Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) by Cari Z. Read Free Book Online Page A

script: Stand Down Evildoer, Never You Pathetic Hero, Then I’ll Have To Make You, Ha-ha I’d Like To See You Try, Battle Battle Battle. Not this. “I’m not . . . You have to surrender, okay?”
    “I think you can take my surrender as implicit at this point.”
    “What?”
    Oh my god. Had I gotten a thick Hero on my case? I mean, all right, at least she wasn’t Freight Train, who would already be in here and arresting me, probably with a smile on his smug fucking face, but was it too much to ask for someone who knew how to negotiate?
    “He means the fact that we can’t get out and you’ve got the only weapon indicates that his surrender is obvious,” Larry yelled. Oh boy, he was really not taking this well. “Now remove your flaming arm from this vault before you destroy more of our property than you already have!”
    “I don’t have to take that! What are you, a Villain sympathizer?”
    The vault shuddered again, this time hard enough that even Larry noticed it. “What is—?”
    “Answer me!”
    The far lockboxes suddenly broke free, scattering across the floor as the wall behind them cracked. I frowned. What was Raul doing? I’d expected a targeted explosion, but this was more like getting hit with a wrecking ball. Larry stared helplessly at the mess for a moment, then started to cry. I almost wanted to join him. This was not what I’d hoped for out of my first real job as a Villain.
    “No answer? Then you asked for it!” Firebolt’s arm started to glow, slowly heating the room up. Within minutes Larry and I were dripping with sweat. I pulled him to the floor with me, grabbed my cane off of the briefcase, and turned the handle three hundred and sixty degrees to the right.
    A thin, flexible heat shield burst out the bottom of the cane. I pulled the fabric over us and thanked God that Raul had insisted on including this in his design. All of his clothes were made of a mix of Kevlar and heat-resistant fabrics, in case he was too close to one of his own bombs when it went off. And it was good that he had, because right now it was the only thing keeping both me and Larry from blistering.
    Not that we wouldn’t roast eventually if Raul didn’t break into the damn vault soon. “Raul?” I tapped my earpiece. Nothing. “Raul!” No reply. The heat had probably gotten to it.
    “What . . . Why is she . . .” Larry panted.
    I grimaced. “She’s new. Overeager. Sees Villains everywhere, I’m sure.”
    “Why don’t you stop her?”
    “I don’t have that kind of power, Larry.”
    “Then what kind of power do you have?” he gasped. It was getting harder to breathe.
    Fuck it, we might die soon and I owed Larry big time for getting him into this mess. The least I could do was help him feel a little better. I reached for my mental barrier, reassembled the poor, shoddy thing so that all my fear was trapped with Inside Me, then touched Larry’s temples. The emotions I shared were stronger when I touched someone’s face. “This kind,” I said, and let myself focus on how I had felt last night, lying in bed with Raul. Not doing anything, not having sex or talking, just lying together and feeling safe and warm and loved.
    Larry’s worry lines cleared, and he actually smiled. “Oh,” he whispered. “That’s lovely.”
    I managed to smile back at him. “Yeah. It is.”
    Those wouldn’t have been bad last words, all things considered, but then the far side of the vault crumbled inward. I peeked beneath the edge of the blanket, and saw . . . the woman with the lavender hair?
    “Come with me now!” she yelled, and fuck it, I didn’t have a choice. I detached the heat shield and left it on Larry, grabbed my briefcase and cane and ran for the hole. She helped me through the rubble, but there were a bunch of bystanders on the other side, all staring at us curiously. As I stumbled outside, police rounded the far corner of the bank and started to push their way through the crowd.
    “Where’s Raul?” I