Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

“You ever get tired of it?” she asked. “Being on Dad’s payroll for doing stuff like this? Keeping up the vigilante gig? You ever wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t joined the Olympiad? Just gone on, gotten a normal job, had a normal life?”

“Normal isn’t an option for folks like me. We are what we are.”

“Well. I’ve got a chance to try normal for a little while. So that’s what I’m doing.” She made a broad shrug, dismissing the topic.

His short-cropped hair was more gray than black now. She couldn’t recall when that had happened.

“You are one stubborn kid,” he said.

She hugged herself and looked away.

“At least take your folks’ limo. It’ll be warm, and it’ll get you right to your doorstep.”

And it would have something to drink in the minibar. “Okay.”

“I’ll call down to the garage for you.”

“Thanks.”

Together, they went through the door, to the foyer of the penthouse, to the elevator. She stepped in and punched the button for the parking garage.

He held his hand over the door to keep it from closing. “It’s normal to call your parents once in a while, you know. They miss you, Celia. Do you think you could at least come home for Christmas this year?”

She shook her head before he’d even finished. “I’m not ready. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready.”

“Will you ever be?”

She couldn’t explain it to him, that it really was getting better, that being on her own—out of the middle of the madness that was her parents’ double lives—had brought the world into focus for her. She looked in the mirror now and saw herself. A little more time, and she’d start to see the road before her, and it wouldn’t seem so murky.

“Yeah, I will. I think. But it’s going to take time. I’m sorry. Tell them I’m sorry.” It was the first time she’d ever apologized or expressed sympathy, even indirectly.

She touched his hand, squeezed it, pushed it away from the door, and held his gaze until the doors closed.

Breezeway was something of a lone wolf. His getting involved meant the superhumans had been in conference, which meant they thought this was serious. She was almost flattered, but she couldn’t help but feel like they were wasting their time. She wasn’t the target. She wasn’t where they’d strike again, not really. She was a red herring.

Once on the bus, she called her mother’s cell phone.

“Celia, what’s wrong?”

“Why does everyone always assume something’s wrong when I call?”

“Because you never call unless something’s wrong.”

“That’s not true.”

“Celia—”

Okay. It was true. “I’m sorry, Mom. I just think you guys should call off the surveillance on me.”

“No. Absolutely not. In case you haven’t noticed, the Strad Brothers tried to kidnap you during both their robberies. They’ll try again.”

“I know, that’s just it. They’re using me as a distraction. While you guys are busy worrying about me, they get away with another robbery.”

“I’ll worry about you over a fish any day of the week. Celia, this is serious, it’s not like we’re following you around on a high-school date.”

Except that they would be following her on dates, the next time she and Mark went out. Hell, Mark was probably in on it.

No need to get paranoid or anything.

“I think your resources would be better spent tracking them down than trying to protect me. You heard what Arthur said, they want me alive. Even if they managed to catch me, I’d be safe. Hell, I might even learn something that could bring them down.”

“Don’t get any ideas. You’re not trained for that kind of mission.”

She wasn’t trained for any kind of mission, except auditing income statements. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” She was starting to sound surly. She needed to wrap this up before she said something she’d regret later.

Suzanne said, “We’ll stop the surveillance on one condition: you come back to live at West Plaza, where we can keep an eye on you.”

She didn’t even have to hesitate. “No, Mom. I can’t do that.”

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“Hey, Mom? My stop’s coming up, I really have to go—”

“You’re not still riding the bus, are you?”

“I’ll talk to you later, okay? Say hi to Dad for me.”

She clicked off the phone.

WEST Corp’s connection to the Leyden Industrial Park hit awfully close to home. She had the next key to the puzzle, and she could keep going—if she could get access to West Corp’s files. If she did, she could find out if Sito had been working for West Corp, and if West Corp had compensated Sito well enough to pay for Greenbriar. She could maybe even find out what Sito had been doing when he had his initial breakdown.

And if she learned all those answers, what was she going to tell Bronson about it? Not to mention her parents.

Jacob West, her grandfather, had headed the corporation then. Her father hadn’t been born yet. No one could have known back then what Sito would become. It didn’t mean anything. Unless the tabloids got hold of the information, of course.

She made good on her offer to have her parents over for dinner.

Her mother fussed, still worried about Celia after the latest kidnapping attempt. Suzanne wanted to cook for her—in her own kitchen no less—but Celia managed to put her foot down. She ordered pizza to be delivered, as she’d threatened, but Suzanne seemed relieved that Celia wasn’t actually going to do any work.

Her father, on the other hand, was in a snit. “It has to be the Destructor masterminding this. We know these hits are all connected. Only the Destructor is capable of organizing a citywide spree.”

“He’s under suicide watch at the Elroy Asylum,” Suzanne said. “He can’t organize a crime spree under those conditions.”

“He’d find a way.”

Celia toyed with a leftover crust of pizza. Something didn’t ring true about that. The targets of the robberies were too odd. The kidnapping attempts were too haphazard. Like it was all some kind of distraction, a means rather than an end.

“I don’t think it’s the Destructor,” she said.

“Why?” Warren demanded.

“It’s not his MO. The Destructor would have pinned the flayed koi to the mayor’s desk. He’d have sent the Stradivariuses back to the symphony in splinters.”

He said, “Is that a fact?”

“It’s a hypothesis.”

A few moments of silence passed before Suzanne said, “She’s right, Warren. This isn’t how Sito operated.”

“Then there’s someone else,” he said. “A new mastermind.”

Suzanne considered, her brow furrowed. Celia used the pause in conversation to start clearing the table. She wasn’t thinking about the Destructor or masterminds—the less she thought about such topics the happier she was. Instead, she’d spent most of the evening trying to figure out how to ask her father for a favor.

The pause lengthened, and she decided to take the chance.

“Dad, do you know anything about a building West Corp owned about fifty years ago? It’s in the northeast industrial district. It used to be called the Leyden Industrial Park.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. That long ago, it would have been one of my father’s projects.”

“Do you think West Corp still has the records on it?”

“Probably. We never throw anything away.”

“He got that from his father,” Suzanne said.

“Do you think I could have a look?” She held her breath.

“What’s your interest?”

It wasn’t an accusation. Just a natural question. She had to remember that. “I stumbled across it at work. The building came up with West Corp’s name attached to it. I got curious, but I’m having trouble finding records from that far back. I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask you.”