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Five months ago
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Byron S. Trubble would have laughed if his life didn’t depend on his silence. The old battleax and her stooges thought they’d broken him. He’d only given one real name and location to Peggy Reinhold. One of the kids that died in a training accident. The rest of the information he supposedly spilled was total bullshit.
If anyone should have known that torture wasn’t a reliable method of extracting information, it should have the woman who used to be Rue Liberty.
And if she were smarter, she would have recruited more people with powers than just her daughter. Maybe even a telepath to dig through his head.
Like he did in Corvus.
He slunk along the dry limestone wall. The fishy smell meant he was getting close to the bunker’s entrance.
His last escape attempt failed because he was stupid enough to believe the new Ghost Owl was Pablo Inunza’s son. Nope, it had to be the Garcia kid’s twin brother. With their ties to the Winters and Franklin law firm, the goodie-two-shoes brothers would have had Professor Venom trace his call to Aisha Franklin.
What if the bitch didn’t tell them about his call? What if he really miscalculated and Franklin was part of Reinhold’s little organization?
Trubble blew out a deep breath. If he wanted to keep breathing, he needed to move. He stepped into the night and waited for his vision to adjust. Beneath the moonlight, rust covered the steel escape stairs. The damn things were nearly as old as he was. One step onto them, and he could plummet into the Rio Cristo fifty feet below. If he didn’t hit a rock on the way down, the rapids would drown him.
However, free-hand rock climbing a canyon wall in the dark was an even stupider option.
Trubble grabbed the railing.
He didn’t touch rust. It felt more like paint. He gently flicked the railing with his forefinger and snickered at the bell tone. The old biddy had replaced the escape stairs and painted them to look like they were the original decrepit ones.
Still, he tapped the landing with his foot in the stolen boot to make sure. Yep, damn solid.
Trubble eased down the steps, not out of worry of plummeting to his death, but so the sentries above and the possible ones below didn’t hear him. He could handle a couple of punks as long as they weren’t supers.
Air came in short, desperate gasps when he reached the trail at the bottom of the stairs. Despite his best efforts at exercise and diet, he was seventy. This getting old crap sucked, but the torture hadn’t helped either. Maybe he was too stubborn to die.
Trubble chuckled at his own idiocy as he ducked under the “No Trespassing” sign. He headed north along the canyon trail for Logan Grove. Normally, the ten-mile hike would be three hours or so. With the guard drugged and in his cell, Trubble estimated he’d have four hours until they missed him.
Logan Grove might have only consisted of a few houses and a general store in the Seventies, but now, it was a decent-sized town with a vehicle or two he could steal. Then it became a matter of disappearing until he could access the money he deposited offshore.
After two hours by the moon, his legs cramped something fierce. He didn’t want the break, but he couldn’t afford falling out here. A thigh-high boulder provided a resting spot. He perched on it and rubbed his calves.
“Not so easy running away from your past, is it, old man?”
Trubble froze at Monica Reinhold’s voice behind him. So much for his brilliant plan.
“Kill me and get it over with, Miss Purrception,” he snarled. “I’m not going back with you.”
Monica dropped in front of him. She had her mother’s classic hourglass figure, but she was so more…flexible. A matte black bodysuit with a matching cowl and boots covered her from head to toe. Eye black cover her exposed skin around her orbs.
“Tell her what she wants to know, Byron.” Weariness coated her words.
“We both know the minute I do, I’m dead.” “Tell me then. I’ll tell her I killed you and disposed of your body. We all get what we want.”
“She’s not going to believe you killed me, Monica.” His breath clouded in the cold mountain air. “For your vaunted reputation as a murderer and thief, we both know you’re not cold-blooded enough to kill an unarmed man.”
“I’ve killed before,” she snapped.
“An accident while defending yourself is not the same thing.”
“Maybe I should toss you in the river,” she said. “With that cold mountain water, hypothermia is a fairly easy way to go.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he said.
“What are you going to do? Kill me?” She snorted. “And everyone calls me a supervillain.”
“What prison did we break out of?” he shot back.
“Either you kill me or you tell me the names. Those are the only ways you get to leave here alive.” Monica sounded deadly serious. There was none of her usual mockery in her tone.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Trubble said, and for once, he meant it. “But I’m not betraying those people. Harriet and I made sure they were well out of your mother’s reach. They lived normal lives. You and your daughters are an experiment to her.”
“If you hadn’t taken my girls, she wouldn’t have gotten custody of them,” she sneered.
“That’s because Byron’s a blunt instrument,” a husky feminine voice said. Another dark figure landed on the trail, well out of Monica’s reach. “I should have known you’d betray me, too, my dear.”
“Why do you have to spoil all my games, Mother?” Monica complained. “I could have gotten the names for you if you hadn’t interrupted.”
“Because you’re even more a sentimental idiot than he is?” Peggy Reinhold raised her arm, a gun in her hand.
“You promised I could kill him once you got the names from him,” Monica screeched.
“I promise a lot of people a lot of things.” Peggy’s laughter was still as low and throaty as it had been fifty years ago. “Including your father. I didn’t keep those vows either.
The muzzle of her gun flashed--
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