Hannah had been lying when she’d reassured Steve; she had never been stuck in a situation like this. Generally she got in and out of places undetected. She carried the gun around for self-defense, but she had never had to use it. Her martial arts were usually enough to get her out of any jams, but in this case they wouldn’t be an option.

Hannah took position behind a bookcase near Steve, waiting for one of the men to pass them. She knew their plan was suicidal, but considering the circumstances, there was no other choice. She and Steve were going to have to fight their way out.

When the nearest man passed them, Steve acted. He body-slammed the man as he passed, knocking him to the ground. He kicked his gun under a printer so he couldn’t use it. With the aisle clear, the two kids bolted for the door, ducking so the men couldn’t hit them. Her heart pounded in her chest as bullets flew above their heads as the other two men opened fire. Unlike the two men, the biker woman didn’t look too fazed by the escape attempt. She shouted “Trip!” at the top of her lungs suddenly, making a quick side-to-side motion with her right hand. Hannah felt an unusual sensation, like an invisible breeze, which made her feet freeze just long enough to trip her up. She and Steve fell flat on their faces as the woman began laughing. “Men, they’re down. Put your guns away,” she told the other guys, raising a hand to them in a stop gesture. Surprisingly, they did so, even though they were supposedly equally ranked. Maybe this woman, who Hannah recognized as Kaitlyn Trosken, the leader of an all-women biker club in the city, was actually higher ranked than the others. Plus her biker club didn’t really do criminal stuff anyways, so she shouldn’t really have been involved with these people. So why was she?

“Did you really think that we would leave our operation totally undefended?” Kaitlyn asked quietly, grinning. She waved her hand again, which made a red stream of what seemed to be lightning shoot out. It transformed into rope and wrapped around the two kids, standing them up and holding them back to back. She moved her free hand in a corkscrew motion as she did so.

“So much for that,” Steve whispered.

Hannah struggled to get free as the subcommanders converged on them. “Now what should we do with you?” Kaitlyn asked, smirking. “There are microphones all through this building, so the Boss heard every word of your conversation. You know a lot about us, don’t you?”

“I know a lot of things,” said Hannah defiantly. Then she pulled her right arm free and pulled the trigger on the gun, sending a round deep into the nearest man’s chest. She hated herself for having to do it, but she needn’t have worried; he was wearing a bulletproof vest. All it did was make him stagger for a moment and give him a bruise.

“Nice try,” he snarled, trying to snatch the gun away. Another guy tried to help, but luckily they got in each other’s way and couldn’t get it. They probably didn’t see much field action, being gang leaders, so that probably helped.

“Here, Steve!” Hannah shouted desperately, flipping on the safety and passing the gun over her shoulder, hoping Steve had a hand free, too. She knew he didn’t like being put in bad situations any more than she did, so it was a gamble that he’d be trying to free himself the same way she was.

“I’ve got it,” said Steve. There were more gunshots, which scattered the aggressors since Steve was aiming for their legs. Once they were hidden, Steve used a small knife to cut through the ropes binding them. With the guys still hiding, the two raced for the door. Kaitlyn looked ready to fight, bat at the ready, but Hannah ducked the swing of her bat at the last moment and delivered a quick kick to the gut, making Kaitlyn collapse, wheezing. The woman was tall and skinny, so the kick landed with extra force. With her temporarily incapacitated, the two left the room, still running.

When they got into the hallway, Hannah heard laughter that chilled her to the bone. “Not bad,” the voice laughed. It didn’t belong to any of their assailants, so Hannah assumed there was an intercom hidden somewhere. The two of them suddenly slammed into an invisible barrier, stopping them in their tracks. The door slammed shut behind them, trapping all the gang leaders in the other room, apart from Kaitlyn, who had scrambled through at the last moment.

Hannah glanced around and spotted a security camera pointed at them. “I have to admit, your performance has surprised me yet again, Ms. Matthews. Your friend is pretty good, too. It took normal law enforcement years to realize I was here, and you tracked me down in a matter of months. Too bad for you we were having a meeting this morning and we cut down on your free reign. I’d ask you to join my organization if I didn’t already know you’d say no.”

“So you’re the Big Boss?” Hannah asked, trying to stall.

“That’s one of my names,” he replied. “Some call me simply Boss, some call me Leader, but most call me Emperor. All of them are equally correct, so pick whichever one you want.”

“What do you want done with them, Boss?” Kaitlyn asked, grabbing them both by the shoulders in a grip of steel.

“Escort them out of the building,” the Leader replied immediately. “These people are powerful, so there is no need to antagonize them further.”

“WHAT?” Kaitlyn asked, astounded. “They’re only children! They have no power or influence!”

“DO NOT BACKTALK ME, KAITLYN!” the Leader shouted. “The boy is the son of a police officer. If we kill him now, we’ll have the police on our backs before the day is out. We are letting these two go so that they’ll be so grateful to us they won’t investigate us again. Isn’t that right, kids?”

Hannah had absolutely no idea what was going on. The Leader was either insane or extremely confident. “Sure,” she said half-heartedly.

“What’s with that tone?” the Leader asked sharply. “Don’t tell me you’re lying right now in order to get us to leave you alone. I wouldn’t like that very much at all. Would you like that Kaitlyn?”

Kaitlyn looked torn. She quite clearly disagreed with the Leader’s reasoning, but she didn’t seem to be willing to contradict him again. “Not at all, sir,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Then that’s settled,” said the Leader, sounding satisfied. “Escort the children out of the building, Kaitlyn.”

“Would you like for them to be watched?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Of course not,” said the Leader. “Profitable relationships are based on trust, after all.”

Hannah didn’t really follow his train of thought at all. He was basically letting them leave with no penalties, which was completely unheard of. To add to that, he didn’t want them watched, which meant she could resume investigating secretly. The Leader’s whole attitude seemed fishy, but she decided it would be best not to say anything else and make him possibly change his mind.

Kaitlyn then got behind the two and started shoving them roughly out of the building. “You heard the Boss. Get out.” The two started walking out again, passing right through the space with the invisible barrier from before with no issues. With the invisible barrier and the ropes from earlier, she realized that magic was indeed real, and everything her contact had told her was true.

Most people in this situation would’ve been content with just leaving quietly, but not Hannah. She was too curious about his attitude. “Is he still listening?” she asked, glancing back at Kaitlyn.

“Probably not,” she admitted. “He’s had his last word for the time being.”

Hannah wanted to ask a simple question, but she didn’t know the right way to ask it, so she just went with the direct approach. “Why are you so scared of him? What’s he done to scare you so much?”

Kaitlyn started in surprise. “The Leader is simply one of those people that you don’t question if you wish to see the next morning. He has this aura of extreme confidence surrounding him and can be very intimidating as you just saw. And he does terrible things to people that defy him. One of my bikers got gutted like a fish and hung from a telephone pole when she talked smack about him. Her bike was located two hours later burning in a junkyard. He wasn’t anywhere around when she said it, and it took him less than eight hours to find out about it and do all of that. So yes, I’m scared to death of him, and with very good reason. During our monthly meeting in June he immolated one of the commanders for failing to execute a snitch and allowing the police to protect him, along with a young girl who was on site. So quit looking into us and do what he says. I’ve never seen him give anybody a second chance like this.”

She said that, but that only made Hannah more intrigued. She wasn’t about to give up investigating him now. The only difference now is that she needed to be a lot more discrete. She did feel absolutely disgusted by the guy burning his commander to death because of Hannah freeing the snitch. Or maybe it was guilt she felt?

When they reached the front doors, Kaitlyn roughly pushed them outside. “Now, get out of here,” she said, waving them away. Steve and Hannah shared a look before turning away and leaving. Then they heard a rumbling sound coming from the building. They all spun around and saw the building vibrating at ever increasing speeds. Kaitlyn ran out from the doorway just as the building collapsed, pancaking one floor at a time until it was just a pile of rubble. Hannah instinctively forced Steve behind a short concrete wall, just in time before it collapsed.

“Did he just…” Steve said, aghast.

“Yep,” said Hannah, just as appalled. “He just destroyed everything and killed the three guys inside.” Kaitlyn, who was covered in dust, was the first to recover. She ran away from the building as fast as she could go, hopping fences as she went. A moment later they heard a motorcycle’s engine turn over before it faded off into the distance.

“So, now we run?” Steve asked, brushing dust off himself and coughing.

“Now we tell your dad what just happened,” Hannah corrected him, coughing. “But first we need to get away from this dust.”

“Right,” said Steve. They walked away from the building back to the park as Steve made the call.

XXX

The two of them spent the afternoon speaking with the police again. Hannah had decided it was safest to make it look like they were uninvolved, so she and Steve had tossed out the evidence they’d gathered, along with the rubber gloves, the pistol, and anything else questionable before the police had arrived. She’d hidden the gun down a drain a ways away, which she planned to retrieve later. They had also washed their hands and arms to get rid of any gunpowder residue. They couldn’t get the residue off their clothes, but Hannah hoped the cops wouldn’t check.

Luckily they didn’t check, since they thought the gunplay had been solely the work of the gangsters. With no way to tie them to the actual crime, the police, while very suspicious, were forced to accept that they had been simple bystanders. After the initial questioning, they were put into a room by themselves, with two officers positioned right outside their door.

“Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder,” said Hannah sarcastically, the events of the morning still fresh in her mind. Her rational mind simply couldn’t explain all the stuff that had happened. She didn’t believe in magic, but there wasn’t any other rational explanation for what had just happened. She also knew she couldn’t share her theories with anyone.

“Things just got a lot worse,” said Steve as the door opened and his dad entered.

“So, what happened?” Eric Dodson asked as he took a seat across from them.

“We’re still trying to piece that together ourselves,” said Hannah.

“Well, whatever happened made the building collapse, so it’s going to take days before we can properly examine the scene. Maybe even weeks. So tell me your version of what happened,” he addressed Hannah.

Hannah had had plenty of experience in making up convincing bullcrap stories, so she came up with one off the top of her head. “I was thanking Steve for saving me the other day by taking him to see the movie The Traveller’s Journey. When we walked by that building, they thought we were looking through the windows at their operation, so they nabbed us and took us inside. While they were deciding what to do with us, the Syndicate leader decided that we should be set free and set the building to self-destruct. We escaped while three Syndicate subcommanders were trapped inside.”

“THREE?” Eric asked in horror. “Why did he let you two live but kill his own men?”

“We’re still trying to figure that part out,” said Steve. “But he did let his second-in-command, that woman Kaitlyn, escape, too.”

Eric’s mouth had dropped open in shock. He quickly recovered from it, though. “Well, if he was in the building, he either died or is long gone. With the Syndicate subcommanders out of the way, though, this’ll cause riots. Three different gangs just lost their leaders, so there’s going to be tons of in-fighting since each group is going to blame each other for their demise. More gangs from other towns might get involved, too.”

“What are you going to do?” Hannah asked hesitantly.

“We’ll just have to try and stop it when it starts up,” Eric replied, standing up and turning the recorder off. “But there’s one thing I need to say before I let you two go.” Staring Hannah straight in the eyes, he said, “Steve told me you asked him to help with something, so don’t think I don’t know you two being there was no accident. So, my question is this: Did you actually see their Leader?”

Hannah shivered. Mr. Dodson was usually a pretty nice man, but he could be plenty scary if he tried. That was probably why he was such a good cop. She trusted him to do his job, as he was effective but fair at it, but she didn’t trust him as a person. She knew he was hiding secrets about his past, although she didn’t know just what these were. That was one of her stretch goals as a detective. “We just heard him over the speakers,” Hannah admitted. “He was watching us through the security cameras. But I did record the whole conversation once he stopped us. It’s on my phone you’re looking into.”

“Are you serious?” Eric said, sounding absolutely amazed. “This is the biggest break we’ve ever gotten! I’ll have that looked into at once, then! All your stuff will be returned to you when we get done with it.”

Well, at least they weren’t getting arrested for breaking and entering. “Fine, sir,” said Hannah, nodding.

“Now, you two need to head home and take showers. We’ve got a major disaster on the horizon, so tell all your friends to be really cautious, all right? We’ll put out some PSAs, too.”

“Sure,” they agreed.

“One last thing,” said Eric as they all got up to leave. Pointing at Hannah across the table, he said, “I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it until you get the memo: stay OUT of police business, and stay away from these people. You are not a superhero and there are consequences for getting involved with the wrong people, especially guys like this Leader that are willing to destroy buildings to protect their secrets. I don’t know why he let you go, but believe me, this will not be the last you see of him. With someone like that, there is always a price for a good deed.” He turned to Steve and continued, “I know what I said before, and I’m changing that now. You need to watch her and keep her out of trouble. Will you promise me that?”

“I...I’ll try,” said Steve.

Hannah was absolutely incensed now, and she was not shy about making her feelings known. “I don’t need a bodyguard, detective. I can take care of myself.”

Eric sighed, putting his head in his hands. “I understand that, but these aren’t a bunch of thugs on the bus. This is a very dangerous criminal, leading a very dangerous organization, and-”

“Well, Steve and I had already handled them when the Leader blocked us in, and-”

That was when he finally lost his temper. “Darn it, Hannah; this isn’t a game! You don’t know what these people are capable of! His magic is not-” He suddenly stopped mid-sentence, and Hannah knew exactly why.

“What’s this about magic now?” Hannah asked sweetly, feeling like she’d just won the jackpot. Steve was staring at his dad like he’d never seen him before.

“We’re done here,” Eric said abruptly, gathering his paperwork and leaving the room.

“You heard that, right?” Steve said. Hannah said nothing, her mind whirring.