Chapter 23
"This is all of it." From her shoulder bag, April pulled out one of the several copies of the CD that Donatello had burned for her that morning, setting it down on Evan Chambers's marble kitchen counter, and watching Holly's reaction as she picked up the thin plastic case. "Are you sure you're ready to go through with this?"
The young woman smiled, tentatively, relief and anxiety pulling at the corners of her eyes. "I think so. I can't pretend none of this ever happened, can I?"
"No, I guess not."
Holly put the CD down carefully, as if it might bite her, then cupped both her hands around the mug she held, her arms tight against her side, as if she could draw the heat of the cup into herself. "Do you do this regularly? Swoop mysteriously into people's lives and battle evil organizations?"
April laughed out loud, then checked herself when she saw that Holly wasn't laughing with her. Of course, why would it be funny to her? This well-educated, privileged girl would never expect to have strange, criminal, violent things happen in her orbit, much less laugh about them. It had only been a couple of days ago that she'd learned Craig Stevenson had been found dead in his apartment from an apparent heart attack, although he'd had no history of any heart conditions.
"No," April answered her sincerely. "Not regularly. Believe it or not, I live a pretty normal life most of the time." It was just that her standards of normal were different. Normal was a low-key weekend dinner in an underground lair with her extended family of mutants. Normal was a week without any terrifying crises.
This was not one of those weeks. Not with Leo a captive of the Foot.
Holly waited for April to say more, then sighed when she didn't. "You're really not going to tell me anything else, are you? I'll never know what went on with my dad. Or how you found out about all this. Or who 'M' is."
"M is a good person." There was no need for any caveat there, at least. "But he lives in a scarier world than we're used to, one that most people don't see much of. Do you really want in on it?"
She hesitated, like Alice pausing at the lip of the rabbit hole, being told that there was no way back. "I'm not sure."
"Then maybe it's enough just to deal with this," April said gently, putting a finger on the CD case. "To try and get your life back."
After a long moment, Holly nodded.
April dialed the first of the numbers she would be calling today. She waited on the line, afraid she'd get voicemail, but on the fourth ring it picked up. "Hi Russell," she started cheerily, "it's April O'Neil... It has been a long time, hasn't it?... I'm doing good, how about you? How have things been since you moved to The Times?... Listen, I have something hot that I think you ought to pick up."