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  “I was just telling Lucas how we met,” she said, checking her phone to see if she had any messages.

  “Nice,” the former Talon said. “I’d heard about what happened to the Frightener and wanted to see for myself. You know how it is with those supervillains—they’re never as dead as you think they are.”

  “He was dead all right,” Katie said, still looking at her phone.

  Putnam continued. “I ran into her at the morgue. We were the only ones there.”

  “My mom had passed away the year before,” Katie added. “Right then I didn’t have anybody in the world … not even a lousy supervillain for a dad.”

  “She thought I might’ve been one of her father’s partners… y’know, another bad guy, but I found myself opening up to her. We struck up a conversation, realized we had similar goals, and here we are.”

  “We’ve been buddies since,” Katie said with that really pretty smile. “We both had something in common with the Raptor, and we formed a partnership.”

  Putman smiled in her general direction. “I felt I needed to keep an eye on her so she didn’t follow in her father’s footsteps,” he said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, right, like I know anything about chemistry,” she added with a giggle.

  “But she did know a thing or two about computers,” he said. “It wasn’t long before we were designing some of the top surveillance systems in the country and making a bundle.”

  “All tax-free,” she chirped, and then laughed.

  Lucas’s head was spinning. “Let’s back up,” he said. “My father, as the Raptor, killed your father, who was a super-villain?”

  Katie looked him squarely in the eye. “Slammed him against an alley wall so hard that it broke his neck. It was not a very spectacular, supervillainy way to go.”

  “And he killed other members of the Terribles as well,” Putnam added.

  Lucas tried again to process the info. They were telling him his father had hurt some people … killed some people, but they were bad guys. They were supervillains who had hurt Talon, as well as some innocent people in Seraph City.

  But was that enough to justify murder?

  “And he hasn’t stopped there. He’s killed others since,” Putnam said.

  Lucas wanted to dismiss everything they were saying. It just wasn’t possible. Yeah, his father had lost it a bit the other night, but who wouldn’t after years of trying to clean up Seraph City? And besides, where was the proof? Two complete strangers stood in front of him, spouting what could very well be lies.

  Hell, they could be villains themselves, Lucas thought. He shook his head. “He’s a superhero. He doesn’t murder people. I—I’m not so sure I’m buying this.”

  “Should I show him the latest?” Katie asked.

  “Might as well,” Putnam answered.

  Katie turned around to face one of the computers on the desk and opened a file for Lucas to see.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” He leaned closer to the screen.

  “It doesn’t look familiar?” Putnam asked.

  It was a crime scene photo—a large body dumped in the middle of an overgrown lot.

  “I still don’t—” Lucas began.

  “Look closely,” Putnam instructed.

  Katie hit another key and a close-up shot of the crime victim appeared. Lucas gasped. The last time he’d seen the supervillain Bestial, the monster man had been lying unconscious on the floor of Hartwell Manor.

  “He’s dead?” Lucas asked, unable to tear his gaze away.

  “Murdered and dumped in an abandoned lot,” Putnam said. “Forensics says he died from a massive electrical shock.”

  “He was … he was my final exam,” Lucas said, staring at the villain’s blank expression, frozen in death.

  “Did you kill him, Lucas?” Putnam asked flat out.

  He felt both of them staring, their eyes burning into him.

  “No,” Lucas answered vehemently, shaking his head from side to side.

  No, but his father had wanted him to.

  “I—I just beat him in a fight. I have no idea what happened to him after.”

  Putnam tapped the screen with a finger. “This is what happened,” the man said. “Bestial served your father’s purpose, and then your father was done with him.”

  Lucas didn’t quite understand it, but suddenly he was overcome with a sense of responsibility. “I feel like it’s my fault,” he said.

  Putnam gripped his shoulder and squeezed. “It’s not,” he reassured him. “But you need to listen to what we’re trying to tell you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lucas began. The world he had just recently come to know was beginning to crumble. “He’s a hero. … How could he do this?”

  “Your father doesn’t know it, but I’ve been watching him. He’s desperate now. The years of strength-enhancing drugs and steroids, along with the physical wear and tear on his body, have had a lasting effect on him. The Raptor isn’t the same anymore, and Hartwell can’t accept that. He’s doing everything in his power to correct the situation.”

  Lucas swallowed, not liking where all this had gone, and where it was sure to go.

  “I learned that Hartwell Technologies had started to do extensive research into nanite technology, with specific applications aimed at healing the human body,” Putnam continued.

  Katie cleared the screen of Bestial’s corpse and called up a search engine. “While Nick was attempting to figure out what our scary superhero was doing with that technology, the gossip columns were filled with all sorts of stories about the eligible multibillionaire bachelor Clayton Hartwell and his numerous one-night stands.”

  She pulled up some files from gossip newspapers twenty years old and scrolled through picture after picture of his father, much younger. A different woman was on his arm in each picture.

  “Wait!” Lucas yelped when he saw someone he recognized.

  His mother. It appeared, from the picture, that she and Hartwell had gone to the theater together.

  His mother loved the theater. Especially musicals.

  “You look like her,” Katie said before changing the screen.

  “Believe it or not, all of this ties together,” Putnam explained.

  Lucas felt sick to his stomach. “And I’m sure you’re going to explain it all to me,” he said, closing his eyes, preparing for the worst … if it could possibly get any worse.

  “All the women you just saw with Hartwell … with your father,” Putnam said. “They all became pregnant with his children.”

  “All of them?” Lucas asked.

  Putnam slowly nodded.

  “And they all left Seraph before their children were born,” Katie contributed. “There are rumors floating around that some were paid to leave, if you catch my drift.”

  “My mother knew about Hartwell … who he actually was. She told me she left to protect me.”

  “Which was probably the case,” Putnam responded. “But each of them left Seraph and had their babies.”

  “Jump ahead twenty or so years,” Katie said. Her fingers were again flying over the keyboard. A yellow file folder appeared, and she brought the mouse arrow up to click it open.

  Multiple yearbook photographs of smiling young adults appeared.

  “And here they are, ladies and gentlemen,” the girl said, stepping back and watching Lucas carefully.

  There were nine photos of young men and women.

  And there had been nine names on the list Katie had given him.

  “These are the people from the list,” Lucas said, his voice a nervous whisper.

  “Bingo,” Putnam said. “And each and every one of these handsome kids is dead.”

  “All except one,” Katie said. “One of the kids has managed to survive longer than all the others.”

  She did something with the mouse and the nine pictures disappeared, replaced by one.

  The photo was of Lucas, taken for the high school newspaper over a year ago, just
before he dropped out.

  “You’re the only one of his children left,” Putnam said.

  “I can’t believe this,” Lucas blurted out. “Why does it have to be him?” he demanded. “Couldn’t it be one of his enemies … one of the Raptor’s enemies? That’s what he told me … and …”

  “And you believed him,” Putnam teased.

  “Flight plans were filed with the FCC that show Hartwell took his private jet to all the victims’ locations prior to these so-called accidents,” she explained.

  Lucas’s legs felt like rubber, and he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. He squatted down, holding his head in his hands.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I don’t want to believe this. Why? Why would a hero murder his own children?”

  He looked up at them, hoping for something that would somehow ease the fever now wracking his brain.

  “It wasn’t just the children,” Putnam said as Katie nodded seriously. “In some instances the entire family was wiped out.”

  “But why?” Lucas demanded. “Why would he do this?”

  Putnam shrugged. “That’s something we’ve never really been able to figure out. They’ve all died … except for you.”

  Lucas was about to tell the man he didn’t understand when Katie’s phone started ringing.

  She took it from her sweatshirt pocket and looked at the screen.

  “Who is it?” Putnam asked.

  She shrugged, opening the phone. “Larrange Scientific,” she answered in her most professional voice.

  Lucas slowly stood, his stomach doing backflips. He thought he might be sick, until he glanced at Katie. The color was draining from her face, and her expression was one of utter shock.

  “What’s wrong?” Putnam asked, reaching for the phone. “Who is it?”

  She broke the connection, appearing dazed.

  “It was him,” she said, on the verge of panic.

  “Hartwell?” Putnam asked.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “He said he was the Raptor.”

  11

  One Hour, Thirteen Minutes, and Twenty-five Seconds Ago

  Clayton Hartwell sat at the head of a long mahogany conference table. The upper management of Hartwell Tech sat at attention on either side.

  They were always on their best behavior when he decided to pay them a visit. Hypocrites. He was sure they would just as soon see him hurry up and die so that the company could be turned over to the board of directors and run in a way they saw fit.

  Forbes magazine said that Hartwell Technologies could be one of the biggest tech companies on the planet, bigger even than Microsoft, but its focus was too broad. It had its fingers in everything rather than focusing on a few particular areas. The company made millions, but these people wanted billions. Hartwell had never been concerned about the money, as long as he had what he needed to take care of the city.

  After all, what was money when you had the safety of every man, woman, and child in Seraph City to worry about?

  Hartwell swiveled in his chair ever so slightly as Timothy Cole, the head of development, droned on and on about something Hartwell probably wouldn’t have found interesting even if he hadn’t been so distracted. His gaze traveled to the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up two walls of the conference room. He could see Seraph City sprawled out below him.

  Crimes were being committed while he sat, trapped at the table, pretending to be something he really wasn’t.

  Murder. Rape. Arson. Robbery. Child abuse. The offenses went on and on.

  He would have loved to tell them that Clayton Hartwell had indeed passed away twenty years ago. Back then, he had been Clayton Hartwell, the man who had become the hero known as the Raptor. He’d even found a sidekick, someone who shared his love of the city, someone he could train to pick up some of the slack in his duties to the Angel City.

  Crime was on the rise, too much for the Raptor to handle alone.

  Talon was his answer.

  Staring out the window, he tried to find the location where it had happened, where Clayton Hartwell had died and the Raptor alone had crawled from the ashes.

  He remembered the sound of thunder as the explosives detonated and the building fell down around their ears. The fact that Talon had survived was a blessing, but it had shown Clayton how it needed to be.

  No longer would he put others at risk. It was up to him, the Raptor, to do everything in his power to see his city protected. And to ensure there would always be a Raptor watching out for them.

  He had taken the time to see to Talon’s care, before making the break completely.

  It was a whole new world now—one Clayton Hartwell was no longer strong enough to protect.

  Hartwell would be the mask now.

  Long live the Raptor.

  “Sir?” he heard a voice call to him.

  Hartwell looked away from the window to see Cole and the others staring at him.

  He had no idea what they had been discussing, but he was about to bluff his way through when his cell phone began to ring.

  The first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony began playing, and he felt a slight chill run up and down his spine. He had programmed different rings into his cell phone to indicate certain things. This one told him there was Internet activity at the computer back at the nest.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said, turning his chair completely around to look at the phone screen.

  His fingers moved across the small keyboard, instructing the handheld device to show him what information Lucas had accessed.

  He imagined it was probably something of little importance—YouTube or whatever else the kids were looking at these days—but he needed to know for sure. Hartwell saw that a search engine had been used, and then he saw the names Lucas had been researching.

  His jaw dropped. This was far from harmless.

  “Something’s come up,” Hartwell said as he quickly stood. “I’m afraid I need to leave.”

  “But there are acquisition contracts that need to be signed. …”

  “What part of I need to leave don’t you understand?” Hartwell barked, feeling his patience ebb. The Raptor did not care to be questioned in any way.

  Cole immediately backed down. Everyone else looked through their papers or out the window, anywhere but at him.

  “Have anything that needs to be signed messengered to the manor, and I’ll take care of it as expediently as I can.”

  He left his chair at the head of the table and walked to the door, holding his cane by his side.

  There wasn’t even a hint of a limp.

  Behind the wheel of his modified Lamborghini, Hartwell tore from the underground parking garage of the Hartwell Technologies building, heading for home.

  He removed the phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it in a docking bay on the car’s dashboard.

  “Call home,” he instructed the phone, while the images called up in the Web search his son had done scrolled by in a separate window on the side.

  He drove through the city streets with amazing precision, avoiding red lights with the help of a special mechanism similar to the fire department controls that halted traffic-signal changes until the fire engines had passed.

  The phone at the manor rang and rang, but nobody picked up.

  “Dammit,” Hartwell cursed, reaching out to press one of the buttons on the phone. “Override phone. Patch me to PA home system.”

  He waited a moment, saying a silent prayer that the boy had been in the bathroom, or napping, and hadn’t heard the phone.

  “Lucas,” he called out, imagining his voice being broadcast into every room of the manor. “Lucas, it’s me. Are you there? I believe we need to discuss something. Please pick up the closest phone.”

  He waited, a ball of dread hardening in his stomach.

  “Lucas?” he tried again. “Please, I know you’re probably confused by what you’ve found, but I can explain.”

&
nbsp; Hartwell’s thoughts had already begun to dissect the situation. Where did the boy get the idea to search for those specific names?

  Either Lucas had chosen not to communicate with him, or worse, he was gone.

  Hartwell came to a screeching halt in front of the main entrance to his home and barreled through the front doors. “Lucas?” he called out, walking through the empty corridors, sticking his head into the equally empty rooms. The boy was nowhere to be found. Hartwell bounded up the stairs. He practically ran down the corridor and flung open the door to his son’s room.

  “Lucas,” he said, bursting in and looking around. He went to the closet to find that the boy’s clothes were still there.

  There was only one other place he could imagine the boy might be.

  He descended the stairs two at a time and headed to the elevator that would take him down into the nest.

  But if he is in the nest, wouldn’t he have heard my call? he wondered as the elevator began its descent.

  Maybe Lucas was choosing not to respond, wanting to figure out answers on his own before confronting Hartwell with what he had found. That was a possibility.

  Hartwell left the elevator as soon as the doors began to open.

  “Lucas!” he called out, but no one answered. He was alone.

  Hartwell stood in the center of his lab, looking for any sign indicating where the boy might have gone. His eyes touched upon an area in the ceiling where a camera was hidden.

  “Computer active,” he said aloud, and all the systems in the lab immediately activated at the sound of his voice. “Security systems review,” he ordered as he turned toward one of the monitors.

  The image of Lucas sitting before the computer screen appeared.

  “Advance recording,” Hartwell instructed the voice-sensitive system.

  The digital recording moved ahead, until he saw the boy complete his search, shut down the computer, and then stand still in the middle of the lab.

  Hartwell’s curiosity was piqued. It appeared the boy was listening to something.

  “Volume up,” he instructed the system.

  Vertical bars appeared at the bottom of the monitor, showing the volume rising.