*note: if you are new here, read Part 1 first
A sound outside. It’s kind of late, certainly wouldn’t expect anyone. Not on a school night.
Sheila’s in bed. She went padding down the hall wearing a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt, my beautiful little girl. She had accepted the discussion of how it’s important to eventually let up on an opponent, but I could see that we would have to revisit that topic soon. It’ll need some repetition to really sink in.
But what is that sound?
Both bikes put away. Bungees across the trash cans because raccoons, car doors all locked, no windows open even though it’s cool enough out that it would be nice to flush the house with some fresh air. What did that sound like?
Creak. Ah, okay. That’s the steps by the kitchen door, right next to the garage. The lock on that door is a good one, and the door itself is too. Normal people won’t come through that in a hurry. But I know a lot of people who are far beyond normal.
Getting outside silently is easy. Getting around the house silently, not quite so much – the euonymus by the garage is overgrown and really needing a trim – but then I’m behind him.
Not him. Her. Under this full moon, those hips are clearly female.
Everything I did earlier today, especially the Kaplan, left me a little raspy but pulling hard I crank up the ultrasonics and give her a blast of a rusty Costa – Mary Costa is still alive, the voice of Princess Aurora, would you believe it? – and she goes down. While she’s dazed, wrap her up in some ziptie cuffs and drag her into the yard, away from the house.
Dogs up and down the street are howling and yarking. They’ll settle in a minute.
“How the hell did you find my house? Who else is coming?” I give her head a shake with one fist tangled in her hair, but not too hard. A Costa at close range is pretty disorienting and I want her to get her thoughts in order, quickly.
“Yearbook.”
“Longer.”
“We got pictures of your kid as you were riding away from the bank. You got the whole crew and just rode away. But we got pictures of your kid and my IT guy had the idea of shopping her face onto a neutral background and Googling for similar images and it came up with a name.”
“Longer, some more.” But I think I could put it together from there.
“The name came up from the Facebook page of her preschool, and from there we got into their records and found your name and address and Jesus don’t pull so hard.”
Give her another little shake, but then relax the grip. “Keep it down.”
She had the gall to laugh a little. “If I’d known before now that The Diva lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in the ‘burbs I might have just not bothered with this. But we needed that crew, we needed that score. What did you bring out of there? We need it.”
“Nothing. We just walked away. Biked away.”
“Nothing? Are you sure you’re The Diva?”
“Are you daring me to yell at you? At this range? I could explode your eyeballs.”
She blanched. “I’m sorry.”
“Is that why you’re here, you’re trying to salvage something from that botched job?”
“That branch was supposed to be staging a delivery, we were going to gaslight a snooper into their system to backdoor access for the real job. The smash and grab was just to front the disruption. Two of those guys were patsies, the one whose fingers you destroyed was the real operator.”
“And the other one? There were four.”
“Well, that was my cousin. He wanted to come.” Her face turned dark. “He might not be able to have kids now.”
“He had a gun at my baby’s head so I’m not very sympathetic.”
She writhed in her restraints. I had ziptied her wrists together, and her thumbs, so that her hands were back-to-back. With another ziptie around her elbows, it’s a really uncomfortable position but the important thing is that she can’t put her palms together. She’s not an adept fighter but makes up for it with a kind of power move. She has to be able to put her hands together to make it work though, so it always looks like she’s beating everything to pieces with a Spock chop. It’s the worst fight move ever but when you can knock a hole through a Buick with it, “worst” isn’t really relevant anymore. As long as she can keep her palms together, she’s incredibly dangerous.
But I can keep out of her range, no problem.
“You didn’t take anything out? No haul, not even intel?”
“Even if I hadn’t gone straight I wouldn’t help you, you’re going to get yourself and others hurt, you know that?” I can’t remember her name. What does she call herself? Doesn’t matter. “You need to get the hell out of here.”
“I’m coming back. You can’t do this to us. The boss wants into that system and he’s going to keep sending others, more like me, to try to get intel on the bank out of you, or else just to eliminate you as a possible leak on his plan.”
“You didn’t really do enough research on me, did you? Got the name and address and just ran over here?”
She doesn’t want to look like she’s been caught but she looks caught. And curiosity gets the better of her. “…why?”
“When I was still…her…I had a different name. Did you know that? Maybe not. But did you notice my little girl’s last name? Did you think about that?”
“What about it?”
“That name sound familiar to you at all?”
My beautiful little girl is my daughter, and so has inherited some natural gifts that are very special. She has a superhuman voice, capable of cutting right through sheet steel – have the two pieces of baking pan to prove it – and will probably one day have even more control than I do. But the other thing she has is her father.
He is the only non-super superhero I have ever met, and the only one who was ever fired. It was quite the news item. His secret identity was never revealed, but through a ridiculous onion of layers of obfuscation, it was – and nobody believed it was real. Genius and shrewd. Never surprised, contingency plans for every possible circumstance, an utter master of gathering and compiling information, of misdirection and manipulation, and a relentless hand to hand combatant. What he lacks in intelligence is difficult to determine because there’s almost no one who can think on his level.
That’s the other thing Sheila Judge has inherited. She’s a genius, and she’s shrewd. Fortunately she’s still a little girl or I would be completely outclassed. So far she still believes me when I tell her to ease up on bad guys, not to use her skills to outwit other kids in games that are far beneath her. To give them a chance.
Her father had been done with giving chances at one time.
“He’s the Judge.”
That took a moment to sink in. “The Judge?”
“The Judge.”
The only hero ever fired. Fired, because he went over the line. His moral compass had been getting weaker, he’d become more implacably pragmatic. The Judge’s constant exposure to evil was making him less good. Not evil, not quite…just indifferent. So when it came time for him to pass judgment on a bad guy, he did. With great finality. The contingency plans had started to look like entrapment, like railroading. Okay, the bad guy could have simply stopped…but he hadn’t been given the chance.
That had also been the incident that drove me to retire. It was pretty bad.
That had been ten years ago. It had been nearly four years getting him back out of his head, and about forty-five minutes getting him to marry me, and the years since had been so good. So good.
If he heard about this ignorant twit coming around the house on a mission of petty retribution, it would get so bad. Unpowered or not, he would eradicate this chick, her boss, her cousin and his finger fragments, all of them.
It was pretty much just me and Sheila that kept him from going over that line. Mostly Sheila. She made him want to be a good person.
“If he knows you were ever here, it will go badly for you. I’m the only thing between you and…you know what, I’m not really sure exactly what he would do. But you need to understand this, and listen close: he loves me. And as much as he loves me, he adores that child.” I started to get up. “For the sake of your life, you should see to it that nothing bad ever happens on this entire block, and most certainly not to me or her.”
I still can’t remember what she calls herself. It isn’t important. She’s gone as white as a sheet.
“Is it true he doesn’t actually have any powers?”
“How badly do you want to find out?” Might as well butter the muffin a little bit. “He beat Maximus into submission by himself, did you know that?” Maximus has been cooling his heels in the ultramax in Nevada for over fifteen years, word has it he has crippling arthritis now. With great power comes great joint pain.
“I’ll leave now, if you let me.”
“You should quit while you still can.” Standing up, I motion for her to get up and turn around so I can cut the tie around her elbows. “That’ll give you some leverage so you can free yourself in a little bit. Don’t try to do it here. If I start to feel threatened I’ll defend myself and you don’t want that.”
“I’m going.”
I never even saw it happen. From one moment to the next, nothing and then something, boom.
Whatsername turning to go, splat right into his chest.
He’s not as tall as the bad guys think. It’s the wig. But he’s wide, as wide as a bank vault door. And if you walk into him, about as soft.
“Banger.”
That’s her name.
She can’t make much sound beyond a stifled wheeze.
“Call your mother when you get home. She’s worried about you.” The Judge looks at his watch. He has a cup of coffee in his hand, and it is strangely sinister. “She’s still up.” With four steps and a flickering snick he’s circled behind her, cut her remaining zip ties and returned back to in front of her. He’s not a super, I swear. But it was so relaxed and yet so quick, you can be excused for thinking he is. The coffee steams.
Banger’s hands come together, clasped tightly before her face. Palm to palm.
The Judge raises an eyebrow. For a moment, everything stops. He sips from the cup.
“I’m sorry.”
“Go. Now.”
Banger whispered a hoarse “thank you” and ran away into the night, rustling through the damned euonymus until we could hear her sneakers slapping pavement, receding. After a couple of minutes, there was an engine roar but then even that too was gone.
“Well,” he said. “That went about like I expected.”
“Good.”
Sip.
“Wait, what?”
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