Dreams Of The Golden Age Part 19

"Corporate espionage."

"Yeah, kind of." "Espionage" made her wonder if she ought to call Teddy and get his help as well-this was exactly his thing. But no, she decided, that would take too much time. Eliot was here, ready to help, better to get it done now. She pulled a page from her pocket. "Here's the name and address of the firm, McClosky and Patterson. They're in one of the downtown offices. I couldn't find much about them online, just a plain business page."

"Horizon Tower-I know that building," Eliot said. "Lots of good ledges. I can get us right to their floor. You think if we find out who hired them, we'll find the Executive?"

"It's just an idea."

"No, I like it. It won't even take long, just a quick look through filing cabinets."

"And hope the place doesn't have good alarms."

His grin turned sly. "We'll worry about that when we get there. Let me just go tell Becca that something came up."

Punk jacket and a nose ring and her name was Becca? Anna waited, watching her breath fog, telling herself over and over that this was a good idea. It was almost a date, even.

No it wasn't.

He returned quickly, backpack over his shoulder.

Anna asked, "Do you need to go get your suit?"

"Already in the bag."

Anna suddenly didn't feel so weird, if she wasn't the only one doing that. "You want to take the bus?"

They set off side by side, walking along the street by the quad.

"Is that how you do your superheroing? You take the bus?"

"Hey, it works," she shot back.

"Why don't we take my car."

"Can you get around without the traffic cameras IDing your plates?"

"Believe it or not, I've been doing this at least as long as you have."

"Probably longer," she muttered, and Eliot did her the courtesy of not responding to that. He steered her around the block to a student parking lot. She searched the rows, guessing which one was his-one of the beaters or one of the fancy, obviously parent-bought-and-gifted models? One of the latter, it turned out: a two-seater coup halfway to being an out-and-out sports car, all silver and streamlined. It had local plates.

"Nice," she observed. So, he was rich, or came from a rich family.

"Thanks," he said, his tone mirroring hers. Which meant he knew exactly what the car said about him.

If he'd grown up in Commerce City instead of Delta, he probably would have gone to Elmwood. They'd have grown up together, a couple of rich kids in their rich kid world. She probably would have avoided him. He unlocked the car and gestured her to the pa.s.senger seat. Leather interior, natch.

He guided the car out of the parking lot and onto one of the westbound arteries. If she thought hard about it, she'd acknowledge that she'd just gotten into a strange man's car and she hadn't told anyone where she was going. Horror movies started this way. No superhero code of honor was going to save her if he turned out to be a psychopath. She couldn't say why she was pretty sure he wasn't a psychopath.

"How long have you been doing this?" she asked finally. "How'd you get powers?"

"Born with them, near as I can figure," he said. "I didn't get struck by lightning or anything. They didn't show up until I was about fourteen. I've mostly kept secret about them. You and your friends are the only other superhumans I've met."

He turned off the main boulevard after a few blocks. The side streets weren't so busy, and surveillance coverage wasn't so pervasive. "What about you?" he asked.

"Me, too. I mean, my power didn't show up until a few years ago. I had to experiment with it for a long time. I've really only started using it in the last year." She didn't say a word about inheriting her powers, that she was part of the famous West family, that her father was the world's most powerful telepath. "You haven't told anyone? Siblings, parents, anything?"

His smile turned pained. "No. I don't think they'd understand. My mother isn't around much-she's a concert pianist and travels a lot. My father-he's kind of a control freak. If he knew what I could do, he'd find a way to monetize it, never mind how I felt. It's kind of a cliche, isn't it? Big wheel corporate tyc.o.o.n, never had time for his kids who now resent him. I ought to be grateful. If he kept better tabs on me I wouldn't be able to do this."

"Oh, you'd find a way."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Yeah."

"I take it you haven't told anyone, either. Outside of your friends, I mean."

It would have been easy to tell him everything-so nice, to be talking to someone who understood. If she revealed enough clues he'd figure it out on his own. She'd have to tread carefully.

"No, I haven't told my family. I don't even know why. My mom's kind of the same, corporate control freak. She'd be way too interested. Same with my dad. But I think ... I'm sure they know something's up. I mean, this is Commerce City, if your kid is sneaking out in the middle of the night, she might just have superpowers. But at this point I don't know what to tell them, so I just keep quiet."

Away from campus, the buildings climbed higher, becoming a forest of gla.s.s and concrete. The sky above was a hazy patchwork.

She asked, "Did you want to come to Commerce City for college because of its superheroes?"

"Sure. You guys have the tradition. I was hoping to meet some of them. You, I mean. And, well, here we are."

She wondered what her parents would say if she told them she wanted to go to college in Delta and get away from Commerce City. She wondered if she would still be able to pinpoint their locations from that far away.

"This looks good." He found an alley leading to a loading dock a block away from their target. It was even legal parking, since the No Parking signs were business hours only. "Ready to suit up?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He had a cover for the car, which would camouflage it. The thing did stand out, but under the dark canvas it seemed more like part of the scenery. He wore the leggings of his skin suit under his jeans, which meant he was pretty hard-core-always ready to leap to the rescue. He had to switch shirts, and she tried not to stare at his muscular chest. The guy did work out, after all. Probably knew all kinds of martial arts. She should have done karate instead of soccer.

She should also maybe think about getting a real uniform, if she was going to keep doing this. The dark coat and ski mask looked silly next to him.

"You come up with a name yet?" Anna asked.

"What do you think of Leapfrog?"

"Kind of lame," she said.

"Yeah, then no."

"You have to get your picture in the paper if you want someone to come up with a cool name for you." Though that didn't always work out. A few years ago, a vigilante with superspeed showed up busting crime in torn jeans, a T-shirt, and a cloth mask. The papers called him Blue Collar because of the clothes, never mind what his powers were. They'd be likely to call Eliot Greenie, a.s.suming the pictures they got were in color.

Keeping to shadows, they made their way to Horizon Tower, the fifty-story skysc.r.a.per housing the law firm. The building was fifteen or so years old, and not one of West Corps' projects, so Anna didn't know as much about it as she would have if her mother was keeping tabs on it. The fake-bronze framing around the mirrored gla.s.s lining the exterior was already looking dated, part of a style that was hip and cutting edge at one time but had been quickly abandoned for more cla.s.sic designs. Eliot was right, though-the upper floors were tiered, offering him lots of good landing and launch points. She sighed. Looked like she'd be spending another night hanging out in doorways and stairwells.

The sound of a car engine traveled up the street, and Anna grabbed Eliot's sleeve and pulled him flat against the concrete wall around the building's base. A white police sedan slid up the street and kept going. Didn't see them, and probably wouldn't see Eliot's car under the cover.

Eliot looked up, studying the facade. No lights showed through any of the windows, and from the back they couldn't see if anyone was keeping watch on the lobby. West Plaza had a guard at the front desk twenty-four hours a day. "Can you tell if any security guards are wandering around?" he asked.

"No. I can only find specific people, not people in general."

"Oh. Too bad."

Whatever.

He walked to the end of the alley, craned his neck back, and pointed. "That one. That ledge will get us to the right floor. If we can't get in without triggering an alarm, we can leave fast enough." And the car was a block away, so they'd have time to get away before anyone found it.

"You have a phone? Maybe I can call you and sound some kind of alarm if I see something out here."

"Don't you want to come?"

"How am I supposed to get inside?"

He looked at her, looked at the roof ledge, and back at her. "I'll take you."

"You can do that?"

"As long as you won't get scared."

Her heart flipped over a couple of times. "I won't."

"Then hold on tight."

His arm wrapped around her middle, and he pulled her close, so their bodies lined up right next to each other and she couldn't help but put her arms around his neck. She could smell him, feel his muscles moving under her grip. He was solid, and she had an urge to wrap not just arms around him, but also her legs, and dig her fingers into his shoulders, and clench her toes. He was so warm, and she could just curl up. She had to work really, really hard to seem completely cool and normal. Professional. Just a fellow superhero doing the superhero thing. No matter how much her insides had turned into complete goo. When his grip on her tightened, tucking in right under ribs, she thought her brain might melt.

His knees bent, he reached up with his free hand, and launched.

It felt like a roller coaster or an elevator in free fall, wind zipping past her face, whipping at the locks of hair that had escaped from her hat, chilling her hands. The ground was gone, and her legs dangled. She yelped rather than screamed-didn't have time or breath for a scream. Her muscles clenched even tighter, securing herself to Eliot. She was trying to hold tight to a rocket. Her eyes watered, tears streaming. She didn't even think about looking to where they were going. The world was a blur, scrolling past too quickly, and she held her breath, waiting for the landing.

It came in seconds, though she swore she had time to think in slow exquisite detail through the whole flight. But it was a jump, not flight, and as the arc of Eliot's trajectory started downward, she opened her eyes just in time to see the upper-story patio he'd been aiming toward. The open s.p.a.ce had tall railings along the edge to keep people from getting ideas. Eliot easily cleared the railing, and his bent knees took the brunt of the impact. Anna's own knees went out, and she folded in a heap on the granite tiles, her fingers still wound tight in Eliot's skin-suit jacket.

So this was what it was like having a real superpower. She took a minute to get her breath back; she'd had the wind knocked out of her.

"Hey, we're here," he said, chuckling. Leaning against him to brace herself, she got her feet under her, straightened, and absently smoothed out the wrinkles she put in his suit.

"You must carry a lot of girls around." She said it as a joke, but not really. More like a hint. A question, which she hoped he would deny. When he didn't, she tried not to be disappointed.

The patio had tables and lounge chairs designed for fashionable corporate lunches and c.o.c.ktail parties. This time of night, the place was empty, the table umbrellas all packed away.

"Should we try the door?" he said, moving toward the gla.s.s entrance at the back of the patio.

Anna was turning over all kinds of plans about how they were going to get in-she didn't know anything about picking locks except what she'd seen in movies, and breaking the gla.s.s would probably be a bad idea.

But the door wasn't locked. Eliot swung it right open.

"Wow," she said. "Wasn't expecting that."

"You'd be amazed how many places don't lock doors on the upper floors. They figure, who's going to break in on the thirtieth floor?"

"But this is Commerce City. People fly around here," she said.

"Superheroes fly-and what superhero is going to engage in breaking and entering?"

"Us?"

Smirking, he held the door open and gestured her inside.

She waited for the alarms to blare, but nothing did, and she figured Eliot was right: The ground floor was alarmed and guarded, but anything this high? Not so much. Another reason the building, or at least this floor, wasn't so well guarded: The floor was nearly empty. The doorway led to a hallway and a row of prime window offices, but beyond a part.i.tion was a typical open-plan s.p.a.ce, only with no part.i.tions, desks, chairs, anything. A few power cords dangled from offset ceiling tiles. An emergency light cast a faint glow from a door on the opposite wall. She wondered how many floors were empty and how much of the building was leased. That said something about the law firm; if they needed the cheap office s.p.a.ce they could get in a mostly empty building rather than leasing posher, more prestigious s.p.a.ce farther uptown, where West Plaza was located. At least, that was what her mother would say about it.

"The lawyers are on the next floor down. Emergency stairs are this way, I think."

"You seem to know a lot about this building," Anna said.

"I just pick things up, you know? Like I said, it's got good ledges."

"I guess the Leaping Wonder would know about ledges," she said.

"I have got to come up with a decent name."

He went toward the emergency light, and she followed, scanning for clues about what business might have been here in the past and what had happened to it. Not much of anything had been left behind-a few pieces of nondescript office furniture, a few extension cords pushed up against a wall. The place smelled of musty carpet and long disuse.

The next floor down wasn't quite as desolate, but it wasn't filled, either. A pair of hallways branched from the stairwell door and contained rows of office doors and windows. A few accounting offices, an architectural firm, all with stodgy names and minimal public faces. The lawyers were at the end of the hall.

Eliot had a set of lockpicks, it turned out, and he knew more about picking locks than what you saw in the movies.

"You came prepared," Anna observed.

"It just seemed like a good thing to have if I was going to be running around at night." He inserted a pair of narrow probes into the keyhole of the office door and wiggled them until the lock popped and the door swung in.

"So, you a vigilante hero or a cat burglar?"

"Trying to be a hero," he said. "But I have some pretty wide boundaries."

She wasn't one to talk, considering all her heroing so far had involved breaking and entering. She didn't have time to work through the philosophical implications.

Inside, she turned on the light with a gloved hand. The front receptionist s.p.a.ce had a desk and a few chairs. No artwork, no magazines on a coffee table. Just the desk, chairs, and bare walls. She went through to the back office, which also had a desk and a few of chairs. At least the desk had a computer on it, and one of the walls had bookshelves containing an official-looking law library, all perfectly lined up. A diploma for a law degree from the university hung on the back wall. The name on it was Evan McClosky. Patterson's degree didn't seem to be hanging anywhere.

The office was spa.r.s.e; it seemed wrong. Celia's office in the penthouse was clean and spare, but it still looked lived in and used. Usually, a jacket was slung over a chair or a pen lay out of place. The shelves had books on them. This place didn't look lived in.

Eliot rubbed his hands together and looked around. "Okay, where to dig for these files of yours?"

Anna looked for another door: a closet, access to another room, anything. But no, the place just had the two rooms, and the rooms weren't enough.

"There aren't any filing cabinets," she murmured. As far as she could tell, except for the law books, there wasn't a sc.r.a.p of paper in the whole place.

"They must have everything on computer, and we'll never get through the encryption," Eliot said.