Day's End by Colleen Vanderlinden Read Free Book Online Page B

tell you you’ve got a nice rack?”
    I laughed. “You’re delirious.”
    “Nah. I think it at least twenty times a day.”
    “Good night, Ryan,” I said, bringing his hand to my mouth and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. He kissed the back of my neck again.
    “Night, Jolene.” He held me tighter, and I fell asleep grateful that, despite everything, I’d somehow found my way to this crazy, warm, loving partnership. My forever, I thought as I drifted off.

Chapter Three
     
    I was cooling down from my workout with Jenson and reading through the reports from the incident with Mayhem and the follow-up stupidity with Eve. I had a paper map (mainly so I could scribble notes on it where I needed to) and was studying the locations of every place there had been a verified sighting or incident involving Mayhem and its members. I’d added Detroit to the locations (again) and was trying and failing to figure out any pattern or method to their madness, other than the fact that they were always either going after super hero teams or actively messing with StrikeForce. I took a gulp of water and started writing. My notes and theories on where Killjoy had his team hidden were an unorganized mess, but I kept thinking that if I just kept writing shit down, if I arranged and rearranged lists of places, something would hit me. Despite having zero trust for Crystal, I’d added England and Scotland to my possible locations as well. I had a second set of notes and maps, all of those covering the missing kids. Despite hoping for some overlap, some kind of hint, there wasn’t any between the two lists, other than Detroit.
    I was still trying to make sense of any of it when my comm beeped. “All hands in uniform and report to the flight bay, immediately,” Portia’s assistant said over the comm. I jumped up, quickly grabbed my maps and notes, and hustled up to my room. I pulled my SF uniform on as quickly as possible and made my way up to the flight bay. Jenson and David were arriving around the same time.
    “What’s going on?”
    Jenson shook her head. “I don’t know. I just heard via the comm announcement.”
    We walked on to the flight deck together to see Portia, Ryan, and a few of the others gathered already. Max, Lindsey, Dani, and Vivian all walked in shortly after us.
    “Okay people. We have a goddamn mess on our hands. Someone set fire to a small private school in Grosse Pointe. Three floors, fires raging at all of the emergency exits. Kids trapped inside.”
    “Any idea who did it?”
    “We’re guessing our lady in blue or Mayhem. At this point, it could be either. There are several StrikeForce families who send their kids to that school. Kids with powers. We don’t know the status of those kids right now, other than that they’re probably trapped in the inferno with the rest of the kids and staff.”
    “Or they’ve already been taken,” I muttered. “I’ll meet you all there.” I took off into the sky, and moments later, I heard the roar of jets behind me as the others started taking off. I knew which school it was from overhearing a few of the support staffers who had family members there talking about it. It was one of those little known secrets in the city, that this one particular school had slowly but surely become a safe haven for the kids of people with powers.
    What had surprised most of us was hearing that the kids of powered people also seemed to develop powers. After the first Confluence, it had all seemed random. It didn’t seem to run in families, or anything like that. I knew now what I hadn’t known then, thanks to Daemon — parents of powered kids did their best to keep those kids’ powers a secret. Most of it was fear. Part of it was worry that organizations like StrikeForce would poke their noses in and want to monitor their kids to recruit or lock them up later.
    This school, in particular, had become a haven in the last year when its principal found herself with powers after the second