FriendorFoe by Frances Pauli Page B

the unit.
    "Simon?"
    Simon cleared his throat with enough force to shake the dumpster.
    "Maximus," the chief corrected. "What is it?"
    "I've got five goons down in the alley behind Sparky's." Simon sprang from the dumpster lip and soared through the air to the rooftop. "Two more on the run, but I'm in pursuit."
    "I'll send the boys down to clean up." The chief yawned. "What were they up to this time?"
    Simon landed, already running toward the next roof in line. "They were having at the parade floats." He leapt the distance between buildings and kept an eye on the black van trundling ahead of him toward the edge of town. "I'd have Sparky check them for damage before the festival starts."
    "Right. Good work." The chief paused.
    Simon heard him sigh.
    "What are the chances we can trace these guys back to The Spartan?"
    "I'm on their tail." Simon jumped another alley and landed with a grunt. He clipped the comm back to his utility belt and surveyed the corner of Main and Hawthorne. He'd run out of rooftops, would have to move along the ground through the vacant lots to the hilltop estate.
    The black van already rumbled out of town, taking the first rise at the edge of the Rutherford family vineyards. It bounced over a pothole and swerved along in the shadow of the estate's stone wall. Simon needed to get to that wall and fast. If he could verify that the goons returned to Rutherford, they'd have enough evidence to press charges.
    He dove over the edge of the building, rolled across the top of a delivery truck and vaulted to the sidewalk. The van disappeared into a dip in the road. Simon sprang across the street and took off at a run.
    Rutherford estate sat, a shriveled, peeling version of the mansion it had once been, on the highest point for miles. The tattered shutters flapped in the lightest breeze, drumming against the weather-beaten siding at all hours. The thin paned-windows gaped down on a lawn that hadn't seen a gardener in at least two generations.
    Simon reached the wall surrounding the manor and cursed. He'd lost the van, though it no doubt sat idling inside the carriage house at that very moment. He'd missed one more chance to tie Rutherford to the goons, and so to The Spartan.
    He pulled himself up onto the stones and crouched in the shadow of a line of Poplars. He watched the house, saw lights flicker on the main floor as bodies moved across the rooms inside. The Spartan may have won this round, but the man's time would run out soon. Simon nodded in the dark. It had to run out.
    In the meantime, he had tomorrow to worry about. He glanced one last time toward the house, found his eyes drawn by a flutter of movement to the second story where one narrow window faced the side yard. He frowned up at it. That window hadn't been looked out of for more than fifteen years.
    He clenched his jaw and followed a path down from the solitary sill to the gnarled oak in the play yard below. The old swing had sprung its tether on one side. Now it hung at a sharp angle from one rope. The twisted branch above sagged more than he remembered, as if the tree, like the house, suffered from a deep depression.
    He bounced in the crouch, felt the muscles in his thighs prepare to leap and spared one more glance to the lone window. This time it lay still and properly empty. Simon nodded, spun out away from the estate and disappeared into the night.
    * * * *
    "Ms. Rutherford?"
    Agnes let the curtain fall back into place and turned to the doorway. "Yes?"
    "Your brother requests that you join him in the study." The old man bent low.
    So low that she thought the gesture held the hint of an apology in it. "I'll be right down." When the butler left and the bedroom door slid shut, Agnes turned back to the window.
    She peered through the filmy material, down at the forgotten yard and across the grounds where a little girl had spent nearly ten years without once sitting on that swing, without once climbing that old tree. She let her gaze wander, drift