Justice: A Billionaire Romance (8 page)

"What?" I asked, stepping away from the bed. I wasn't bleeding, and moving wasn't making the pain in my shoulder any worse. "What do you see?"

Mom looked up at me from the screen she and Sophie were studying, concern back in her eyes. "On the bed," she said, stepping around. "You've got some fractures."

"No," Sophie said, holding up her hand. "Let's get that shoulder back into place first, and then we can worry about the fractures. It'll be easier if he's sitting up."

I let Mom help me sit down, and Sophie came over, taking my arm in her hands. "This is going to hurt."

She pulled, and before I passed out, I heard a satisfying
thunk
. Still, the pain was enough that I embraced the darkness, and let it wash over me for a while.

I
helped
Andi out mostly by following behind her, making sure things were tidied up. "Give me your sidearms," I said as we came in. "I can store them in the Bell Tower for the night."

Andi stopped, startled. She nodded, and unsnapped her weapons from their hard-points on her costume. Peeling off her cowl, she ran through the house to the gym and medical facility. I went upstairs to the Bell Tower, making sure to put things away.

I was just finishing my breakdown of my sidearm when Dad came in, his face tight. "How's Carter?" I asked, trying to put my fears aside. "Andi's with him?"

"She is," Dad said, popping the clip on his Glock and clearing the weapon. He put it away, then put his hands on the table. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, Dad," I said, finishing my last weapon. I went over to the rack and peeled off my costume, plugging it into the computer port that would do a diagnostic on the systems as well as recharge it. "Didn't Carter say anything?"

He shook his head. "He passed out when Sophie put his shoulder back into socket, and she's kept him lightly sedated since. Riley, he's got two broken ribs and massive bruising over his entire chest. How the hell does that happen with those suits you guys wear? They're designed to take a sledge hammer blow without a second glance."

I shook my head. "We'll find out when Carter wakes up. Did you download his cowl's camera feed yet?"

Dad shook his head. "Tabby is doing that now. Riley, did you see anything out there that can give us a lead on this?"

I thought about it, then shrugged. "Maybe. The guys Andi and I were listening to, they seemed to know about the attack on Carter. They also said something about this new drug that our mysterious Mr. Clean is bringing in, making you feel like Superman. Perhaps the Eighty-Eights know some more? I can go out and ring some bells if you want."

Dad shook his head. "Not until we know more about what the hell this is. Riley . . . ” Dad said before falling silent. He came over and hugged me, and I knew what he wanted to say without him needing the words. Former hitman, vigilante, and all-around-badass, he was still a concerned husband and father. He patted me on the back and cleared his throat. "All right, let's go make sure your sister is okay."

We found Andi still in the remnants of her costume, sitting next to Carter in the medical bay bed. Mom had completed her scans, and was preparing an injection. "How's he looking?"

Mom looked up, while Andi seemed to not hear. She was holding Carter's left hand, her eyes filled with concern. "He's busted up pretty bad, but the suit took most of the pounding," Mom said, pointing to the pile on the floor. "I'm glad that the video recording system is stored in the cowl and not in the main suit itself. The suit's trash now."

I whistled between my teeth. With a price tag of nearly a hundred thousand dollars each, our base suits were adapted from plans that had been an experimental design for the Navy SEALs, then customized for us. We had backups, but only one each. "Damn. And Carter?"

"The shoulder will heal up easily enough, but those ribs are going to put him out of action for a month at least," Mom said. "Tabby's going to have the video feed in a few minutes. Mark, will you and Riley take care of that?"

I understood what she wanted, to spare Andi the pain of watching from Carter's beating from his own perspective. But eventually Andi would have to see, in order to understand. "All right, I'll handle it," I said. "But Andi, you need to see it when you can."

Andi finally looked up at me from her seat and nodded absently. "Right . . . ”

Carter stirred on the table, blinking. "Hey," he said, giving Andi's hand a squeeze. "There you are."

I hadn't realized until then that Andi hadn't said anything since coming in the medical bay. She stood up, her eyes filled with concern. "Carter."

"Hey Big Bro," I said, coming over. "How're you doing?"

"Meh, Mark's kicked my ass worse than that," he said in a soft voice. "Hey Mark."

Dad chuckled and put his hands on Andi's shoulders. "I don't think I've hit you that hard before."

"Andi's hit me harder than this when she's been pissed off at me," Carter said with a laugh. He grimaced and shook his head. "No jokes for a while though."

"Well, I'll take advantage of that," I joked, causing Andi to glare at me while Carter smiled. "Come on, you know I'm just kidding."

"It's okay Andi," Carter said, seeing her face. "He’s allowed to get a few of those in while he can.”

"I'm just getting the last of those in before you legally become family," I said. Carter shook his head, and I looked at him. "What?"

"Wedding's delayed," Carter said, looking at Andi and then the rest of us. "Think the church will be pissed off?"

"Delayed? Why?" Andi asked. "Carter, you need to heal, you don't need to be out there fighting."

"Come on bro, I can handle it," I said. "You know that."

Carter shook his head. "You'll need backup. That means Andi or Mark. And, not to put too blunt a point on it, with these ribs, there's a few things that I want to do during my honeymoon that I can't anyway. So until I can, we should delay things. Mark, you think Dad can get Vanessa to handle the press on that? Say I had a bike accident or something."

Dad nodded, then laughed. "Considering what Sophie and I did during our quick honeymoon, I guess a delay is warranted. But you're not going out on the streets before you get married."

"We'll see," Carter replied. He looked at Andi, squeezing her hand. "You okay with that, babe?"

Andi nodded. "Okay. I'd hate to hurt you on our wedding night, and I know how we can get."

"Well, you both can hold off on that for at least four weeks," Mom said. "Now Carter, you need to get sleep, and the rest of you need to get changed and debriefed. So shoo, all of you. I'll keep watch over Carter, he’s staying here tonight."

"Yes Mom."

"
G
od damn
those guys are fast," I said the next day, watching the video for the third time, this time in slow motion. Even with that, the two men who attacked Carter were hard to track. Tabby had enhanced the image to account for the low light, and I'd spent the past thirty minutes reviewing it with Dad and Patrick. He'd just gotten home from the press conference announcing the delay to the wedding. The official story was that Carter had hurt his leg falling down the stairs. We didn't want our enemies to know who Carter was, after all.

Now, the three of us were breaking down the film nearly frame by frame. I had a date with Janet, but I wanted to get this done first. "What in the hell causes this sort of power and speed?"

"Angel dust?" Patrick asked. "Dust heads have been known to exhibit great strength and damage resistance."

Dad shook his head. "No, PCP freaks usually display erratic behavior. These two were controlled, even if they were attacking. They were lucid. This is, this is something new."

"Shit," I muttered under my breath. "I hate new. First reports of those military rifles on the streets just before you took office and I come back into town, now this stuff. I hate new problems."

We heard a door close behind us, and the unmistakeable sound of high heels approaching. "Come on Riley, if you don't have new problems, what fun is life?"

I whipped my head around, surprised and pleased at the same time. Patrick spoke my exact thoughts as he got up and held his arms open for his daughter. "Barbara! I didn't think you were getting in until later."

Barb shrugged. She came over and gave Patrick a hug, then one for Mark. "Hi Dad, hi Uncle Mark. Riley, you've filled out some. Looking good."

"Not so bad yourself," I said, not lying in the least. Barbara was easily one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, and considering my reputation, I'd seen a lot. Exactly one inch taller than her mother, Barb was built like a man's wet dream come to life. With rich auburn hair that reached all the way to her waist and a figure that put lingerie models to shame, she practically oozed sexuality. And she'd used it, too. However, with me it was always a sort of friendly rivalry. It was like we both knew the other was sexually attractive, but at the same time didn't feel attracted to each other. We were more like best friends than anything else. "So did you have a good flight?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" she asked with a smirk. I rolled my eyes, and patted the couch next to me. "By the way, Andi said in her last e-mail to me that you've got yourself a girlfriend. Anyone I know?"

"No, and while I'll introduce you, you better be on your best behavior,” I replied. "Janet's not a short term thing I think."

Barb looked at me quizzically, then nodded. We'd talk about that later. "Okay. So I just got in from the infirmary, Carter and Sophie filled me in on what happened to him. Where's Andi and Mom?"

"They're out handling the delay in the wedding," Patrick said, "they should be back soon. It's good to see you baby."

"So this is the fight video, huh?" Barb asked, sitting down next to me. "Well, let me get eyes on the thing. Carter said the whole fight was less than a minute."

We restarted the video, Barb sitting forward with her elbows on her knees. Her face went somewhat slack as she watched the video once, then again. I'd seen her do this before, it was one of the ways she made connections.

You see, Barbara's not built quite like the rest of us. While Carter, Andi and I are nowhere near dumb, Barb's got a freaky sense of intelligence. If you underestimate her based off her looks or her upfront sexuality, you’ll get burned. Barbara is a sort of polymath, one of those people who picks up stuff quickly but gets bored almost as quickly as she picks it up. It’s my secret opinion that it was one of the reasons she was so interested in sex and seduction, it's one of the few subjects that doesn't bore her. She doesn't have Carter's eidetic memory, but she can notice details that would slip by others.

So when Barb's eyes went wide and her face slack, I knew she was seeing something we'd missed. After the second go-around she sat back, crossing her arms over her chest and sighing. "Shit."

"What is it, honey?" Patrick asked. He knew his daughter, and knew her tone of voice. She'd seen something.

"Those two, Carter said they were under control, right? And that they were breathing super fast, like they were winded or something?"

"You've seen something like this before," Dad said, more of a statement than a question. "What do you know?"

"It's coming out of Europe, I don't know the exact source," Barbara said. "They call it Amp. You guys remember that old movie,
Limitless
?"

"Sure," I said. "About that guy who took a pill, and it woke his brain up. Guy made Einstein look like an idiot sort of thing."

"Well, Amp is for the body, does the same thing," Barbara said. “From what I’ve heard, the stuff turns your average doofus into a super-athlete for a hour or more at a hit."

"Shit," Mark said. "What's the catch? If this stuff was so good, I'd have heard about it being used here in the States."

"The catch is that not only is it addictive, but it has quite a few side effects as well," Barbara said. "First, you can tell from the video, too high a dose will put you into cardiac arrest. I've also heard of people getting aneurysms too. On the low end, those guys will wake up with just about every muscle in their body feeling ready to die, like taking the worst workout that Mark ever put any of us through and magnifying it by ten. Oh, and the fact that their broken bones will now be felt."

"They don't feel pain?" I asked, not all that surprised. "No wonder it's addictive."

"Yeah," Barbara said. "I was going to tell you guys about it when I came back for the wedding. Wish I had told you about the rumors I'd heard sooner."

"Well, you're here now honey," Patrick said. "Let's get you unpacked, and all of us will talk later."

W
e didn't move
Carter into his bedroom. Despite the fact that Andi would have been more than willing to be his nursemaid while she was home, Sophie’s deep den mother streak interjected. In the end, Carter walked his way from the infirmary to the entertainment room, and settled himself in on one of the reclining chairs.

"You know, other than getting up to use the toilet, I could stay here for the entire four weeks," he joked as he elevated his feet. "In fact, maybe we can invent one of these that has a toilet built-in?"

"Already been imagined by lazies ever since the Barcalounger was introduced," Mom said with a laugh. "So no Carter, you don't get to sit on your butt for four weeks."

Carter sighed, then grinned. "Worth a shot."

Andi made sure Carter was comfortable while I put together dinner. Besides studying overseas, I'd picked up a flair for cuisine, probably because one of my lovers was a trained chef. I enjoyed the process, and decided to display some of my skills for my family, as everyone else seemed busy. Well, except Riley, who’s almost never busy, but was getting ready for a date with his new girlfriend. I reminded myself to ask about her later.

While I was chopping some mushrooms, Andi came into the kitchen. "Whatcha making?"

"A chanterelle mushroom risotto," I said. "I'll pair it off with some pan-seared duck breasts that I saw in the fridge, and some of the broccoli rabe too, maybe sautéed in a bit of butter."

"You do that, and Riley won't want to take Janet out for a date. They'll just keep crashing dinner here," Andi said with a small smile. "Can I help?"

"Sure," I replied. "Grab another cutting board and a knife, and cut up the rabe into about one inch pieces."

Andi did what I asked, starting on the vegetable. While she cut, we fell into a comfortable silence. We'd grown up as sisters, and despite having periods of not really getting along, there was nobody in the world I was closer to. Even Riley and Carter were different in my relationship with them. Carter was always my big brother, but he and I were different enough that we just mutually agreed unconsciously to be different. Riley was the opposite in that we were almost freakishly similar, and therefore too close. We were friendly rivals, and yes, immediately comfortable with each other.

Andi was somewhere in between. Besides being a girl, there wasn't a lot we shared in common, at least spiritually. At the same time however, for some reason the two of us always tried to reconcile our differences and work together, succeeding more often than not. Andi was like my sister and my best friend. As such, we actually worked together better than I did with either Carter or Riley. "So Carter's doing good?”

"As good as he can be," Andi said. "Riley told me about the new drug, Amp. Is that what he ran into?"

I shrugged. Finishing the mushrooms, I set them aside in a glass bowl before starting on scoring the duck breasts. "I haven't seen it in person, but from what I've heard about, that’s what I'd guess. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it by e-mail or something earlier."

"You couldn't have known that this Mr. Clean is bringing this stuff into the city," Andi said. We fell silent, both of us working, before she spoke up. "Sorry if this screws up your vacation plans."

"I'm fine," I said. "Summer break is soon, like Riley. And I'm in the Master's program, I can even take a semester or two off and not suffer for it. I mostly just have my thesis to go anyway, and that I can work on in my spare time. I'm sorry your wedding is delayed. I know you and Carter have really been looking forward to it."

Andi chuckled, then shrugged. She finished the broccoli rabe and set her knife down. "Carter and I are together, regardless of whether the law recognizes it or not. The only delay is in me coming off the birth control pills."

I nodded in understanding. That was Andi, always the responsible one. "You know you don't have to," I said. "If you do the math, you and Carter both were conceived before our parents were officially married."

Andi nodded and shrugged again. "I know, but I guess I just want things to be as simple as possible for Patrick and all. We dance on the edge of disaster anyway with doing all of this, and we've gotten away with it. It wouldn’t really be a scandal, but you know how politics is. I wouldn’t want to hurt Patrick."

I laughed and set my knife down, giving Andrea a careful hug with my dirty hands. "Andi, this is what makes you so damn adorable. You worry about everyone else, when you should worry about yourself more often. I swear, I've only seen you act without worrying about how it'll make the rest of the family look only once."

"Oh? When was that?" Andi asked, looking at me curiously.

"When you finally did what I'd seen in your eyes and my brother's eyes for years, and get together. Seriously, you two were literally made for each other. It was like the universe righting a wrong or something."

"The universe righting a wrong?" Andi asked. "Have you been taking up theology as well as everything else over there in Europe?"

"Why not? Business is boring, and my MBA is a walk in the park," I replied. “Now, how about you get the chicken stock from the pantry, and I'll show you how to make the best risotto on the planet?"

"Canned or the boxed stuff?"

I shivered in revulsion. "Never, ever use canned stock, it tastes like the tin it comes in. In fact, tomorrow when you take me to the pistol range, remind me to bring those canned stocks. They'll make good targets. Guess I'm going to have to teach Sophie about food."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about it too much," Andi said with a laugh. "I don't think this house is suffering too much in terms of food. But if you insist.”

"And she’ll promptly dismiss it if she doesn't like it," I said with another laugh. It was something Sophie and I had gotten used to. She wouldn't try to shut me up when I felt she was doing something wrong, but at the same time I knew she wouldn't accept everything I said. "I think that started when I tried to show her a better way to vacuum the living room rug."

Andi laughed, tension loosening from her shoulders as she did. "Thanks Barb. Having you around is nice."

"That's what I'm here for. Now, how about you tell me about this new girlfriend of Riley's while we get this dinner finished?"