After the Golden Age

been a while, and she hadn’t missed it at all.

The place buzzed with far more than the usual late-night police station energy. The evening round of drunks and prostitutes had stalled out in the lobby, waiting on plastic chairs until someone remembered that they’d been arrested. The front desk was missing its clerk. Behind the desk, in the back, voices shouted, phones rang, uniformed people scurried back and forth with files in hand and cell phones stuck to ears.

A large, booming man appeared in a doorway and called out. “All right, people, I’m looking for black-market contacts. They won’t be able to unload these things in the open, so we need to go to ground. If I see another auction house phone number on the fact list I’m going punch somebody!”

That was Chief Gene Appleton. Head of the force for ten years. Fifteen years as a cop before that. Celia smiled. If Appleton was knocking heads, things couldn’t be too bad. She’d always liked him. He never talked down to her.

The liking wasn’t mutual, at least not as of seven or so years ago. He’d sealed her juvenile record personally. If he saw Celia here he’d be livid. She slunk away to lean on a wall.

A girl sat in the chair next to her. Magenta hair, black plastic miniskirt, and fishnet shirt over a green bra. She looked about fifteen. Might have been seventeen. Her sullen air made her seem young.

“What’s going on?” Celia asked her.

The girl looked her up and down. Celia wasn’t dressed for the lobby of a police station at eleven P.M., but leaning on the wall, arms crossed, gazing vaguely out, she acted like she belonged. Made all the difference.

“Dunno. Something big went down.”

“Big. Like Destructor big? Like Olympiad showing up big?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. Heard that a cop got hurt.”

Celia’s stomach lurched. She had to remind herself this was only street gossip. Didn’t mean anything. She looked toward the back offices, working herself up to go and ask someone.

The front door opened, ringing the old-fashioned brass bell that no one had the heart to take down. In walked Mark Paulson, his collar unbuttoned and his jacket hanging from his hand.

Celia pushed off from the wall. “Mark!”

His tired eyes brightened. “Celia! What are you doing here?”

In a couple of strides they met, gripping each other’s arms. Not an embrace—they needed to look at each other.

“I wanted to be here in case there was news.”

“Paulson! God, Paulson, what the hell happened?” Appleton stormed around the front desk, his gaze piercing like bullets.

The detective shrugged. “They just let me go. Dumped me out of their car down the block.”

Appleton noticed Celia, even though she’d stepped aside. “You. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was worried about Mark. Nice to see you again, Chief.”

“Huh. Right.”

Mark put his arm protectively around her shoulders. Appleton took in the gesture and gave his head a frustrated shake. “Whatever. You.” He pointed at Mark. “In the back. Tell me what happened.”

“I’d like to take my date home first, sir.”

“Call her a cab.”

Mark glared at him.

As much as she enjoyed the scene, she recognized when she’d been shown the door.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ll call my own cab.”

“Celia … are you sure you’ll be okay? It’s no trouble, I’d really like to make sure you get home safely.”

Her giddy feeling was relief. Mark was back safely. He hadn’t been killed in her place. The kidnappers had just … let him go. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t going to argue. All was well with the world. So what if the relief fed into other things?

She stood on tiptoe and pulled his head closer, so she could whisper in his ear. “Don’t think that just because you took me home you’d be getting any gratitude sex for being all brave.”

He drew away and looked properly shocked, blushing, his tongue stumbling over denials. Finally, he noticed that she was grinning. He was a cop; she’d have to train a sense of humor into him.

She kissed him. A nice, cinematic kiss on the lips, warm and tingling, lasting a half-dozen heartbeats. Enough time for him to react and close his arms around her. The officers and staff who’d gathered in the lobby at Mark’s return cheered and catcalled. Even the drunks and hookers cheered. Appleton didn’t cheer.

“I’ll see you later,” she said.

Mark took a breath. “Right. Yeah. Good.”

She separated herself from him, readjusted her shawl, and made a calm, smooth exit.

Out on the sidewalk, she let herself giggle. Damn, that had been fun.

EIGHT

MAYOR Paulson made a public statement the next day at noon. Mark called her at home to tell her about it.

“Celia, turn on the news.”

“What? Why?”

“Dad just gave a statement about last night.”

She grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, and curled up on the sofa.

A perfectly manicured reporter at a news anchor desk read off the teleprompter. “—scene a half hour ago at City Hall.”

The picture switched to the marble-lined foyer of City Hall. The camera turned to a podium as Anthony Paulson, flanked by assistants, emerged from a door behind it. Celia recognized some of the flunkies from the concert. Cameras flashed and reporters clustered forward. The mayor, his face set in grim lines, waved them back.

After a moment, he received the silence he needed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice. In light of recent attacks and the proliferation of organized criminal elements bent on ruin and anarchy, I am announcing the creation of a task force to deal with these elements. I will hire a hundred new police officers to patrol our streets. Some people will say that I’m overreacting, that I’m taking last night’s theft of priceless musical instruments from the symphony gala personally because it also involved the kidnapping of my son Mark. My answer to them is yes, of course I’m taking it personally. As well I should. Every crime committed against a citizen of Commerce City is committed against someone’s son or daughter. Someone takes each of those crimes personally. It is my sworn duty to protect the safety of every law-abiding man, woman, and child in this city, and so I must take every crime personally.

“And I must apologize for a certain laxness in fulfilling that duty. It has become clear that for too long we have depended on outside, independent forces to defend us. However, it seems that unless those forces are faced with an adversary of the Destructor’s magnitude, they simply can’t be bothered. I will not be taking questions at this time. Thank you for your attention.” He turned and slipped back through the door, followed by his swarm.

“Celia, are you still there?”

Celia had held the phone to her ear silently while watching. When the announcement ended, she had to repeat to herself what the mayor had just said. What she thought he’d just said.

“Yeah, Mark. I talked to Robbie last night and he said the cops told them to stay out of it.”

“Robbie?”

“The Bullet. I don’t know where your dad got his information, but the Olympiad didn’t help last night because the cops asked them not to. I’ll bet the other vigilantes didn’t even know about the theft—they don’t have the level of access the Olympiad does.”

“Are you sure?”