The question of why they’d kidnapped her would have to come later. That was fine, she could wait. She passed the time by studying the ceiling and seams along the walls, looking for where any secret cameras might be hidden. A small black globe in the corner of the far wall got her bet. A three-sixty fisheye in there could survey the whole room. She stared at it a moment, willing some awareness of her to whoever was watching, then looked away. Shifted to get some feeling back into her muscles and hoped she looked bored.
Her captors left her sitting there for at least an hour after she regained consciousness. She could be bored, or worried, and she refused to show them worried. She saved that for Arthur. —This is getting less fun. I have no idea who these people are. Can you hear me?—
No answer.
They might have gotten him, too. He might be unconscious, unable to hear her. But no, that was impossible, because no one could sneak up on Arthur, ever. No one ever got the jump on him. He was fine, just fine. Maybe he was distracted, and at that her thoughts spun out of control, because the only thing she could think of that would distract him from looking for her would be if something had happened to the girls. Maybe he was busy looking for the girls because if she could be targeted, so could they. Please, let nothing have happened to Anna and Bethy …
Voices approached, and she flinched, startled, exactly like she didn’t want to do. But she focused on her approaching captors, and she wasn’t worried or scared. She had progressed to a slow-burning fury. She heard low voices, footsteps padding on carpet, a door closing, maybe to an adjoining conference room. They approached from behind, and she suppressed a chill along her spine. They were watching her, studying her, and she had to not care. She’d done this before, she’d be fine. She settled an expression of cold superiority on her features. She would bury them at the first opportunity, oh yes.
Finally, they moved forward, around her chair to stand fanned out before her. There were five of them. The man and woman who had kidnapped her entered first. Two more men, young toughs with a polish that made them at home in the office setting. They’d have been out of place in a back alley brawl, but here they were sharks.
The fifth, standing in the middle of the group, was Danton Majors. His suit jacket and tie were gone, his expensive starched shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the top edge of what looked for all the world like a shimmering black skin suit.
“Danton Majors.” A statement. She wasn’t at all surprised.
“Celia West,” he said, crossing his arms, gazing down on her with a triumphant sneer. “Welcome.”
She looked at the straps binding her wrists and snorted. “I can’t swing you an invite to the country club, if that’s what you’re wanting.”
The curl on his lips twitched to a frown. “Be amusing as long as you can. I’m here to do business.”
She studied his four companions. Their positions in relation to Majors were deferential, to the side and a little behind. The two sharks she recognized as assistant types he’d brought to the planning meetings; they’d fit in to that setting well enough she’d hardly noticed. One of them had been the assistant in the courtroom with him. The other two were equally confident, as if they had no doubt that they were the superior beings, and they all looked at her as if they’d caught difficult prey. They stood with an alert readiness, like sprinters preparing for a race—that stance she knew all too well. They were superpowered.
But they weren’t from Commerce City. They were all from Delta, she bet. She didn’t know them or their histories. She looked at each of them, amazed.
“All right,” she said calmly. “Which one of you is blocking Dr. Mentis?”
They all, except Majors, glanced at the man who’d initially kidnapped her, dark haired and thin faced, lithe and intense in his business suit. So they had a mentalist. Problematic, not impossible. She caught the flicker of uncertainty in their eyes. Not quite fear, but close. Majors had probably told them this would be easy. The mentalist unfolded his arms, frowned.
“Are your powers active or passive?” she continued, regarding the mentalist, poking. “Can you actively influence other people’s minds, or just block another mentalist’s powers?”
“Enough,” Majors said, as Celia expected he would. She could guess the answer on her own—they’d had to physically take her off the street and drug her. This guy couldn’t do anything but block. Still, it meant Arthur wouldn’t be able to find her. Not right away. Anna wouldn’t be able to find her, either, and that meant Anna probably knew she’d been taken. She would tell Arthur. Help was on the way, and Majors and his team wouldn’t know that.
This was all going to be okay.
Majors came to stand before her, just a bit too close, so she had to crane her neck back to see him, so she could feel the body heat coming off him. “We need to talk.”
She said, “I have an office, and it’s a lot more comfortable than this. I’d have been happy to schedule you in.”
“Oh no, not like that. This is bigger than that.”
“It always is,” she muttered.
“You can’t be allowed to continue on your current path,” he said. Matter-of-fact, condescending. The kind of tone that indicated he wasn’t used to being argued with. His henchmen arrayed behind him supported his claims.
“What path?”
“West Corp. You’re going to sell West Corp to me. You won’t be able to use it as your base of power anymore. I’ll break up the company, sell off its subsidiaries, and no one can ever use its power and influence again.”
This both confused her, and not. What did West Corp have to do with any of this? They’d grabbed her to use as bait in some other scheme, she was being held hostage for some kind of leverage. That was how it always worked.
On the other hand, West Corp was everything, wasn’t it? And she was West Corp. Something else was going on here, some subtlety that Majors was assuming, that she wasn’t picking up on.
“I’m the third generation of my family to run this company, and you think I’m just going to sell it? Are you crazy?”
“And after you sell the company to me, you’ll leave Commerce City forever. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay.”
She stared. The former suggestion seemed laughable. This one landed in her gut with a punch. Her shock faded to a cold resolve. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m not giving you a choice, Ms. West. You’re too dangerous, and you’ve manipulated this city’s affairs for your own ends for too long. It’s time you step aside.”
A burst of laughter escaped, and she clamped her jaw shut to quell it before continuing. “I’m dangerous? What have I done?”
“I’d heard rumors, but I wasn’t sure, so I came to Commerce City to watch. We all did. And now we’ve seen how you work. Commerce City’s judiciary is in your pocket. I don’t know why I thought I could have used the courts to expose you. You control City Hall, the police, the newspapers—and no one’s the wiser because you put on this respectable public face. No one can see it, not even the superheroes, because you’ve used your reputation, your identity as the daughter of the Olympiad to reassure people that you’re not a threat, oh no, you only have their best interests in mind. It’s for the public good!”
This astonished her more than anything; she’d hated her parents’ superhero identities when she was growing up. She’d hated being the daughter of the Olympiad. It had gotten her into too many situations just like this. She hated being judged by their standards, which she could never hope to reach, plain and powerless as she was. Identify with them? She’d fled. The picture he painted of her—ambitious, manipulative, amoral—was so weird. She could only look up at him, confused.