Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (2 page)

“Firefly?” He sopped up some more blood with his sleeve.

Suddenly, two more specks of light appeared, a dozen or so yards away from the other sparkle, each coming from opposite directions.

Patrick dispelled the firefly theory. The sparkles didn’t appear to be flying. By their slow movement and the way the flashes faded in and out, he guessed that they were underwater.

“Only one way to find out.”

Clamping the cigarette between sun-cracked lips, Patrick scooped up his military backpack and hoisted all his worldly belongings onto his back. As he made his way down to the water, he marveled at the fact that the big rednecks had thrown his backpack out of the truck after him. It had been pretty generous, considering he’d called their mother a cow.

The song “Bad to the Bone” skittered through Patrick’s mind. He hummed the tune around his cigarette, noting that five more sparkles had joined the ranks. By the time he stumbled onto the rocky beach, he’d counted thirteen specks of light, no more than ten feet from shore, swirling through the water as if searching for something. The first sparkle had been in the middle of the lake.

He scrutinized the strange phenomenon for another moment, then decided the sparkles were just some type of water insect that probably posed no danger. At worst, he might get a little bite or sting if he came into contact with one.

The sparkles danced closer toward the shore. “What the—?” Patrick flicked his cigarette onto the rocks. “You attracted to my rugged good looks?”

Squatting down, he stuck his hand into the cool water and wiggled his fingers. “Well, come on. Let’s have a look at you.”

Like bees catching the sweet scent of a fragrant rose on the breeze, the sparkles ceased their whirling and moved straightaway toward Patrick’s hand, bumping up against it.

Enchanted, Patrick laughed. A warmth filled him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt happy.

“You’re beautiful.” He gently swished his hand and watched the sparkles dance around his fingertips, like miniscule forest fairies. The white shimmer they cast reflected in his delighted eyes.

He scooped up a single sparkle with some water in his cupped palm. The twinkling glow immediately began to fade. Alarmed, Patrick submerged his hand in the lake. The sparkle instantly regained its luster.

“Guess you need your brothers and sisters to shine,” he deduced. After another moment of observation, he recognized a curious pattern in their twinkling, almost like Morse code. “Do you communicate with those bright flashes?”

All at once, the sparkles swam away, as if summoned home by a dinner bell.

“Where are you going?” Patrick felt a strange panic.

He slipped off his backpack, dropped it on the rocks, and stepped into the lake. Water seeped into his boots.

“Come back!” He trudged after the sparkles that lured him onward, deeper and deeper.

“Stop!” Waist-deep, Patrick took another step and the rocky floor beneath him disappeared. He plunged with a splash.

Opening his eyes in the dark, murky water, he stretched his arms as he prepared to swim to the surface. Then he noticed that the sparkles had stopped moving.

In fact, they were drawing closer.

Patrick again felt unusually happy.

He watched with amazement as they hovered about two feet from his face, as if observing him, appearing even more luminous underwater. The bright flashes came more quickly, like a speeding heartbeat.

The dark underneath him illuminated.

Patrick dropped his gaze and saw a mass of sparkles rising from the depths like an incandescent cloud. The glare from the light they radiated was so intense that he could barely look at them. Panic began to rise in his chest, prompting him to try to escape—while he still could.

But another part of him overruled the instinct. The part that craved the immense joy amplified in his being as the shimmering wonder came ever closer. It was the joy he had ached for his entire, miserable life, a feeling he had instantly become addicted to the moment the sparkles had touched his calloused hand.

Patrick’s lungs burned. His head grew dizzy. Grudgingly, he surfaced, took a gulp of air, and submerged again, right into the cluster of sparkles.

Blinded by their collective brightness, he jerked in surprise. Before he had time to understand what was happening, the sparkles attacked, rushing into his ears, up his nose, and into the open wound on his cheek, flowing into him like relentless rivers of light.

Terror-stricken, Patrick clawed his way through the water. The invaders continued to swarm into his body. His toe kicked a rock, and he sprang to his feet, screaming. He lifted frantic hands to claw at his ears, but suddenly his fingers dissolved into water.

It’s impossible to describe what Patrick felt as he watched his hands turn into water—then his forearms, and upper arms, which poured from the empty coat and shirt sleeves now dangling at his sides. Fear, obviously, disbelief, and denial. Yet blanketing the expected emotions was one not normally experienced when life is coming to an end:

Euphoria.

It was as though an internal choir of angels celebrated in song when Patrick felt his physical core give way like a ruptured dam. A sweet cherubic voice caressed his mind with a promise:

You will be a new man.

Patrick exploded into water.

“Aren’t we the brave crooks?” I asked out loud. I was sitting crossed-legged on the steel catwalk of a billboard a hundred feet above the street, watching four burglars cut a hole into the adjacent building’s rooftop. “Especially with all the extra police everywhere.”

Right on cue, a squad car crawled down Spring Street below. There were definitely more police on patrol that evening.

Probably because of Jeff Ferrell
.

The twenty-one-year-old University Of Washington student had been reported missing that afternoon. The case had come right on the heels of two other local disappearances: Anita Hart, a mother of three, and Sebastian Romero, owner of Champion Health Clubs.

Three people in two weeks— has to be a serial killer
.

I could see no other explanation. However, according to my dad, Drake Jones, host of
In the Spotlight
for Channel Five News, missing person reports were filed with the Seattle Police Department almost every day. Only about one percent turned out to involve actual crimes, he said.

These particular cases had made headlines mainly due to Romero. I’d recognized him immediately when his face had flashed across the television screen eight days earlier. I’d had many opportunities to ogle the twelve-foot-high picture of him that graced a billboard off I-5 advertising his health clubs. His chiseled jaw and ripped biceps had been seared into my brain.

The guy is all muscle. He had to have been taken by gunpoint, or drugged.

I shook off the grim thoughts and redirected my attention toward the crime-in-progress. The thieves’ attire, similar to mine—black clothing and a ski mask—had been a dead giveaway that these four were up to no good when I’d happened upon them about thirty minutes earlier. The high-tech power tools they’d produced from two large duffel bags snuffed out any lingering doubts.

Chunks of cement blasted into the air as they drilled. The group wasn’t exactly being quiet, but wasn’t loud enough to draw attention from that high up, either. Good thing I’d decided to leap rooftops that night, or there wouldn’t have been any eyewitnesses.

While three of the thieves cut the hole in the roof, the fourth anchored four ropes to air conditioning units and put on a rappelling harness and backpack. The calm and proficient way the men worked suggested that breaking and entering was old hat for them. I could guarantee, however, their playbook didn’t include a fifteen-year-old mutant foiling their heist.

The harnessed thief lowered himself through the hole as the others shrugged on their own equipment. One man slid on a backpack, too, and rappelled into the dark office, followed by the next man. I expected the remaining thief to go down, as well, but he didn’t.

Plan B?
I surmised, searching for reasons why he’d geared up but had stayed behind.
Rappelling over the side of the building,
if
—I glanced at an access door to the roof—
things go badly and they can’t escape the way they had come up.

Time for things to go badly,
I thought, and pulled on a pair of soft, black angora gloves, embellished with a purple heart, dead center.

I gathered the handles of the colorful polka-dot gift bag nestled in my lap, and stood up. Then I gently tucked the bag against my side, drew several steps back on the catwalk, and took a running leap.

I soared over the alley separating the two buildings, dropping a full story, and landed, solidly and silently, in a crouch. My eyes darted to the pretty gift bag. I frowned. All this jumping was wrinkling the tissue.

No biggie
, I reassured myself, setting down the bag.

The thief directed a flashlight into the hole. He had no clue that he was no longer alone on the rooftop. I slunk up behind him and tapped his shoulder. He started, but didn’t scream or drop the flashlight. The guy was a real pro.

He whipped around. I introduced my fist to his jaw.

The blow snapped his head backward, and his body followed the motion. My hand shot out and secured the harness. The man dropped the flashlight, which tumbled into the hole, but his abrupt stop caused him to whiplash in the harness. A series of pops rippled along his spine.

I winced. I hated the sound of cracking joints.

I heard the flashlight strike the floor and bounce across it.

“Paves,” one of the men hissed.

Gripping the harness, I lowered Paves into a sitting position so his legs dangled over the ledge, as though he were just chilling.

“Paves!” A flashlight beam caught the unconscious man’s face slumped to his chest.

I stifled a giggle.

“What are you doing?”

Paves’s cell phone vibrated inside his jacket.

I unzipped his jacket with my free hand, ran my hand down his chest, and located the pocket his cell was in. The flashlight beam caught me.

“I see you,” the man hissed as I pocketed Paves’s cell. “Let him go.”

By all means
.

I shoved Paves’s backside off the edge with my foot. The rope raced through my palms, which would have been torn to shreds if my skin hadn’t turned rock-hard—a little defense mechanism of mine. My cute gloves wouldn’t have been enough protection.

The men below shrieked as their cohort plunged toward them, then they scrambled out of the way. I tightened my grip moments before Paves reached the floor, stopping his descent. He swung back and forth in the harness like a wrecking ball, his chin bobbing flaccidly against his chest.

I adjusted my eyes and absorbed the available light, until the dark recesses of the room below were visible. Safe-deposit boxes lined the walls, and there were bars behind a closed steel door. The robbers hadn’t broken into an office. They had broken into a vault.

“Who are you?” the hisser demanded as the men cautiously approached Paves. “The Seattle Shadow?”

A giggle escaped as I let go of the rope.

Paves crashed to the floor, taking out the other men.

Moaning, they crawled from beneath their cohort. I ripped an air-conditioning unit off the roof and carried it to the hole. A bullet struck the metal.

“Not cool,” I grumbled, placing the air conditioner over the hole. The thieves had the gall to protest after shooting at me.

I brushed off my gloves and retrieved Paves’s cell, then dialed 911. When the dispatcher answered, I cleared my throat and forced my voice down a few octaves.

“There are four
armed
men trapped in a vault on the top floor of a building on Spring Street, right next to the billboard—” I glanced right at the billboard. I hadn’t paid attention to the advertisement. “—for Group Health.”

“It is illegal to call 911 if there is no emergency,” the dispatcher droned.

“I told you they have guns!” My voice pitched. Coughing, I forced it low again as the dispatcher threatened to trace the call.

“Good,” I replied deeply. “You do that. Don’t forget about the guns. Approach with caution. Oh, and tell the cops that the Seattle Shadow said so,” I added as a last-minute flourish before disconnecting. Maybe that would give this phone call some credibility.

A reporter for
The Seattle Times
had dubbed me the
Seattle Shadow after a cashier called me a “phantom” when I’d intervened in a convenience store holdup. I’d thrown the two robbers into shelves, which toppled over, one after another, like enormous dominoes. It had been pretty cool.

Since the MO matched a few other crimes I’d hampered—a slight person dressed in black and wearing a ski mask, appearing from nowhere, going to town on the baddies, and then vanishing in an instant—naturally the conclusion had been drawn that our city had gained a new crime fighter—one who could disappear into thin air, like a phantom.

I hadn’t looked for those crimes per se, but I did seem to have the uncanny ability of being in the right place at the right time, or within a one-mile radius. What can I say? Not much gets past super-enhanced hearing, sight, and sense of smell.

“Speaking of which, you smell like salami, Paves,” I said to the air-conditioning unit plugging the hole. “Hope you have a breath mint on you.”

I dropped his cell phone on the rooftop for the police, then collected my gift bag, taking a moment to straighten the tissue.

“It looks awful,” I grumbled, giving up.

I tucked the bag under my arm and headed to Joe Jackson’s new digs.

~~~

I climbed down the fire escape over Joe’s new home, pausing to watch another police car drive by the alley. Once it passed, I hopped down to the asphalt.

With a heavy heart, I observed the refrigerator box tucked inside the alcove of the back entrance of a vacant store. This was no way for my friend to live, even though this lonely and miserable existence was Joe’s choice. Living on the streets was his self-inflicted punishment for delivering a single blow that had killed his childhood friend, Theo. They had gotten into a fistfight over a girl when they were eighteen, almost fifty years ago. Joe had served his time in prison, but as far as he was concerned, he was condemned for life.