One More Day (StrikeForce Book 2) Read online

  by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Published by Peitho Press

  Detroit, Michigan, 2016

  © 2016 Colleen Vanderlinden

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at [email protected].

  Contents

  Books by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  Letter from the Author

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my own personal super team of beta readers and crusaders. You guys are the absolute best.

  Part One

  Shadows

  Chapter One

  “On your right,” Caine’s voice said over the comm in my ear. “He’s about to let loose again.”

  “Copy.” I swerved, turning back to the right and finally catching sight of the most recent powered dumbass Caine and I had been chasing. This one had been popping up all over the region the past two weeks, damaging buildings and injuring people in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis, and then boasting about it on social media. If I had to guess, I’d say he was in his early twenties, probably. Tall and skinny, jock-looking type. He didn’t bother with a uniform or costume of any kind, unless you counted black skinny jeans and a 1980s-era studded black leather jacket. He could fly, and he was able to breathe fire.

  He called himself, predictably enough, “The Dragon.”

  Asshole.

  Caine and I had spent most of a day trying to chase him down the last time he’d shown up in Detroit, with the rest of the team backing us up. He shouldn’t have been as difficult to catch as he was, except that in addition to the flying and fire, he had the ability to camouflage himself. If you were anywhere where there were buildings or trees or anything like that for him to blend into, you were screwed.

  Over the past hour or so, we’d managed to draw him out near the river and toward Belle Isle. It was more open there, and there were no skyscrapers for him to blend into.

  I got ready to move, and the phone I kept in one of the pockets on my belt rang. Again. I rolled my eyes. This was the fifth time in maybe ten minutes.

  “Shouldn’t you answer that?” Caine asked as I hoisted him up and started flying toward the island.

  “Not right now.”

  “What if it’s your mom or something?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not her ring. It’s Killjoy’s.”

  Killjoy. Who I hadn’t heard a peep from in over a month, since the day he’d come to visit me in the hospital wing after my fight with Maddoc. I’d told him to stay away from Command, because I didn’t trust Alpha not to try to take him in. But that wasn’t an issue anymore and if he’d bothered calling or messaging or something even once in all that time, he would have known that.

  I dropped Caine on the beach at Belle Isle, where he could get a good shot off if I wasn’t able to take the guy down. He wasn’t getting away from us again.

  “Ready?” I asked him.

  “Go get him,” he answered, pulling the stun rifle off his shoulder and aiming it. “If he starts taking off again, he won’t get far.”

  I nodded, then rose into the air again. I knew by now, about a month after Portia had assigned Caine as my partner out in the field, that when he took a shot, he didn’t miss. The problem was that we didn’t get as many shots as we’d like, and superpowers, unfortunately, sometimes reacted strangely with the stun gun, so we had to make sure that we were somewhere where the chance of civilians getting hurt was low.

  I also knew, because he’d told me the second we got our partner assignments, that his real name, secret identity or whatever you wanted to call it, was Ryan Lucas. To me, he was still Caine.

  Superhero life. It’s complicated.

  I raced toward Dragon, who hadn’t spotted us yet and seemed to be surveying the area below. Either looking for us or deciding which random structure to set fire to next. It really didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t get the chance to do any of it. Everything was a blur as I pushed myself toward him. His back was to me, and I had the perfect chance to get the jump on him, take him down before he even saw me coming.

  And, at that moment, my phone rang again. Killjoy’s ring.

  Dragon spun and kind of did this funny mid-air version of tripping in surprise. I was already going at him full speed, so I just kept going, and I was lucky that he wasn’t exactly a quick thinker. I barreled into him, got an arm around his neck, and flew with him back down to the ground. Even if he managed to take in enough air to blow fire, there was nothing on the beach to set fire to. I landed, and he struggled and fought against me. I could see Caine further down the beach, running toward us. Dragon kept struggling and trying to get out of my grasp, and I tightened my hold around his neck, his head under my arm.

  And my phone rang again.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered. I used my free hand to dig my phone out of my belt pocket and answered.

  “Hello?” I asked, well aware that I sounded like a bitch.

  “Well hello to you too. I was wondering if you were ever going to bother answering,” Connor’s voice said over the line. Dragon started struggling again, and I yanked him back toward me.

  “Little busy just now,” I said.

  “Yeah. Busy with Caine, huh?”

  “What?”

  “You two are always together. I see it on the news.”

  I was seriously tempted to throw my phone into the river. “I’m working. I literally have an asshole in custody right now and he’s trying to get out of my grip and you’re giving me bullshit about my patrol partner? Are you kidding me with this right now?”

  “I— ” he began, but now I was on a roll.

  “And what business do you even have saying anything about anything? I haven’t heard from you in over a month and I would have been sure you were dead except that I keep seeing you on the news.”

  “You told me to stay away.”

  “Oh kiss my ass,” I gave Dragon a hard yank when he tried to get free again. “That has nothing to do with dialing the damn phone once in a while.”

  Caine met up with me and started putting the dampener over Dragon’s neck while I held him still.

  “So you’re not going to say anything about Caine then?” he asked, and I held my phone away from my head and glared at it. Caine raised his eyebrows at me, oblivious to what was going on, and I shook my head.

  “You can call back when you decide to stop being an asshole. I have things to do.” I hung up and shoved the phone back in my pocket just as Caine activated the dampener.

  “Everything okay?” Caine asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t know who tha
t was, but it seems like pissing off the chick who breaks buildings for fun isn’t the brightest idea.”

  I shook my head. “Two buildings, man. Two. You act like I do that shit all the time.”

  We started walking up the beach, and I was more than happy to let Caine take over keeping a hold on Dragon. He smelled strongly of burnt eggs and I had to try not breathing through my nose or I’d end up losing my morning coffee in my mask.

  “You forgot about that house in Brightmoor,” he said.

  “That didn’t count. It was going to come down any day anyway.”

  “Uh huh. The Historical Museum?” he asked, glancing over at me.

  “I didn’t break the building. Just some of the stuff inside,” I said with a grimace.

  “Have they lifted the ban on you yet?”

  I glared at him then, and he laughed and hauled Dragon into the mini jet we’d taken out for patrolling.

  “You owe me lunch, by the way. I bagged this one,” I told Caine as I buckled into the seat behind the pilot’s seat.

  “It’s kind of unfair working with you. You end up bagging all of them.”

  “Yeah. All three of the ones we’ve managed to take down,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Caine strapped Dragon into the seat beside mine, securing his hands and ankles and double-checking the dampener before sliding into the pilot’s seat. Then he turned and looked back at me. “Hey. Better than leaving those three out on the street. We’ll take a win where we can get it, and eventually, we’ll start getting more of them. Right?”

  I studied him for a moment. Dark mask covering everything but his mouth, he sported the same gray and black uniform I did. He looked a lot more menacing in his than I did in mine, though. “Who would have guessed you’d be the perky positive one of the two of us?” I asked him.

  “Perky. Damn. You didn’t have to get mean about it,” he muttered, but I could tell from his tone that he was smiling. We took off, and I watched the city pass beneath us. I would have rather been flying outside of the mini jet than inside it, any day.

  Within minutes, Caine was landing the mini jet at the flight bay at Command. We got out, and Caine talked to the flight crew about something with the jet while I hauled Dragon out of the plane. We took him down to the detention facility, handed him off gratefully to Marie and her people, then went up to Portia’s office to fill her in on everything. By now, we didn’t need to talk about how or when we were going to do something, or who would talk when, or what had to happen next. I’d been unsure about Caine as my patrol partner, and actually went as far as arguing with Portia about it because I would have preferred Jenson, but I had to admit that we worked well together.

  It wasn’t the same for everyone she’d paired up. Toxxin and Chance pretty much despised one another by now. Amy, AKA Steel, was kind of creeped out by Jenson and her self-replicating powers; and Monica thought Beta was, in her own often-repeated words, “an insufferable little know it all shit.” Dani was intimidated by being paired with Portia because she was our leader, and she was constantly looking for someone to take her shifts for her.

  So, yeah. Things were going really super well. For the most part, Caine and I were the only ones who managed to actually bring anyone in when they caused trouble, and even that wasn’t all that often.

  But, we were working on it. Portia had her hands full trying to keep all of us on task, and I didn’t envy her the job.

  We were heading for the elevator after dropping Dragon off when my phone rang again. This time it was Mama’s ring, and I gestured for Caine to go ahead without me while I picked it up.

  “Hey! What’s up?” I asked, pacing back and forth near the elevators in the lobby between the men’s and women’s detention wings. I turned and paced back toward the men’s wing. Through the window in the entry door, I could just see the cell at the end, and make out Maddoc’s hulking form. I turned back around and put a hand to my neck, hating the way I felt on the verge of panic just from seeing him. The nightmares still hadn’t stopped, and my reflexes and fine motor skills were still shot. Dr. Ali said it was likely I’d never be what I’d been. I still couldn’t hit worth shit, and that had kind of been my thing. All I managed now was barreling into things at high speed. It got the job done, sometimes, but it wasn’t pretty.

  I shook my head, forcing the thoughts away and concentrating on Mama.

  “Are you busy? I can call back,” Mama said, and I smiled.

  “Nope.”

  “I was wondering… I feel like a terrible person for even asking this but nothing else seems to work, and— ”

  “What is it?”

  “You know those guys who moved in next to me? In Patty’s old trailer?”

  “Yeah. The bikers?”

  “Yes. They’ve been really loud, and we’ve been calling the management on them, but they won’t do anything. And Shelli even called the police twice, and they came but as soon as they were gone, it just started up again. They were shooting guns off out there last night.”

  I took a breath. “We have to get you out of there, Mama,” I said, thinking of the house keys I had in my suite at Command. I’d just closed on a house I’d bought for Mama a couple of days ago, and I had some contractors coming to take a look at fixing it up so I could move her in. I hadn’t told her yet, because I wanted it to be a surprise. And also because I didn’t want her to argue with me.

  “Not right now, Jo. And it’s not just me. We have kids in this neighborhood.”

  “I know.”

  “I know it’s not a StrikeForce thing. They’re not powered or anything like that,” she added quickly. “But do you think someone could come by and maybe talk to them? Maybe Beta?” She’d met Beta back when I was in the hospital and she’d taken a liking to him.

  “Why not me?”

  “I don’t know how intimidated they’d be by a female superhero,” she said.

  “Mama. I have a reputation, you know.”

  “I know. But you know how some men are,” she said, and she didn’t have to explain, because, yeah, I did know. There was a type, and that type usually believed that anything a woman accomplished was actually thanks to someone else, that there was no way a woman, even a powered one, could beat up a big, strong man. Or, let’s be honest, even a weak-assed one. They were the ones who suggested loudly and often on social media that my fights were all staged, that the villains I took in were actors, that Caine actually did all the work and I just swooped in at the end to look good. And you don’t have to be a costumed superhero to get that shit. All you have to be is a woman who does things.

  “Are they around now?”

  “Yes. Neither of them seem to work or anything,” she said.

  “Okay. Sit tight.”

  “Is Beta coming?”

  I sighed. “Mama.”

  “All right. Just be careful.”

  “Okay. Stay in the trailer, all right?”

  “Love you, Ladybug.”

  “Love you more. Are you planning to make some of those double chocolate cookies of yours?”

  “I am now,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll have them ready when you come to visit on Saturday.”

  “Yes!” I said, and she laughed again. “Okay. On my way.”

  I pressed my comm twice, which would get me Jenson instead of Caine. “Hey,” I said.

  “Congratulations on not breaking anything today,” Jenson’s cool, deadpan voice said in my ear.

  “You all are really funny, you know that?” I asked, and I heard her laugh. “I’m just letting you know that I’m stepping out for a bit. My comm is still on but there’s something I need to take care of.” I thought for a second. “Oh, and if there are any rumors about me roughing up some biker assholes later, they’re totally made up.”

  I was pretty sure I heard a sigh on her end, but all she said was. “Duly noted, Daystar. See you at dinner.”

  I grinned and made my way up to the flight bay, then took off toward Warren, which was where Ma
ma still lived and where I’d lived up until a few months ago, in the little yellow and white single wide in the Eight Mile Motor Village.

  I landed on the cracked asphalt in the center of Perdition Lane. I could see Mama’s trailer at the end. The flowers she had planted had long since died back from frost, and a light layer of new snow covered everything. The trailer next to hers was an old aqua and white monstrosity that should have been scrapped years ago. The tiny lot around it was strewn with old tires, beer cans and bottles, and empty pizza boxes, and there were three bikes parked there, three long-haired, tattooed guys standing around them. You know the bikers you see on the covers of certain romance novels? Mama loves those books. Anyway, these guys didn’t look like that. Stringy, scrawny, oily looking, but clearly they think they’re something special. I walked past my old neighbor and friend Robbie, who was fixing a car in his driveway with one of his buddies. I heard one of them murmur “oh, shit,” and smiled behind my mask. I walked closer to the biker guys and they finally looked my way.

  “There’s no costume party around here, honey,” one of the bikers said, and the other two immediately laughed. Dipshit hierarchy is so easy to peg. That one was the alpha moron, and the other two were his lackeys.

  “I received a report that you guys were shooting guns here last night,” I said, keeping my voice low. I crossed my arms over my chest and watched them. They couldn’t see my face at all behind my mask, but I still tried not to look at Mama’s trailer. I could hear doors opening as some of the other neighbors checked out what was going on.

  “There’s none of that powered shit going on here. You have no right to be here,” alpha moron said.

  I walked closer to them, arms still crossed over my chest, like I was taking a slow, casual stroll.

  “If people feel unsafe, for any reason, I have every right to be here. And you are a problem.”

  Alpha moron held his hands out in a “come get me” gesture. “You think I’m scared of some bitch in a mask? You got any whips on you? We can make this fun if you like that kinky shit.”