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.”
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.
And then Hartwell heard what Lucas had been hearing. A tiny voice calling out his name.
Lucas left the vantage point of that particular camera, but another hidden in the ceiling of the lab switched on to continue the surveillance. This one showed the boy near the worktable where Hartwell had been repairing his costume.
“Lucas, it’s me … Putnam,” said the tiny voice.
The cold hand of dread that had been gripping Hartwell’s heart slowly began to squeeze.
Putnam.
Nicolas Putnam.
Talon.
“No,” Hartwell snarled at the screen, feeling his resolve beginning to disintegrate. “Don’t do this.”
Lucas had put on the cowl, making it difficult for Hartwell to hear what Putnam was telling him.
“Does this have anything to do with the list?” he heard Lucas ask the voice.
“Damn you!” Hartwell raged. “You’re going to ruin everything.”
“Each of the names,” Lucas said to Hartwell’s former partner. “They all died in accidents.”
Hartwell experienced a sudden wave of calm.
The Raptor had fully emerged. Cold, hard, calculating; it was he who would handle this delicate situation. The bird of prey watched the boy on the screen as he listened to the voice inside his helmet.
“How do I find you?” Lucas asked, and the Raptor knew what had to be done.
In the digital video, the boy removed his mask and left the lab.
The Raptor stared at the screen for quite some time, formulating his plan. There was a part of him that looked at this situation as dire, that knew nothing good could possibly come from it, yet there was still a spark of damnable humanity that didn’t want to believe it.
This one had shown such promise. He hated to think of Lucas having to go the way of all the others.
The failures.
Disturbing images flashed before his mind’s eye, images of those that had failed the tests sprung on them. He hated to think of them as anything more than test subjects. It made things much, much easier to handle.
Hartwell stalked across the lab toward the special cabinet where he stored his weapons systems and armor. He decided to give the boy a chance as he punched in the code that would open the cabinet’s wonders to him. The doors slid apart with a welcoming hiss, and he strode inside.
He’d always known that Putnam could be a problem, that he could come so close to perfection and have it all come crashing down around him.
It was enough to make anyone a little crazy.
Now Putnam was attempting to turn the boy against him.
The Raptor knew that the former Talon would not give up without a fight, so he would have to wear his most powerful costume. At the far back of the cabinet, the Raptor stealth armor hung by thick chains, like some sort of mechanical shell waiting to be infused with life. Hartwell removed his clothes and stood before the fearsome visage of the shiny black and scarlet armor. Slowly and purposefully, he began to clothe himself in the new skin that would define his true self.
A fearsome bird of prey on the hunt.
A raptor.
He hoped it wasn’t too late for the boy, that he hadn’t somehow been corrupted by his former partner’s poisonous words.
But if that were the case, he would do what was necessary.
He would put the boy down, as he had the others.
And start the process all over again.
Putnam leaned against the counter. He raised a trembling hand, passing it over the smooth side, then the scarred side of his face.
“I was afraid it might come to this,” he said with a sigh, closing his eyes.
“How did he find us?” Lucas asked, panic growing in his voice.
Putnam shrugged. “He might have stuck some kind of a bug under your skin while you were sleeping, or it could be something as simple as a tracking signal coming from the car you used to get here.”
“Under my skin?” Lucas asked, rubbing his hands over his arms. “Would he do that?”
Putnam laughed. “This is the guy who’s been killing his own children. To him, sticking some kind of tracking device under your skin is like giving you a piece of candy.”
Katie had moved to her workstation, and her fingers were clicking across the keyboard. “I’m activating all the security systems.”
“Good,” Putnam acknowledged, although he didn’t sound convinced it would be much help.
“You don’t seem all that concerned,” Lucas said. “If he’s as … as crazy as you’re saying …”
Putnam nodded. “I think he is,” he said. “And if I’m right, there isn’t anything that’s going to keep him from getting to us.”
“GPS says that he’s less than five miles away,” Katie announced.
“Maybe we can talk to him,” Lucas suggested. “Maybe there’s a reason for all this that you … we don’t even realize. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks.”
Putnam looked as if he felt sorry for the boy. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “I did the same thing not all that long ago. No matter what I discovered—no matter what he had done to me—I still wanted to believe in him.”
“Less than two miles out,” Katie said.
Putnam grabbed his crutches and hobbled from the work area, the boy at his heels.
“But you still haven’t answered the major question. Why would he do this?” Lucas asked. “There has to be something. …”
Putnam led the boy to a darkened area of the work space.
“You want to know what I think it’s about?” Putnam asked, flicking a wall switch.
A single bulb illuminated a glass display case.
“It’s about that.” He pointed to the costume behind the glass. Over the years he had worked on it, trying to improve it so that if the time ever came, he could wear it again. …
Lucas stood before the case, staring.
“It’s about never being able to live up to the expectations of what he believed being a hero was all about.”
The boy said nothing.
“Those he killed … his children … maybe they didn’t live up to his expectations either.”
Lucas turned his head slowly to look at Putnam. Could it be true? he wondered. Could the others have disappointed the Raptor somehow and paid the price with their lives? With a chilling realization, Lucas wondered how close he might’ve come to letting the old superhero down.
How close he might’ve come to really dying this time.
“I survived,” he said.
And Putnam nodded ever so slowly. “You did,” he agreed.
“He’s here!” Katie announced, her voice cracking.
“Let’s see how you do now.”