“Perfect,” I say, and I bolt off until Landon uses his telekinesis to throw a car in front of me.
“NO! Down, boy! Stay!” Landon yells. I leap up onto the car as the siren herself comes screeching after me.
“Stop running off alone! If you are going to be part of Superheroes United, you are to workasa teamwithyour team. Do you understand? Of course you don’t because your head is filled with rocks! Fucking rocks!” she yells.
The door of the car I’m standing on opens and a shaky reporter slowly oozes out.
“Whoops,” Landon says.
“Thank you so much for allowing us the use of your vehicle during our time of need,” August tells her as he flashes his superhero smile at her, which makes her smile in return. It’sfascinatinghow a smile can erase all trauma when August is involved. Whenever I smile at my victims, they sure don’t seem to forget what I’m doing.
“Y-You’re welcome,” the woman says, leaning against the car in the strangest pose I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell whether she’s trying to look sexy or is airing out her undercarriage.
“Get a rooooom,” Landon shouts.
Valerie and Ellison are both staring at us like we’re children that they’ve given up all hope on when I’m theonlyone trying to catch the bad guy.
“Why would we just stand here?” I ask, genuinely curious and confused. “My number one advice for pursuing someone who must be murdered is that they rarely, if ever, turn around and come backtoyou to be murdered. It’s only happened once for me.”
“You don’t even know which direction he went, do you?” Ellison asks.
“It doesn’t matter because I know he’s not here. I can pick any direction, and I’d have a better chance of finding him than standing here,” I say as I jump off the roof of the car.
“You let him get away. Your lack of skills has put everyone in danger. When they die it’s on you.”
I try to push away the dark thoughts invading my mind.
I look up and notice Ellison is staring at me while still holding my poor waterlogged rifle, so I give him a wink. “You look rather fine with that gun. Want me to show you how to shoot it?”
“No. I am more than good, thank you very much,” he says as his phone beeps. He pushes the gun at me and takes his phone out before scowling at it. I have to assume he’d wear the same expression if someone sent him a text detailing some blackmail.
“I have to go. When I get back, we will discuss our next course of action. I would like to lay out our plans with explicit details, understood?” Ellison asks.
“Is he talking to us?” Landon asks. “Explicit… ooh, does he mean sexy explicit? I can get behind that. I’ve been saying for so manyyearsthat if August was naked when he took down villains, more villains would hand themselves over.”
“We haven’t even been dating for ‘so many years,’” August says.
“He spooned his August dolla lot,” Brandon calls out from where he’s stuck with his body partway through the broken window. There is nopossibleway he thought he was fitting through that window, but it looks like he still chose to try.
“Brandon, you are not allowed to speak. I’ve heard that if you tell stories about your favorite brother, your penis will shrink.”
“Gasp! Do you think that’s why it’s so small? But I really never say stories about Nolan.”
“What the fuck! You put me through hell and back and I’m not your favorite? Youusedmy toothbrush. You slept in my bednaked.”
“Yeah. I also crawled into bed with August naked one time. Do you think you could help me? I think I’m stuck.”
“Excuse me, what?” Landon asks, obviously struggling to comprehend this. “I’m sorry…excuse me, what?”
August has pulled out his superhero stanceandsmile.
And Ellison is so interested in hearing about this that he stops heading away from us.
“The couch was just so uncomfortable, and you were reading and weren’t using the other half of the bed. I didn’t see why I couldn’t use it. Landon, please, I’m stuck.”
“August… did you… did you spoon mybrother?”
August promptly shakes his head. “I did not! I immediately jumped out of the bed and ran to you, but… when I looked you in the eyes… I couldn’t… I couldn’t repeat what happened.”
