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, assuming the pictures they got were in color.
Keeping to shadows, they made their way to Horizon Tower, the fifty-story skyscraper 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 glass 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 classic 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 façade. 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 space 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 cocktail 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 glass 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 glass 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 partition was a typical open-plan space, only with no partitions, 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 space they could get in a mostly empty building rather than leasing posher, more prestigious space farther uptown, where West Plaza was located. At least, that was what her mother would say about it.