The White Knight & Black Valentine Series (Book 3): Almost Invincible Page 16

  “Hey!” Elisa jumped out of the ambulance.

  “Thank you,” Julio said, “for looking after Nicole. If you hadn’t been there…”

  “I didn’t do much.” Rosa brushed back her hair as she looked quickly between Julio, Elisa, and me. “I actually came to say thank you. I thought I was going to die back there, and you—you saved me. It was absolutely amazing.”

  Oh, no. Rosa’s voice was breathless, her eyes bright and glossy. I knew that expression. Back when I was White Knight, women got that expression when they were about to kiss me in an overwhelmed display of gratitude. I’d learned to dodge it faster than a punch, but had I ever taught Julio to recognize the warning signs?

  “I can’t ever thank you enough.” She stepped forward—right past Julio—and passionately kissed Elisa.

  Julio blinked rapidly, and I opened my mouth before thinking twice and closing it again. After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, Rosa pulled back, smiled shyly, and hurried away.

  Elisa stared after her, dazed, before breaking into a huge smile.

  I was about to tell her Rosa was too old for her, but who was I kidding? I couldn’t say anything bad about Rosa. She was brave and kind and had saved a lot of lives today.

  “If you want her number, you’d better catch her now,” I said with a resigned sigh.

  Elisa looked at me, jerked up straight, and dashed off.

  Julio shot me an amused look before jogging to Agent Lagarde’s ambulance, which turned on its sirens and drove away. I leaned my head back against the cot’s pillow and relaxed. The drugs the paramedics had given me left me pleasantly light-headed, and I felt as if I were floating in the ocean. I tried not to dwell on how many people had died today, instead focusing on those who’d been saved. I had to do that, or the harsh reality of it all would destroy me.

  There you are.

  Combined with the drugs, Val’s voice in my head made me feel weightless. I propped myself up just in time to see her climb into the ambulance. She’d changed clothes since this morning, wearing a black dress suit and heels. My swollen cheeks ached as an unstoppable smile spread across my face. Val didn’t seem to mind the bruises, because she immediately leaned down and kissed me.

  I closed my eyes so I could savor the sensation. Her mouth touched mine softly at first, and I reached an aching hand up to run my fingers through her hair. I pulled her head closer, pressing her full lips harder against mine. She did something with her tongue that pulled a moan from deep in my chest. My heartbeat raced, causing all my injuries to throb in unison. Otherwise, I would have yanked her down on top of me.

  She must have telepathically sensed the pain, because she pulled away in an act that was both cruel and merciful. Lying on the cot and trying to catch my breath, I felt a warmth in my chest that soothed all my hurts. Val looked my beaten body up and down and shook her head. “How do you get yourself into these situations?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” I took her hand. “How did you get past the DSA?”

  She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Oh, they had to let me in once I found a way to bring down the wall.”

  “That was you? Heh. Why am I not surprised?” I’d figured that with Mother Earth dead, there had simply been no force to hold the earthen walls up. I should’ve known better than to think it would be that easy.

  “Technically, it was him.” She pointed to a short, pudgy man surrounded by DSA agents. He had a bald spot atop his head, but the rest of his stringy brown hair reached his shoulders, and a goatee adorned his round face. His T-shirt and jeans were baggy and rumpled. “He’s another earth manipulator.”

  “Hero or villain?” I asked, not recognizing him.

  “Just a weirdo. He lives in these caverns in South Dakota, calls himself the Naked Mole Rat.” She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to banish a particularly bad memory. “You do not want to know what I had to do to track him down.”

  I squeezed her hand. “My hero.”

  She rolled her eyes, trying to hide a flattered smile, but then her expression sobered. “Look, your mom couldn’t reach you, so she called me.”

  I sat up straight, and even the drugs couldn’t suppress a flash of agony at the sudden movement. “What happened? Is she okay? What did the doctors say?”

  I’d barely had time to think about her with everything else going on. If something awful had happened while I’d been too busy to even worry… It wasn’t right. My mother had always made time for me no matter what was going on. Being with her for this was the least I could’ve done.

  “It’s congestive heart failure,” Val said.

  My own heart felt as if it failed after hearing that statement. That sounded bad—no, “bad” wasn’t a strong enough word. What did it mean?

  “And before you panic,” Val said, “it’s apparently pretty common with elderly people. They prescribed her some medicine and recommended a few lifestyle changes. There’s no reason she shouldn’t be fine. I told you she was too mean to die.”

  I let out a huge breath. “I should visit her again before she leaves the hospital.”

  Val’s dark eyes sparkled as she gave my injuries another once over. “Darling, at this rate, she’ll be visiting you.”

  Val was right. (She was always right.) My mother got discharged while the hospital was still keeping me for observation over worries about internal bleeding. She came to visit and brought her homemade guava pastries, which cheered me immensely. My hospital room wasn’t quite as nice as hers had been. The walls were dull beige, and the window looked out over the parking lot rather than the ocean.

  “My poor boy.” She cupped my cheek, where the bruising had turned an ugly yellow. “You went through so much to save all those people.”

  “All part of the job,” I said. “You know that.”

  “Yes, but you’re supposed to be retired.” She shook her head. “And Val…”

  Val looked up from the fashion magazine she’d grabbed from the lobby, her face a blank mask.

  My mother swallowed, her neck stiff. “You did a good thing, bringing down that wall.”

  Val kept her expression neutral, hiding her surprise. “Thank you, Dolores.”

  “I do wish you’d done it sooner, though. My poor David had to fight that monster three times before you managed it.”

  Val let the magazine fall closed and wordlessly snatched another pastry.

  My mother wasn’t my only visitor. Julio stopped in, bringing news of Agent Lagarde. If I was doing rough, it was nothing compared to her. She’d live, but her spine was broken, and it took Julio almost a full minute to list all the other bones that had shattered. It would take a lot of time and physical therapy for her to recover, and Julio expressed doubts that she’d ever return to being a field agent. I asked Val to send her flowers from the both of us, wishing I could’ve done more.

  “Any sign of Dr. Sweet?” I’d asked Julio as he sat by my bedside.

  He shook his head, his voice low and worn. “He’s in the wind. We think he might have encouraged Bloodbath’s attack as a distraction.” He idly rubbed at the cast on his hand. “The DSA turned all its resources to the situation at the park. By the time we turned our focus to tracking him down, the trail was cold.”

  My body felt heavy. So Dr. Sweet was out there right now doing God knew what. I was sure I’d find out what he was up to, but by then it would be too late. You couldn’t afford to be reactive when it came to Dr. Sweet. My jaw tightened, and I thought about trying to track him down myself. There had to be something I could do. I glanced at Val and could practically see the wheels in her head turning as she stared into space. She caught my gaze and mentally said, Later.

  “Treat slipped away, too,” Julio added, “though security footage caught her at a gas station about a mile outside the park a few hours after the wall came down. Local police are on the lookout, but you’ll want to watch your back.”

  “Good to know.”

  Julio exchanged a glance with Val,
and in the silence that followed, I was sure she was telepathically reassuring him that she’d look after me. She made good on her word, and made sure I always had a bodyguard whenever she had to leave the room. Eddy and Irma were back in town and pretty upset they’d missed all the action.

  Being in the hospital meant I missed Haley Flores’s funeral. I wished I could have gone with Elisa, but there was a small, secret part of me—one I was ashamed to admit existed—that was relieved. I couldn’t bear the thought of meeting Barbara’s eyes. I spent hours torturing myself by wondering what would’ve happened if I’d just tossed those free tickets into the trash instead of offering them to Elisa and her friends. I was the reason the girls had been in the park that day, and Bloodbath had attacked to get revenge on me. Haley’s death was my fault in more ways than one.

  It crushed me to see Elisa silent and slouched, barely hearing what we said when she visited the hospital. According to telepathic conversations with Val, she was pretty much the same at home. Time would help, but I wished she didn’t have to go through this in the first place. Elisa had been through enough. At least she had texts from Rosa to brighten her day.

  After a couple more days, the doctors cleared me to go home. I escaped the small, dull hospital room, and Val sped us so fast out of the parking lot that you’d think she was fleeing the scene of a crime. It was a bright, cloudless day in Miami, and I let my gaze drift out the window as we drove past palm trees and buildings with windows that gleamed in the sun. People walked down the sidewalk, waited at bus stops, and sipped iced coffee under umbrellas in front of cafés. Nobody was running, screaming, or hiding. The events at the Hero Experience seemed so distant for something that had consumed my life for the past several days.

  We drove across the Causeway, and the waters of Biscayne Bay glittered to either side of us, broken here and there by white boats zipping over the waves. Val pulled into our neighborhood on Star Island, and as we turned into our driveway, a feeling of calm settled over me. The house looked the same as it had when I’d rushed out of it days ago, hoping to get to Elisa before Dr. Sweet did. It was a comforting reminder that life could go back to the way it had been before—in some ways, at least.

  Elisa had either heard the car door slamming or telepathically picked up our thoughts, because she came out the front door to greet me. She was barefoot in a summery dress Val had bought her, and some kind of flyer was clutched in her left hand.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Better,” I said as I eased into the wheelchair Val had unfolded outside the car door. She’d insisted I use it for at least the next few days, and while I didn’t need it, I’d learned early on in our marriage to pick my battles.

  “Good.” There was more life in Elisa’s voice, and though sadness still lingered on her face, she looked much better than she had yesterday. “So, um, that week-long summer camp thing for band is coming up.” She held up the flyer and peered intently at both our faces. “On a scale of one to ten, how paranoid and overprotective are you feeling right now?”

  “Firm nine,” Val answered promptly.

  Elisa’s shoulders drooped, and she lowered the flyer.

  I winked at her. “We’ll talk.”

  She rallied with a smile, and together, we went up the stone path to the front door. With my girls to either side of me, I basked in the afternoon sun, breathing in the familiar scent of fresh-cut grass and listening to the waves lap against the dock in our backyard. Back at the Hero Experience, I’d thought I’d never see a day like this again.

  Dr. Sweet would try to take this from me. Right now, he was plotting and scheming, and the result would be an attack on me—and my family. Treat would probably help him. She wanted nothing more than to see me suffer. She’d do anything she could to hurt me, threatening my peaceful life and the people I cared about, and Dr. Sweet would give her the means to do so. They were welcome to try.

  I’d fight them with everything I had, and I wouldn’t be fighting alone.

  Note from the Author

  Thanks so much for reading! If my books are my children, then Almost Invincible is the problem child that talks back and doesn’t follow instructions. It was a struggle to write, but I hope it kept you entertained.

  Want extras from The White Knight & Black Valentine Series and more superhero fiction content? Head over to kristenbrand.com and sign up to receive new posts by email. You can also chat with me on Twitter, where I’m probably already obsessing over something superhero-related.

  As always, thanks for your support. I couldn’t do this without you!

  If you enjoyed Almost Invincible, don’t miss Book 4 in The White Knight & Black Valentine Series

  Kill Them All

  Chapter 1

  I was twenty minutes late, exactly as planned. Five minutes were barely noticeable, and ten was excusable. At fifteen, he must have worried, but it was still possible I’d just gotten stuck in traffic. Twenty, however, was the magic number, and right now, he was probably wondering if I’d show up at all.

  It would be better for him if I didn’t.

  I pulled into the strip club’s parking lot, looking for a tree. Shade was more important than proximity when parking in South Florida during the height of summer. Unfortunately, the closest thing to a tree in this lot was the scraggly grass creeping up through the cracks in the asphalt. I settled on an empty space close to the entrance: a glass door covered in smudges and oversized bright-red kiss decals. Daylight wasn’t kind to the building. It needed darkness to cover the cracks in its black paint, rust stains on the sidewalk, and litter on the ground, leaving only the neon outlines of female figures visible in the night.

  I scanned the building telepathically to make sure no one was planning to shoot me the moment I walked in the door. No one was, but you could never be too careful. I strode in, taking off my sunglasses and slipping them into my purse. The lights inside were dim and pink-tinged, focused mainly on the stage. A badly remixed pop song played too loudly over the speakers, the current dancer doing her routine in front of what few patrons were here this early. Opposite the stage were a small bar and half a dozen round tables, but only one man sat there. He smiled when he saw me, though he couldn’t cover the sweat that had formed on his face from worry that I wasn’t coming. I paid the doorman and walked over.

  “Valentina Belmonte,” he greeted, not standing.

  I picked his own name from his mind. “Lance Holden.”

  His smile faltered, but he recovered it quickly. He was pretty much what I expected: white, middle-aged, average build (for an overweight American, at least), and bland features. His teeth were the only thing noteworthy about him; they were perfectly straight and bleached so white I almost reached for my sunglasses again.

  “Can I get you a drink?” he asked as I sat down. “Beer? Wine?”

  “Wine.”

  He waved over a waitress. His wristwatch looked expensive, shiny silver clashing with the gold of his wedding ring.

  “Show it to me,” I said.

  He reached into his suit jacket. There was enough room to smuggle a newborn in there; he should really fire his tailor. I took the white envelope he handed me, opened it, and removed the photographs from inside. I had to suppress a sigh. The photos were grainy and hardly professional, but they showed me sitting at a table outside of a restaurant, an umbrella overhead and a fountain in the background. Across the table, on the other side of two cocktails and seafood dishes, sat a handsome man with a goatee and a fedora. I supposed I should be grateful the pictures were genuine. The only thing worse than being blackmailed was getting tricked by a fake.

  Lance pointed a thick finger at my image. “That’s you.”

  As if the gorgeous woman could be anyone else. My long black hair hung loose in the picture, and my mouth curved upward in amusement at something I couldn’t remember, my lipstick a fierce shade of red. I had a figure to die for—and not just because I always carried a concealed weapon somewhere on it. And thoug
h I was looking away from the photographer, the distinctive burn scar on the side of my face was clearly visible.

  He pointed to my dinner date. “And that, unless I’m mistaken, is Xanthos, a supervillain and wanted felon.”

  “Is he?” I asked blandly. “Last I heard, no one really knows what Xanthos looks like without the mask.”

  “That guy matches the sketch artist renderings and digital simulations. I’d say he’s the real deal.”

  The frenzied beat of the music pounded against my skull, threatening a headache. I should have insisted Xanthos meet me somewhere more private. That kind of sloppiness was inexcusable. But I’d needed information from him, not the other way around, so he’d gotten to pick the venue.

  I put the photos back in their envelope as the waitress came by with our wine. It was too dark to see the liquid’s color well, so I swirled it and sniffed. Ugh. No. I put down the glass. What had I been expecting at a place like this? That made two serious lapses in judgment.

  “You wouldn’t want the authorities to see this, would you?” Lance’s whitened smile had turned into a leer. “Or your husband, for that matter.”

  The dancer on the main stage finished her performance, and the awful pop remix stopped. Finally, I could hear myself think.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Half a million. Cash.”

  “Hm.” I pulled out the photographs for a second look to kill time. The music started up again, but this time, it was soft piano followed by a surge of violins. The next dancer came onstage, and unlike the dead-eyed woman before her, she had a genuine smile and a bounce in her step. She started with a twisted grip handspring then took off, twirling gracefully in the air. She barely seemed to be attached to the pole, her movements precise but to all appearances effortless. She looked as if she was flying.

  Something squirmed into my mind, annoyed I wasn’t paying attention and wanting to know the cause. Well, well. Lance Holden was a telepath, too. That explained why he was so confident. How adorable. I pretended not to notice and kept watching the dancer, who was upside-down in a spin. I used to be able to do that. Well, not that, exactly; I’d never been that good, but pole dancing had been a fun way to exercise when I was younger. I wasn’t young anymore.