Even Villains Have Interns (6 page)

“And how am I supposed to get gifts for
everyone?” Travys demanded. “Aaron’s got his brother’s bank
account. Gideon has his own company. Am I supposed to go shopping
with my intern salary? What’s that gonna buy?”

“Do you never check your emails?” Delilah shot
back. “Everyone was given a name and twenty dollar gift limit.
Trust me. You’ll be fine.”

“Twenty bucks?” Travys sat down with a frown.
“So that’s a no to my new car for Christmas?”

“Maybe for graduation.” Delilah patted him on
the head and turned back to her white board filled with purple ink
and power struggles. “I need a pattern to emerge. Does the oracle
of Delphi have anything for me?”

Travys shook his head. “Nothing.” He closed his
eyes. “I can give you a solid bet on who the next mayor will
be.”

Delilah waved a dismissive hand. “Alan Adale.
He’s politically hot right now, the press loves him, the people are
enamored with him.”

“Which is why you’re not dating him?” Travys
guessed.

She arched an eyebrow. “Adale has every red flag
for a user: bad childhood, no significant relationships, and too
much money to care about people.”

“Have you ever considered that he’s maybe not a
bad guy?” Travys asked. “It’s possible to be devastatingly
handsome, have a bad childhood, and still be amazing.”

Delilah gave him a look.

He held up his hands in defense. “All I’m saying
is that I have red flags all up in my background and you gave me a
chance.”

“Stop using logic and reason on me. My mind’s
made up.” She uncapped her white board marker with a click. “Help
me find my killer. Adale is the best suspect—”

“But he was at the party last night,” Travys
said.

“Could be a well-planned alibi.” She shrugged.
“But anyway, I don’t think Adale is the killer. I think he’s the
next victim.”

Travys frowned at her. “You getting premonitions
now?”

A whisper of ice slid down her spine as she
remembered Ivan’s words at the party. “No. Just something a little
bird told me. Chicago’s become ground zero for a hunter who likes
big prey.”

Travys’s eyes widened. “I really hope you mean
street rats.”

She shook her head. “Serial killers.”

“Plural?”

“If my source is accurate, yes. The thing is,
they like to know their victims first. Buddy up and give them the
choice to join or die.”

“Arámbula must have said no.”

Delilah rocked back in her chair. “Let’s get the
mayor’s phone records. Then get Adale’s, and see if we can tap the
police street cams and find him. I want to make a timeline for him
from, oh, let’s say first of November through whenever we finish
this project. Phones, schedule, witnesses, bank accounts. It’ll be
a fun little side project for you.”

Travys gave her a skeptical frown. “Superheroes
on TV are way more exciting. No one sits in front of white boards
in the movies.”

“Sue for false advertising,” Delilah
advised.

Travys glared at the board. “You sure it was a
serial killer?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure we’ll find out—” A buzz
from the front office interrupted her. Delilah nodded, and Travys
hit the button on her desk for her. “Yes?”

“Miss Samson, Detective Morrow of the Chicago PD
is here. Are you with a client?” Margo the secretary asked.

“No, I’m free. Please show him back.”

Travys raised his eyebrows questioningly.

She shrugged with a frown. “I’ve got airtight
alibis for everything.”

“I bet.” He stood up and grabbed the files.
“I’ll go start that file on the deputy mayor.”

Delilah opened the door for him. “What else is
there to do, right?”

“I have my mom’s file. There’s a business card
in the box that I thought might be a lead.” The box was still
sitting by the donuts.

“I’ll look at it after I talk with the police.
Promise.”

“Thanks.” Travys hurried down the hall, nodding
to the gruff police officer coming the other way.

Delilah stayed by the door as she waved the
policeman into her office. “Detective Morrow, always a pleasure to
see you. Although I doubt you’re here for fun.”

“I wish,” Morrow said. He took his hat off, but
remained standing. “This is, officially, a social visit. I came by
to invite you and Wil to the annual benefit dinner we’re having
next week.”

Delilah returned to her seat, hiding her
internal turmoil and boiling curiosity. “Unofficially?”

“Wil says you sometimes do side projects.”

Her pulse skipped. “We all do. A little light
body guarding, fieldwork for bonuses. It’s all above the
board.”

Morrow pulled a video stick from his pocket and
flipped through the pictures before holding it out to her. “Images
from the mayor’s office taken this morning by the forensic crew.
Notice his desk?”

“Everything seems normal.” She touched the
screen and zoomed in. “You guys need better equipment.”

“We got new stuff last year. Every picture in
the office came out distorted until we took the apple out.”

She froze. “Apple?” Serial killers with an apple
as a calling card. She knew who that was right away, and none of it
was good.

“A golden apple paperweight. We think it’s
bugged, but our tech people haven’t figured out how it works yet.
They’re trying to crack it open.”

Delilah was already shaking her head. “Bad idea.
Don’t do that. They tend to explode.”

Morrow let out a breath she hadn’t realized he
was holding. “Yeah. I’d heard about that. In Atlanta, right? After
the DEA officer was shot?”

Delilah exhaled, rubbing at her forehead. “Last
October. This spring the Wooden Wonder had an apple on him when he
was killed.” She met Morrow’s eye. “Apples are not a good thing.
Though the warped images is a new twist,” she added.

He perched on the edge of the spare seat. “What
information can you give me?”

“Lots of guesses and no names, alas.” Delilah
tapped the video stick in her hand. “The apples are the calling
card of a serial killer, or group of serial killers, who call
themselves The Golden Hunt of Atlanta. Possibly a reference to the
city, possibly a reference to the mythical Atlanta. I think they
started as a normal hunt club, going after deer and foxes, but
someone at the top isn’t right in the head.” She stared at her
white board, the hastily written names blurring into abstract art.
“They started hunting humans. Picking off the weak, the forgotten.
They prey on the most vulnerable.”

“Like wolves?”

“Like vultures.” Rage simmered beneath her calm
facade. One day she was going to find the leader of the Hunt, and
then God have mercy on his soul, because she wouldn’t. “I’ve linked
nearly twenty deaths to the group. Some of the kills are
straightforward, like Arámbula. The more dangerous they consider
the victim, the more they like to toy with them. The Wooden Wonder
was a superhero, nigh on immortal as we would understand it. Almost
nothing could hurt him, but they burned him alive.”

Morrow had settled back in the chair and was
taking notes. “Why? What’s the motive?”

She stared at him, eyes cold. “Survival of the
fittest, detective. They are Darwinists. Except they take it to an
extreme only Hitler could appreciate. They believe they are
superior, and the rest of us are just animals. We’re prey.” Delilah
smiled, but she knew it didn’t soften her features. “I have a
transcription from the one caught in the DEA case.” She pulled it
up on the computer.

“Did the guy go to jail?”

“He died three hours after booking. The
arresting police officer died in a traffic accident the same
night.”

Morrow frowned at her. “How’d you get a copy of
the interrogation?”

She shrugged. “My tip led to the arrest, and I
was with Officer Kimley when it happened. Out of habit, my recorder
was on. I wanted evidence for court. Emmet Grear babbled like a
brook. He told us all sorts of things, some of it utter nonsense,
but the Atlanta PD couldn’t take the case any further. The
perpetrator was dead.”

“But he had someone on the outside,” Morrow
argued. “He had someone mess with Kimley’s car. Right?”

“That’s always been my suspicion, but I could
never collect enough evidence to move on it. They’re cagey. They
like anonymity. The apple is for the victim. They want them to know
they’re about to die. They want them to run scared.”

Morrow shook his head. “That’s just sick.”

“It’s a troubled world, detective.” She held his
video stick out. “I’ll send you all the files I have.”

“Send it to Gelphi, he’s handling the
investigation.”

“Are you sure you don’t want copies?”

Morrow pulled his hat on. “Officially, no.”

“I’ll send the files to your private email
then,” Delilah said, softening to a real smile. “Along with a
question about the dress code for the benefit dinner.”

He winked at her. “You’re the best. Don’t let
anyone tell you otherwise.”

“I never will.”

Dear Maria,

Where the hell is our baby sister? I tried
emailing Noah and, lo and behold, his military address no longer
works. Did you know he wasn’t active duty anymore? I didn’t even
know you were allowed to quit! You don’t think he’s in trouble, do
you? He would definitely call someone if he was in trouble. He’d
call Blessing, right? So where is she?

Call as soon as you can,

Delilah

Golden apples. The Spirit of Chicago balanced
his chair on two legs and put his feet up on the table. He’d snuck
into Chicago’s main library after hours to see if the book he
remembered from childhood reading forays was still in circulation.
It was, and now he was ensconced on the eighth floor of the Harold
Washington Library Center, reading the old mythology book like he
was twelve again.

He flipped through the weathered pages, ripped
and torn by thousands of careless hands over the years—and repaired
with great patience, no doubt. Golden apples. He couldn’t shake the
feeling that it meant something. There were the Golden Apples of
Discord, used by the goddess Eris to start the Trojan War.
Kallisti
, the fairest.

Well, he doubted anyone had needed to convince
Helen to leave her aging husband for a younger man. That happened
even without meddling goddesses. There were golden apples of
immortality in several mythologies.

A beguiling idea, but that didn’t seem right for
a serial killer, not unless he thought killing people would bring
him immortality. And there were the golden apples of Atlanta,
thrown during a foot race to distract the goddess. That sounded
almost right. Distractions...

He shelved the book back where he’d found it and
drifted through the library. From his pocket he pulled a page from
Arámbula’s day planner, the unofficial one no one was supposed to
know about. The ripped page had been crumpled in the jacket the
mayor had left behind in the office after the meeting. There was a
partial date on the corner.

Three numbers and a hunch wasn’t much to go on,
but it was a start. He stepped through a wall into the shadows, and
out into the snowy Chicago night.

***

No one at Sub Rosa Securities knew about
Delilah’s alter ego, the super-villain-by-default Locke. They’d
hired her at the Blackhat conference in Las Vegas when she was
still playing around as LockPick and earning good money finding
holes in people’s security systems. Subrosa offered her all that
and healthcare. She’d signed once they added a rider to her
contract that kept them from asking too many personal questions
about life before they hired her.

During her three years in Chicago, no one had
ever questioned her results. Legal methods turned up plenty of
dirt; her methods turned up more. But Wil had never once asked why.
She was pretty sure he wouldn’t believe her anyway, even if she
swore on a stack of Bibles.

Still, over the years she’d found fewer and
fewer reasons to pull out her steampunk suit with its clocks,
copper curls, and a top hat. There were better ways to curb her
curiosity. But tonight she needed Locke. She needed to have
something for people to look at, if they looked at all, because
Kalydon hadn’t left traces on the computer.

Three hours of gleaning every grain of
information from the web had resulted in a pitiful biography. Edgar
Kalydon had been an average son of a blue-collar family until a
lottery ticket on his 18th birthday had changed his life. He’d
dropped out of school, found himself an accountant, and enjoyed his
life living off the interest.

There was no record of drug abuse, and although
he’d gone through four wives in under twenty years and any number
of girlfriends, there was no abuse reported. His major vices seemed
to be a stubborn self-centeredness—something Delilah didn’t find
herself quick to condemn—and a passion for hunting. He’d been a big
game hunter in his younger years, and an avid skeet shooter well
into his sixties. Now, nearly eighty-five, he seemed to have
settled down.

Maybe it was paranoia that made him so cagey. Or
maybe he was a victim of the hunt too, being stalked like Arámbula
was.

“Hudson? Thames?” Delilah called over her
shoulder as she shrugged a Kevlar jacket cut in Edwardian style on.
Four points of red light lit the dark hall—eyes, although not the
sort most people liked to see. Hudson and Thames were
gargoyle-style Minions, genetic marvels created in her father’s lab
to guard her in the big city. “Fly over to the Wacker building. Do
a preliminary scan, and settle down to watch. I want reports coming
into base in thirty-second intervals, and instant alerts if Kalydon
arrives. Do you have all the information you need?”

There was the sound of stone scrapping against
stone as Hudson opened his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”