Hero Engine (21 page)

Next to me, a lifeless body waits to be dropped six feet under. That was another human, a person, I just killed. I should feel bad, but I don’t. Him or me. He wouldn’t have felt bad if things had gone the other way. Maybe it’s adrenaline, maybe it’s situational awareness, maybe I’m as sociopathic as Ann, but no matter what, it equates to: I don’t give a fuck.

I stand up and dust as much of the dirt off my clothing as possible. Ann levels one of the guns and fires a shot into the air. “One shot for each of us. Hopefully that will buy us an element of surprise.”

Training really makes a difference. Ann’s always been a couple steps ahead of me. “Are you okay?”

She’s got a black eye and blood running out from under her hair. “Yeah, I’ll be all right. Thanks for that.”

“Thanks? What the hell did I do?”

“You kept them distracted.”

“And you kicked his ass.” I point at the broken-neck merc.

“And you that one.” She reciprocates the gesture.

“Fair enough. Not bad for a team that’s been together for less than a week.”

Ann smiles. Through her beating she looks like someone from the winning side of a hockey game. All she needs is a missing tooth or two.

“You ready to go back down to that house and figure out what in the
fuck
is going on right now?”

Ann is walking before I’m finished asking the question. I bend down, grab a gun and a knife off of the dead merc.

“Hey,” I say, jogging to catch up, “did you notice that lady said McCarthy warned
her
about us?”

“Yeah, I did. I’m surprised you did after that headshot you took.”

So that fucker did hit me in the head. I should have stabbed him before I choked him to death. “What do you make of that?” Because I know it confuses me about as much as every other part of this damn case.

“I don’t quite know, but I can’t wait to go down there and ask her.” The ice in Ann’s voice would make me worry if I didn’t want to take a couple of that woman’s fingers for ordering my death.

“Say, Ann, did you bring those cutters with you this time?”

Ann gives me one of those appraising looks before she nods.

We climb down the retaining wall on to the back porch. It’s time to get some answers. I grab the handle and walk through the door of the house, ready to stab the first person who gets near me.

THE LIGHTS
in the kitchen are on this time and there’s no goons waiting in the room to jump us. That’s a bonus. From somewhere inside the house, heels click against the flooring. The sound comes closer.

“Great job, Boys. I’m glad that was taken care of so easily,” the woman’s voice says before she comes into view. The woman from earlier rounds the corner. She’s wearing a business suit and looks a lot like Ann did when I met her, style-wise. Only the lines on this woman are from being skinny whereas Ann’s lines come from hard-earned muscle. Our hit-lady stops in her tracks. Her gaze travels from Ann to me.

The woman is all cheekbones and sneer. Her sunken cheeks make her disgust at our presence seem greater. She glides over to the large island in the kitchen and grabs a cancer stick out of a pack sitting on the counter. Cigarette lit, she takes a puff with the kind of flourish that would make a stage magician proud. A trail of smoke rises up from her cigarette, squiggling through the air from a shake in the woman’s hand. The shake looks more annoyance than fear. “What do you want from me?”

Who in the fuck is this lady?

“Who in the fuck are you?” Ann asks.

“My name is Ninon Dumont,” she says, “and this is my home. I assume you have been sent by SHI as a result of the explosion that occurred there recently.” She takes a puff and slides a stool out from under the island to take a seat.

So she knows about the Engine. “What explosion would you be referring to?” Always best to make sure we are on the same page before I go giving away information on accident.

Her smile is derisive as she says, “The one that disabled your precious Engine. The bomb that that dumb hillbilly Jackson McCarthy built and Leroy DeLaCruz planted.” With her accent the word ‘hillbilly’ sounds more like ‘ill-bill-ee’.

“You said McCarthy warned you.” Ann paces. “McCarthy sent an email to the Grand Sovereign Mage Andy Donovan.”

“You are a perceptive brute of a woman, no?” Dumont’s foot bounces, as if she’s already bored with this conversation. “I am Andy Donovan, the Grand Sovereign Mage of the Anti-Hero Alliance.”

“How is that possible? Why, why go with an alias?” My hand scratches at the stubble of my beard.

Another suck on her stick makes her cheeks sink farther, she looks like she gave up eating years ago. She sighs out a trail of smoke. “Do you really think those bunch of cape-hating rednecks and geeks would be so devoted if they knew they were following orders from a woman? From a
French
woman none-the-less? No. So I put on a fake name and a fake accent just to
sound like one of the good ol’ boys
.” The last part of the statement she drops every hint of French and takes on the hard consonants of someone from the American South. The transformation gives me the chills.

“So why talk to us now? You just ordered our deaths not even an hour ago.” Ann continues pacing. She’s going to wear holes in the tile with that kind of consistency. “Is this your super-villain monologue where you reveal all of your grand plans to us?”

Dumont laughs. It’s a hearty laugh full of bitter malice. “No, this is a business proposition. That is all any of this has ever been. Do you think I give a fuck about the capes and what they do? No. But the people who do, you see, those people pay lots of money for direction. Direction I give them. I organize their protests and their actions and in return, they all make generous donations to the cause.” She uses her fingers to put air quotes around ‘the cause’.

“So this is all about money?” Of course it is. When is everything not all about money?

“Of course it is. What will it take for you to leave me in peace? You already have McCarthy; he made the bomb. I’m sure it will not be hard to link the materials from McCarthy’s house to the device that destroyed the Engine. From my understanding Monsieur DeLaCruz is no longer with us, and you will have a hard time proving anything against me.”

“Do you really think McCarthy is going to keep his mouth shut when he finds out who you really are?” Ann’s voice is a poison hand grenade launched in Dumont’s direction.

Dumont’s bouncing foot falters for a millisecond before she finds her stride again. This lady is as cool as dry ice, smoke and all. “
Do you
really think McCarthy is the only one working for me? Prison is a dangerous place, lots of potential witness have come to their end behind bars.”

Stalemate.

“So,” Dumont stamps her cigarette out on the counter-top, “I will give you whatever you want to leave me alone. I’ll give you information, you take it and deal. This is all just business.”

Ann scoffs. I swear she might be about to throw up on Dumont’s shoes. The cold calculated business-woman is nauseating. She doesn’t seem to give much of a damn about what happens to whom as long as she profits from it. But fuck it, an informant is an informant. This is just turning over a dealer to get the distributer – on a much, much larger scale.

“Tell us the whole thing and we might not kill you.” My hand slides down from my cheek to delicately touch the bruise that probably takes up half my neck. If it looks half as nice as Ann’s eye, I look like shit right now.

Ann has the caged tiger aura going pretty strong. Dumont might make it out of tonight alive, maybe.

Dumont gets up from her stool and walks into the next room. Ann and I follow to make sure she’s not going to get a rocket launcher or fifty-caliber rifle, you know, a nice, subtle weapon to kill us with. Instead of a weapon of mass destruction, she goes over to a filing cabinet and pulls out a handful of letters, and hands them to me.

She takes a seat in an office chair behind a huge oak desk. A cigarette is in her hand and I’m not even sure where this one came from. Her hand searches the desk, but she can’t find what she’s looking for. “Do you have a light?”

“No, don’t smoke,” Ann says.

I rifle through the letters, checking for return addresses before paying any mind to the letters themselves.

Dumont huffs. I look to see her twirling the stick between her fingers like the pen of an uninterested receptionist. “Those are letters I received from an anonymous party, starting close to a year ago.”

I hand a couple envelopes over to Ann and open one of the letters, half-reading, half-listening to Dumont.

“The correspondence stated they were from someone from within SHI who wanted to help me carry out an attack within their main headquarters.”

“Did they say why?” I skim over a letter detailing the kind of explosive they wanted built.

“The mystery person only said they hated the capes as much as the rest of AHA and wanted to help end the abominations, or whatever generic religious fervor those people use as excuses for their actions.”

I scan another paper instructing Dumont—it uses her actual name, Ninon—to leave the bomb at a location in Italy with exact GPS coordinates. The author says they will pick up the bomb and have it delivered to DeLaCruz for placement.

“These letters use your name. Do you know this person?”

“No.”

“How many people know who Andy Donovan really is?”

“Other than the two guards you killed? None.”

Ann looks up from the paper in her hands. “It didn’t strike you as odd that this mystery person happened to contact you
and
know your name?”

“They had information and proved it by giving me the exact coordinates of SHI Headquarters. I was cautious at first, but I had an acquaintance sail far into the Atlantic where they happened to stumble across a landing strip floating in the ocean. His ship sank and he died, but not before getting me a message that he had found SHI.”

I wonder how much Vince had to do with that ship sinking. That deep in the ocean, it would be simple to write something like that off as a rough weather accident.

“So you followed the instructions? You commissioned McCarthy to make the bomb and this person got the bomb to DeLaCruz to sabotage the Engine?” Ann folds the note she’s reading and stuffs it back into the envelope.

“Yes.
And
the mystery person also made a significant donation to The Cause.”

“And The Cause is ridding the world of superheroes?” I give Dumont my full attention.

“Yes.”

“Is there more to the plan beyond destroying the Engine?” Ann resumes her pacing.

Dumont snaps her unlit cigarette in half with the fingers of her left hand. I swear the tobacco is strong enough to catch a whiff from where I’m standing. The smell could just be the haze from the room. “If there is more to the plan, it hasn’t been shared with me.”

Ann stops directly in front of Dumont’s chair. “If this person contacts you again, you will call me immediately.” Ann reaches across Dumont to write a phone number on a scrap of paper.

“I might, but the mystery person pays more.” Dumont leans back in her chair, smug as a criminal who just beat the rap.

Ann stands up straight and pulls the edges of her tank top down. She smiles, gently setting a hand on Dumont’s shoulder. The gesture looks every bit as intimidating as when the mob dons do it in the movies. If Dumont catches any of the malice in the action, she does a good job of hiding it.

“You tried to kill me and my partner. I will look past that. Now, if you would be so kind as to call me if you get any more of those letters, that would save us a trip back out here.
If
we have to come back out here, no one will ever find the pieces of your body.
No?
” Ann puts on a French lilt at the end.

Her hand slides up Dumont’s neck to the back of her head. With a vicious acceleration Ann’s hand slams Dumont’s face against the solid desk top. Poor Ninon’s head snaps backward and her body bounces back, slumping against the back rest of her office chair. Dumont covers her face and shouts what I’m sure aren’t lady-like words through her hands.

Still calm, still scary as fuck, Ann pulls Dumont’s hands down. The entire side of her face is red and there is already a knot forming over her eye.

“That was for your gift to me.” Ann points at her black eye. With another equally quick movement, Ann pivots her body and drives the point of her right elbow into Dumont’s throat.

Dumont tumbles out of her chair and hits the ground, gagging, heaving, and crying. The entire tough-girl façade has given way as she lies on the floor convulsing.

“And that is for the gift you gave my friend. Bon nuit, Madame Dumont.”

WE LEAVE DUMONT
on the floor in a puddle of tears and blood. I would feel bad for her, I want to feel bad for her. But she tried to have us killed and has orchestrated the killings of others for pure profit. Ninon is not a good person. The wrathful side of me thinks she got off easy.

The sky outside is pitch black. No stars and still the sliver of a moon giving off bupkis as far as lighting is concerned. As far up in the mountains as we are, and as late at night as it is, running into traffic on the small road seems unlikely. We don’t bother with the shoulder and instead stroll down the road itself.

Not far away, our unmarked black car waits for us. “Whose turn to drive?” I pull the key out of my pocket and hold it out.

She grabs the keys and heads for the driver’s side. “My turn, I think.”

That works for me. Swallowing still hurts like hell and my head feels a bit more empty than usual. At least the hangover vibrating sound in my ears has quit. I open the car door and drop down in the seat, immediately grabbing the handle to lean as far back as it will go.

“You sure you’re good to drive?” I ask. “You took a pretty good header yourself back there.”

“Yeah, I’m good. I was only out for a second, the rest was an act.”

Ann starts the car and turns back down toward our ride out of this damn place. This is so not how I imagined my first Parisian adventure. Even if this isn’t Paris, it’s probably as close as I’ll ever get. I should have a T-shirt made: ‘I went to France and all I got was a stupid throat chop.’