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Harri knocked on the door of Aisha’s loft. When no one answered, she punched in the keycode. The pad flashed green, and she rolled back the door. To her left, Aisha’s dining table had been commandeered by a sewing machine and loads of fabric. A dressmaker’s dummy stood guard over the organized chaos. To her right came Molly and Monica Reinhold’s voices. It sounded like another mother/daughter squabble. Harri locked the door and headed down the hall.
“Mom, you’ve got to eat something.” Molly wasn’t whining, but there was a subsonic burr in her voice that grated on Harri’s nerves. It also meant the superhero known as Nix was about to lose her temper.
“I didn’t ask for you to babysit me,” Monica snarled.
“Would you like to stay at Grandma’s?” Molly shot back.
Whatever Monica was about to say to her daughter was silenced with the snap of her teeth at Harri’s appearance in the doorway to Aisha’s spare bedroom. The normally immaculate supervillain Miss Purrception lay limply in the twin bed like a rag doll that had been run over a few times by Julio and his garbage truck.
“How are you feeling today?” Harri asked.
“I’m just peachy, counselor,” Monica sneered.
“That’s good because I have a headache.” Molly stormed past Harri and out of the bedroom.
“What do you want?” Monica pushed her dark, dirty locks out of her face. Flecks of silver and white shone along her scalp. The vain supervillian had been on the run at least a month if she hadn’t bothered touching up her roots. She hadn’t given anyone much more information other than her own mother Margaret Reinhold, AKA Rue Liberty, had shot Monica after Rue had killed Byron Trubble, the former head of the black ops organization known as Corvus.
Harri leaned against the doorjamb, crossed her arms, and watched her former client. Her own emerging gray hadn’t bothered her. She let Jeremy or Leo color her damn hair every six weeks just to get them to shut up about it.
“Molly’s right,” she said. “You need to eat.”
“So you can send me back to Mauvaises?” Monica mocked.
“We both know you’ll be dead within a week if I do that.” Harri sighed. “But if you don’t eat and do your physical therapy, you’ll never be able to escape the Lechuza Building and rub it in Tim’s face.”
“Sometimes, I don’t know whose side you’re on,” Monica spat.
“That makes us even since I’m never sure which way you’ll jump in a given situation,” Harri responded.
“Then what do you want?” Monica leaned back wearily on her pillows.
“Would you happen to have any more bullets like the ones you were shot with?”
“Just the ones Serena pulled out of my chest and gut.” Monica’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“They were designed to fragment upon impact—”
“And tear up the target.” Monica sighed. “Those things are available at any ammo store in the U.S.”
“Tim thinks there was something inside the ones you were shot with,” Harri said. “Something that’s impeding your super healing ability. You should have been up and around—”
“And escaping?” The smile on Monica’s face was only a whisper of her usual sly smirk.
“At least five days ago,” Harri finished. “That’s accounting for both the damage and Serena’s initial attempt to heal you.”
The physician’s assistant at the end of the block had nearly burned out her superpower in trying to help Monica. Harri wondered if the supervillain even appreciated what Serena had done for her.
“All I wanted from the kid was a patch job and enough painkillers to get me down to Mexico.” Monica wouldn’t look at Harri anymore. Instead, she stared at the steel rafters overhead. “I didn’t ask her to heal me. Or to call O’Brien.”
Doctor Hannah O’Brien ran the neighborhood clinic where Serena worked. Both Harri and Rey made regular donations to keep the clinic open since most of the folks in the Canyon Block didn’t have health insurance. If they could only get a dentist on this side of town…
“I’m the one who called O’Brien if you want to get pissy,” Harri said dryly. “And if Rue wanted you dead, she would’ve shot you in the head, then decapitated you.”
“She tried the head shot.” Monica lifted a section of lank hair by her left temple. What looked like a fresh burn scarred her scalp. “I got lucky, or she’s getting old. Either way, she missed.”
Barely, but Harri kept that opinion to herself. “If Rue has developed bullets that can hurt supers like you—”
“Of course, she has.” Monica squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s always been about power for her. She’s got to be top dog.”
Her act almost made Harri feel sorry for the woman. Unfortunately, Monica had lied too many times for Harri to ever trust her again.
“I’ll say it again,” Harri said. “Cut a deal with the FBI. Consuelo has cleaned up her office—”
A sharp bark of laughter erupted from Monica that led to a coughing fit. Harri didn’t try to assist the supervillain. Not that she didn’t have any compassion for the injured woman, but she knew Monica would respect her attempt if she did.
When Monica’s fit died and she collapsed back on her pillows, Harri said, “So you’d rather cough out a lung, then to help us stop your mother?”
“Tell Tim, there’s modified bullets in one of my old safe houses.” Monica smirked. “The first one I let him see.”
Harri wanted to beat the smirk of the supervillain’s mug. She didn’t have to ask why Monica left the bullets in that particular place. It was her little dig that she had her claws in Harri’s husband long before they got married.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Harri said. “Are there any new booby-traps he doesn’t know about?”
“No,” Monica said. “But he might want to take Steve with him. Tim’s getting a little slow in his old age.”
“So are you if a senior citizen got the drop on you, Miss Purrception.” Harri pivoted and strode out of Aisha’s spare bedroom before she said or did something she’d regret.
