Page 26

Oz grabbed a set of keys from off of the desk and started from the apartment. A moment later, they were both standing in front of the residents’ mailboxes. “That man was murdered at least an hour ago. But the mail only just arrived. Which means…”

“…Ronnie couldn’t have taken it.” She nodded, impressed with that thinking. That was one of the reasons why she always enjoyed working with Oz: he was the best Cape she’d ever seen in her life. Well, that and the fact that the man was fucking gorgeous, which also had a lot to do with it.

That man was absurdly hot, and Mull got a genuine thrill just watching him.

Oz squinted at the lock on the mailbox, then put on a second pair of gloves. “Do you know the kinds of horrible things that get sent through the mail?” He explained, defending himself against her unspoken criticism.

She leaned against the wall next to him. “I got a box of dead swans in the mail once.”

“Who sent them?” He sounded puzzled by that. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Once you become a super-villainess, you learn to stop asking questions like that, Oz.”

Oz opened the mailbox and pulled out the mail, which was almost entirely junk. Ads from local stores and whatnot. But Oz stopped shuffling through it when he came to the last letter in the stack. It had no return address.

He looked at her meaningfully, then tore it open.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, with seemingly meaningless letters printed on it. He held it up to her.

“What the fuck does ‘xvwzh sompt lmtna fuuqf jpwgg fjge’ mean?” She wondered aloud.

“I have no idea.” Oz shook his head. “But a man doesn’t typically get mail with nothing but random letters on it.”

“A code?”

Oz shrugged. “That would be my guess. ”

“I’m shit at codes today, Oz.” She warned. “I had a day two months ago when I was really good at them, but today, that’s just meaningless to me.”

Oz pursed his lips, then placed the letter flat against the mailboxes to take a picture of it with his phone. He pressed several buttons, then was silent for a beat.

“Yes?” Came the voice on the other end of the speakerphone.

“Marian?” Oz asked. “Did you get the image I sent you?”

“Yes.” Marian Willson, AKA “The Librarian” said in her eternal calm. “That is an exceedingly complicated substitution cypher. There are approximately 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. It would take a supercomputer decades to crack that.”

Oz frowned. “That’s what I…” He began, but Mull cut him off.

“Cut the shit, Marian. You’re smarter than any computer. What’s it say? ”

“Your letter reads: ‘Train leaves the station in 7 days. Be ready.’” Marian announced.

They both stared down at the letter, trying to decide what that meant.

“Anything else you can tell us about it?” Oz asked.

“It is written in a more complicated variation of the Agletarian diplomatic code.” Marian informed them calmly. “I do not know what you two are up to, but I would advise extreme caution.”

Mull made a face.

“We’ll be careful. Thank you, Marian.” He hit the disconnect button on the phone, looking up at Mull. “Did you and Mercygiver ever work with the Agletarians?”

“Just once.”

“What happened?”

“They hired us to kill someone. Rondel ended up killing our contact and leaving their source, one of our partners, stuffed in a mailbox with postage stamps on his forehead.”

Oz’s eyebrows rose.

“Oh yeah.” She nodded. “Ronnie is a prankster.”

Oz carefully put the letter back in its envelope, then sealed it in an evidence bag he produced from his pocket.

Because of course the man would carry evidence bags with him everywhere he went.

This was Oz they were talking about. “Doesn’t sound like the Agletarians would be open to working with him again. ”

“I wouldn’t think so, no. ”

“So, Rondel hires those men to attack the hospital…”

She shook her head. “That’s not Ronnie’s style.”

“But let’s just say it, for argument’s sake. He hires the men to attack the hospital, because he wants to get to you.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “For what reason? He usually does all of his killing in person.”

“Then, he comes here and kills Mr. Gibson to eliminate the witness…”

“But he just tried to kill me yesterday. That kind of limits the suspects. So what would it matter if this guy implicated him? Especially since he literally left a note identifying himself as the killer.”

Oz shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nope.”

“So, perhaps the Agletarians hired the men to kill you, because…”

“They try to kill us all the time.”

“But why you specifically ?”

“I haven’t killed any of them in years. Except for the ones a few weeks ago, during that whole Super-Person Resistance Movement mess.” She rolled her eyes. “But we all killed a bunch of them, so I don’t know why they’d be stuck on me. Or what Rondel would possibly have to do with that.”

“Maybe it has to do with the people you were supposed to kill, years back.”

“Doubtful. Since it was the Consortium.”

Oz’s eyebrows soared. “The Agletarians tried to hire you to kill the Consortium ?”

“Yeah.”

“But then you took a job to kill them .”

“Yeah.”

“Which…”

“…doesn’t help us explain any of this.”

Oz silently considered that. “So, what’s going on then?”

She shook her head. “I honestly have no idea.”

They were both silent for a long moment, recognizing that this was far more serious than they’d first thought.

Oz’s voice sounded concerned. “Something else is going on and we’re only seeing pieces of it.” He looked up towards the apartment where the dead man was still waiting, then out towards the street. “We’ve stumbled into something here…”

He didn’t need to tell that to Mull. She’d always had a sixth sense about such things. And whatever this was, it was going to be very, very bad.

She didn’t like the idea of Oz being involved in it.

“This is going to get loud, Oz.” She warned seriously. “Louder than anything you’ve been around before. Blood in the streets kind of shit.” She met his eyes. “Can you handle that?”

He started towards the exit. “I think you’d be surprised at what I’ve been around before, Natalie.”