My grandfather’s property (and that of all the neighbors on his side of the block) went up to the edge of Veterans Memorial Park. I followed the chain link fence that separated private property from city property.
I slowed down as I got closer to where I’d seen the shot. No point in running into somebody’s line of fire.
Three houses away from my grandfather’s house, I heard Daniel in my head.
Nick. Stop.
I stopped.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 44
Tag Archives: Haley
In the Public Eye: Part 42
Kids don’t really know adults. What I remembered of Jaclyn’s grandfather from the picnics was a man who spent a lot more time laughing, telling funny stories, and coaxing me into racing Jaclyn. I think I only ever won one race. He gave me a forty-nine foot head start out of fifty feet and even then it was a near thing.
As a crimefighter though, he had the old school, “fight the criminals, and run from the cops” approach.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 42
In the Public Eye: Part 41
As I ran toward the table in the middle of the main room, I wondered just what else putting HQ on high security did. What if it sent an alert to other hero groups? I didn’t feel like explaining all this to Guardian or the Midwest Defenders.
Glancing at the screen, I saw Travis, Haley, Marcus and Cassie crouched at the forest entrance, in costume and looking nervous.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 41
In the Public Eye: Part 38
Having watched the recording, I understood why the mayor had slipped under everybody’s radar for so long. We had video right here of him planting commands into the brains of an entire team of heroes while simultaneously having almost no evidence of it.
The fact that everybody had stopped and started talking on his cue pointed in that direction, but not inarguably. It was purely circumstantial evidence.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 38
In the Public Eye: Part 33
“Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Vaughn said. “You’d never believe it, but my grandfather’s personal stuff never burned.”
“It must be the only thing that didn’t,” I said.
A layer of dark soot seemed to be everywhere, mixed with bits that crunched when I stepped on them.
“Nah,” Vaughn said, “The side tunnels didn’t burn. That’s where I found the stuff that I handed over. Let’s go.”
In the Public Eye: Part 32
“Why are we going this way then?”
“The tunnel I used to go through collapsed during the rainstorms we got near the end of August. This is the only other one I know about,” Vaughn said.
I couldn’t see anything. Was I supposed to go down there and locate the gun by the flash from its muzzle? If I was lucky, the gun was fixed and capable of firing in only one direction. If I was unlucky, it had the ability to track targets. My armor did well against bullets, but I didn’t feel much of an urge to test its limits.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 32
In the Public Eye: Part 31
Hardwick House sat on a hill near the middle of downtown. It began, not especially humbly, as an enormous mansion back when Percival Hardwick made his fortune as a lumber baron. His heirs added on to it in a peculiar mixture of styles. The first section used the thin spires and intricate woodwork of the Gothic style. A later addition to the house had added an eight story tower and the extensive stonework of the Medieval Revival style. The final section of the house had been added in the late 1920’s — six, flat roofed stories, each story less wide than the story below. The final story ended in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid.
Impressively hideous, it absorbed almost half a city block when you included the grounds.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 31
In the Public Eye: Part 30
Putting the suit on and checking the systems took a good ten minutes as usual. I ran down a tunnel to the exit in the middle of the forest in Veterans’ Memorial Park. It felt good to be in the full suit. The last time had to have been when I’d bugged Magnus’ house in Chicago — almost a month ago now.
The doors opened above me and I jumped, making it a good twenty feet before the rockets kicked in and took me the rest of the way into the sky. The trees went past in a blur of branches. I found myself looking down on the city lights almost before I realized it.
In the Public Eye: Part 29
I caught Vaughn on the way out of the lunchroom. We didn’t have any classes together and we hadn’t eaten together lately because Cassie had been spending a lot of time with Kayla. Repairing relations, I guessed.
Vaughn had been talking with a couple other guys. Neil leaned against the wall next to the door, tracing the tattooed dragon on his forearm while Dave talked. “… someone called the cops and we ended up climbing the fence while holding our skateboards. They caught Mike, but Neil and I got away.”
In the Public Eye: Part 27
I’ve been hinting at the contents of this post for a while, but now I finally get to hint a little more clearly.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 27