Maybe that was part of why he disliked Genissa Clark so much. Maybe he was jealous that she could get away with what she did, whereas he was treated like a pest to be eradicated.

“I wanted you to hear it from me, before word gets around,” said Hugh. “This choice isn’t because we don’t trust you and the others, Adrian. But this is a high-profile case, as you know, and—”

“You need the best,” Adrian muttered.

Hugh frowned, but didn’t disagree.

Adrian sighed. “The important thing is that Hawthorn is caught and brought to justice. It doesn’t matter who brings her in. After all”—he glanced back at Simon, remembering what he had been told after the hospital heist—“there is no I in hero.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WAS NEAR DAWN by the time Adrian got home and trudged down the stairs into his bedroom. He knew he shouldn’t be so cranky after the night they’d had. After he managed to give Max something he had given up on wanting—quality time with Simon, and soon, quality time with his friends too. After his dads gave the okay for Adrian to tell people about the medallion, at least.

But all of Max’s joy couldn’t overcome Adrian’s irritation, to know that Frostbite’s team—of all the patrol units in the whole organization—had been chosen to go after Hawthorn. His jaw ached from grinding his teeth all the way home.

Pacing back and forth across his worn carpet, he held up his wristband. He had finally turned off the notifications from the call center, removing some of the temptation to put the Sentinel’s suit back on. He was trying to trust the system, to put his faith in the code, just like his dads wanted him to. He was trying to give the Renegades the benefit of the doubt—to believe that they were enough to protect the city, to bring justice to the wrongdoers of their world.

But today, he couldn’t resist.

He pulled up the map of the city and did a quick search for Frostbite.

His jaw clenched as a small signal blinked on the map. She was on active duty, moving down Raikes Avenue. As he watched, she turned north on Scatter Creek Row, moving fast, so she had to be in a patrol car.

He tried to puzzle out her destination based on the direction she was heading. Maybe Hawthorn was camped out in an old boathouse by the docks, or in one of the warehouses near the port, or in an abandoned train car by the defunct tracks.

Screwing up his face, Adrian forced himself to take off the wristband. He tossed it onto his bed, then flopped down beside it, burying his face into his pillow with a frustrated groan.

He told himself to let them deal with it.

He tried to persuade himself that going after them, after Hawthorn, wasn’t worth the risk.

His fingers dug into his blankets.

Hawthorn would be captured. She would be brought into custody. The stolen drugs that hadn’t yet made their way to the black market would be confiscated.

Frostbite would get the glory, but that shouldn’t matter to Adrian. The point was that justice would be served, and a wrong would be made right. As right as could be at this point, anyway.

But for every logical reason to stay put, his brain threw back an excuse to go after them.

What if Frostbite’s team failed? What if Hawthorn got away again? They could use an extra hand. A backup, just in case.

He turned his head to the side. The light on his wristband was still blinking.

Adrian gnawed on the inside of his cheek, feeling the strain of the internal debate tugging at him.

Stay safe. Stay hidden. Let the Sentinel rest in peace.

But somewhere deep inside, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He knew from the moment his dad had confessed that her team had been chosen over Adrian’s.

He would go after Hawthorn. He had to.

“Just to make sure,” he said, snatching up the wristband and bending it around his wrist again. “You won’t reveal yourself unless it’s absolutely, positively necessary.”

It wasn’t because he had something to prove. Not to himself or his dads or … or even Nova.

No, this wasn’t about him. This wasn’t about the Sentinel.

This was about justice being served.

* * *

IT WAS ALMOST NOON when Adrian reached the port, the signals from his wristband guiding him from rooftop to rooftop. His heavy boots thumped loudly as he landed on the cabin of an old crane that years ago would have been used to lift the shipping containers from arriving barges. Judging from the film of dirt on the cabin’s windows, he doubted anyone had used it for years. Frostbite’s tracking signal was coming from a stack of shipping containers that had long ago been left to rust once international trading had been halted. The industry had picked up significantly over the past decade, but a lot of the infrastructure that was in place before the rise of Ace Anarchy had been left to slowly deteriorate.

Beyond a fence on the other side of the storage yard, he spotted the patrol vehicle with the red R painted on its hood—a van large enough that even Gargoyle would have been able to fit inside.

Adrian climbed halfway down the crane’s tower before dropping to the ground. He landed hard, sending up a thick cloud of dust. He approached the shipping containers from behind, making his way through the rusting labyrinth in the storage yard.

A crash made him freeze. It was followed by the roar of splitting earth. The ground trembled beneath Adrian’s feet, and dust was knocked from the towering containers, raining onto his helmet.

That had to be Mack Baxter—Aftershock.

A second later, he heard an enraged scream, and then the back of a container was blown across the path, not thirty paces in front of him. Hawthorn’s brambled tentacles emerged first, slithering out from the container like a giant octopus.

Adrian crouched, then launched himself into the air before Hawthorn could spot him. He landed on the roof of the nearest container with a tooth-rattling clang, but the sound was disguised beneath Frostbite’s shrill scream. “Stingray! Gargoyle!”

Hawthorn roped her extra limbs around the nearest stack of crates and hauled herself up them, lithe and quick. Seconds later, she was speeding across their rooftops, heading toward the water.

She was getting away.

Again.

Growling, Adrian fisted his right hand and thrust his arm toward her. The cylinder on the forearm of the armor rose out of his skin and began to glow white-hot as the laser prepared to fire. He was a better shot with the laser than he’d ever been with a gun, and she wasn’t too far away yet. He could hit her. He could—

Somewhere below, he heard Gargoyle roar, then Hawthorn screamed in surprise as the tower of crates she was running across swayed and toppled to one side. She yelped and reached out with two of the tentacles, grappling for the next container. The extra limbs caught, the thorns puncturing the metal with a shriek that made Adrian wince.

Hawthorn dangled for a moment, caught her breath, then with a loud groan hauled herself up to the roof.

She had just flopped onto her stomach when Stingray appeared at the other end of her crate, smirking. He said something Adrian couldn’t hear, and Hawthorn looked up, her expression frenzied.

One tentacle pulled back, preparing to lash out at Stingray, but she was too slow.

His tail whipped toward her, the barbed point jabbing her on the shoulder.

Hawthorn grunted and collapsed forward, sprawling face-first across the ridged top of the shipping container.

Swallowing, Adrian ducked into the shadows and dismissed the laser. The suit clunked as it sank back beneath its paneling.

The venom from Stingray’s tail acted quickly, immobilizing Hawthorn’s body and her extra limbs. Stingray jerked her arms behind her back and cuffed her wrists. He wasn’t particularly gentle as he shoved her body back over the side. Adrian expected her to smash hard onto the ground below—but Gargoyle was there, waiting for her. He caught her limp body, but dropped it just as fast.

Frostbite strode out from behind a container, and Aftershock appeared on the far side of the path, the ground rippling as he approached them.

“Nice work,” said Frostbite, tapping her palm against Hawthorn’s cheek. A glaze of frost was left behind when she pulled away. “Between arresting the mastermind behind the hospital theft and bringing in all the drugs from that laboratory, I’d say we’re nearly due for a promotion.”

Adrian shut his eyes, his heart sinking. He had come all this way for nothing. The fight had lasted only a couple of minutes, and the Sentinel clearly wasn’t needed. Maybe his fathers had been right to assign Frostbite to the case after all.

He sulked along the crate to avoid the telltale thumps of his footsteps on the metal. One of the containers he passed had windows roughly cut into the sides and covered with netting. He paused to peer inside and saw that the interior had been completely altered. From the outside it looked like an unassuming stack of abandoned shipping crates, but inside was an entire laboratory’s worth of tools and equipment. Bunsen burners and measuring cups, flasks and gallon-size buckets sporting various tubes and labels, and shelf after shelf of stolen pharmaceuticals.

They hadn’t just found Hawthorn. They had found her laboratory, the drugs, and the proof that they would need to not only show that she had stolen that medicine from the hospital, but also that she was using it to formulate illegal substances for sale on the black market.

Her trial would be a quick one.

Adrian backed away from the window. The disappointment he felt at having missed his chance to capture Hawthorn made it obvious that this really had been about wanting to prove himself. About wanting people to view the Sentinel differently. About wanting praise and admiration—from the public, yes, but from the Renegades too. From his peers and his dads.

Sighing, he prepared to jump down from the container when an odd noise made him hesitate.

He cocked his head, listening.

It was ticking.

Slow, steady ticking.

His pulse jumped and he swung around, his memory launching him straight back to the carnival and the Detonator’s glowing blue explosives set around the park.

A bomb. Hawthorn has a bomb.

He crept back to the window and peered inside, searching the laboratory. From his vantage point, he could see Frostbite standing just outside the far opening, and though the ticking must have been loud enough that they all heard it, she seemed as relaxed as ever.