled by her ear followed by another shot.

  Pain, a long, sweet needle, pierced her shoulder. Unholy roar coalesced somewhere behind her back. As if the world had slowed, she tried to cover up a patch of skin somehow exposed through Kevlar and came away with crimson staining her hand.

  Someone yelled, “No!” a desperate roar of the past as her knees buckled under her, the world dipping in a slow languid motion. No burn this time, no smoke, just cold and stinging pain. Soft light searing her vision, she couldn’t stop looking at the streaks of crimson on her hands.

  “No! Stop!” The voice enhanced by loudspeakers faded into a swarm of bees. Hands closed over her helpless wrist. “Jesus, he’s really going to do this.”

  She pried apart her sleepy lids —somehow she knew the action to be vital. Under the slaps of rain and shrieking lights, she made out Mac dangling a figure over the roof’s edge.

  The freeze in her veins burned away seeing Mac’s ravaged expression as he gripped Williams’s throat.

  “Mac. No.” She thought she screamed, but the sound came as a whisper. Strength she didn’t know she had allowed her push off the hands trying to hold her back. Cops, edged in crimson, held countless laser sights trained on Mac’s unshielded back.

  In the chaotic lights, William’s lips stretched to smile, an eerie, happy, knowing gaze. Do it, he seemed to say, and God help her, she almost tasted the sweet bitterness of death.

  She wanted it. The thrill, the power of vengeance.

  “Don’t. Don’t do this.” She used the last burst of strength to make her voice carry over the humming chopper.

  She moved through water, deep and heavy, surrounded by blinding beams of laser sights. The cops silent and tense, allowed her to pass. Rivulets of crimson on her hand, she reached out to touch Mac’s shoulder. “You do this, you become him. You become everything you fight.”

  Four steps. Three.

  “You’re still a hero. You’re still Narc.” Lasers silent on his back, bright and deadly. Under the tint of Lana’s face shield, the beams sparkled and winked on the wide playground of his back.

  “Mac.”

  Endless moments passed before he glanced back at her, Williams dangling from his outstretched hands.

  “You do this, and you’re everything he said.”

  Mac’s wild gaze focused on the rip of Kevlar on her shoulder.

  “I’m fine. Though I’ll hurt like hell to
morrow.” She tried a smile. Failed. And because she had nothing left, she closed a fist over his shoulder and pulled him and the man who killed her brother away from the roof edge.

  Coughing, clutching his throat, Williams fell to the concrete.

  No one so much as blinked.

  Mac’s hands hung fisted at his sides, his face a wall of nothing, devoid of pain or any semblance of emotion. Lana didn’t know if he felt her when she touched his chest. “You’re bleeding.” Something wet and thick and horrid spilled from a horrid hole on the right side of his chest.

  “I’ll live.” Low quiet voice, a well of darkness. AR lasers trained on their heads.

  “Commander?”

  More coughing. “What are you waiting for? Take them in, now.”

  “I got everything, Commander.” Amy stumbled forward, waving an object that in the piercing floodlights looked like a silver pen. “Everything. How you killed Jonny. How you—”

  She turned just in time to see Williams shuffle toward the edge. Two cops caught him before he leapt, and his eerie silence did nothing to dampen the screaming in his eyes.

  Almost over.

  A few more seconds, then Lana could close her eyes and rest. Mac’s hand against her waist kept her from floating under. The water drops swept soft tight circles over the shield of her helmet, a lazy patter in a soothing rhythm.

  “Sir, you need to get down on the ground.” Somber voice somewhere in the distance, full of both shock and respect.

  “Turn off the sights. We aren’t going anywhere.” Mac’s voice, low and tired above her head, his arm a reassuring presence. The weight at her back was gone, and when her lids snapped open to the murder of the red and blues, Mac was on his knees, that hero’s chin angling up.

  “Hey, you.” She tried but couldn’t remove her face shield with rapidly numbing arms. It was important that she tell him, before she closed her eyes and floated up in all this lovely darkness. “I love you, Mac.”