Rick knew something was coming—Janice and Sergeant Houston had been quietly warning several of the officers to stay close to the boyfriend and his buddies, since Hippolyta had told Lieutenant Turner that they might get violent when the woman made her statement. The Cordero woman didn’t get past the word “five” when four of them started to run. Fortunately, there were several policemen right there, and three of those running didn’t get very far, being taken down by officers while in the lights of a TV camera.

The fourth one, Rodriguez, surprised them. “You fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled as he started to run, too—but toward the four on the porch, rather than away. Only Metheny was in the way, and his back was to him, facing the camera. Rodriguez gave the reporter a shove to get him out of the way, and Rick, obviously surprised, took out after him as hard as he could go, jumping over the reporter’s sprawled body. He could see Rodriguez pull something from his pocket as he ran and watched the switchblade spring open.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The two cameramen on the porch both turned toward the action, cameras running, while Hippolyta stepped in front of Mrs. Cordero, simultaneously pulling the sword from the scabbard on her back. Rodriguez scrambled up the steps, heading for the woman, but Hippolyta had her sword out now, swinging as Rick made a desperate, lunging leap for the man. He connected, just as the Amazon’s sword bit into Rodriguez’s shoulder. The man gave a cry of agony, from both the impact of the tackle and the cut from the sword.

Then Janice was there, a couple other officers were there, even Charlie Parker was there in civilian clothes, but with that big .45 automatic of his drawn, and the situation was under control, Rick holding onto Rodriguez’s leg as someone snapped cuffs on him.

Damn, Rick thought, that was the third time he’d seen the results of Hippolyta taking a chunk out of someone with her sword—Penthesilea, he remembered it was called—but this was the first time he’d seen it happen. In some corner of his mind, he wished that Sally had seen just how smooth it was. Stan, too, for that matter; he’d be impressed! The sabres he’d been using on the practice strips were blunt and had no edge, but now he saw first hand the true effectiveness of a sharp!

Now the EMTs ran up—they’d been waiting in the shadows for hours—and started to work on the screaming, swearing Rodriguez, as two cameras rolled, probably still going out live, Rick thought. Shaking a little from the adrenaline shock of the last few seconds, he picked himself up and turned to Hippolyta, still standing in front of Mrs. Cordero to protect her, sword in hand, still wet with blood. “Nice job, ma’am,” he told the Amazon.

“Nice tackle, officer,” he heard the Amazon say calmly. “I expected to have to hurt him more seriously. Thank you for making it unnecessary.”

Now Lieutenant Turner was on the porch. “Mrs. Cordero, is this true about the cocaine?”

“Of course it’s true. They threatened to kill me if I told anyone. You just saw Gerry try to.”

“Mrs. Cordero,” Turner asked. “Why the standoff? Why all this trouble?”

“They wanted me out of here, so they could get in and get the shit out of here. I had to tell you about it before you hustled me out of here.”

“Damn,” Turner said shaking his head. “It didn’t have to be that dramatic, but it got the job done. Will you show us where it’s hidden?”

“Of course. I want that crap out of my life. You’re agreeing to everything else I asked Hippolyta about, right?”

“I told her I agreed, and I will keep my word. We’ll be taking you and your kids someplace safe in a few minutes.” He turned to Janice. “Watkins, I want you to guard this door. Do not allow anyone but police officers, Mrs. Cordero, and Hippolyta inside.”

“Yes, sir,” Janice said. Turner asked half a dozen officers—Rick one of them—to accompany him inside, along with Mrs. Cordero and the Amazon. The porch was getting crowded now, EMTs, media, more officers, as Janice took up her position in front of the closed door.

Inside, as Rick began to get his heart rate back under control, Mrs. Cordero led the officers upstairs. Hippolyta and Turner stayed in the living room, as they’d been told the bedroom where the cocaine was located was rather small. “Hippolyta, I’m glad I got the chance to talk with you tonight,” Turner said. “I’m sorry this got a little out of control. I should have expected it.”

“Sir, I was always taught to expect the unexpected. I’m just sorry the warning Mrs. Cordero passed along wasn’t more clear to me, or I would have made it more clear to you.”

“Look, this is pretty strange,” Turner told her. “In everything I’ve ever done as a cop, I never believed I’d be thanking a masked superheroine, but you’ve done a couple big ones for the department in the past few weeks. I’m glad you came tonight. You took the fuse out of what could have been a nasty one. I feel that we owe you one or two if the time comes.”

“You owe me nothing,” she told him in her cool, impartial voice, without seeming emotion. “I was merely doing my duty as an Amazon to protect helpless and oppressed women and children.”

“You’ve done it well. A little strange maybe, but it worked well. Look, I don’t have any idea who you really are, and I don’t intend trying to find out, so long as you keep your activities within the law. Just a word to the wise, work with us, don’t take the law into your own hands, and don’t make us look for you.”

“I have no intent of doing so,” she told him flatly. “If you need my services again, you know how to get in touch with me, and I will surely be in touch with you when needed. I’m just happy to do my duty as an Amazon, and as a citizen. In many ways, the two are much the same.”

“That’s really appreciated. And I also want to thank you for your statements about citizens playing a part in fighting crime just as much as the other services you’ve done for us.”

“It’s all a part of being a citizen, let alone an Amazon. If you have no more need of my services, I shall take my leave.”

“You might as well. Unless maybe you could make a statement to the media, maybe settle that mob down a bit so we can get our job done.”

“As you wish, sir. Officer Mattison, may I ask you to get their attention? I wish to make a brief statement, then I will take a few questions. Also, please make sure Mr. Parker is available.”

“Sure thing, Hippolyta,” he said with a grin, as if after what just had happened, her stepping out on the porch wasn’t going to get their attention quickly enough.

“The situation seems pretty much under control here at the scene of the standoff earlier this evening,” Jason told the live camera that Brett was holding as both of them stood on the porch, where the EMTs were still working on Rodriguez. “Although, as you just saw, there have been several unexpected turns of events. The whole thing appears to have turned from a minor domestic dispute into a huge drug bust, with a still-unconfirmed five kilos of cocaine reportedly involved. If true, that’s a street value of around two million dollars. And there also seems to be another couple of additions to the Hippolyta legend here tonight.”

“Good deal,” Koser said in the earbug. “We’re still going out live. You can wrap it up anytime now.”

“That about wraps it up here tonight …” Jason began, then halted for a moment. “Wait a minute. We’ve just been told that Hippolyta has a short statement for us. You’ve just seen her live on First to Know News, ending the confrontation earlier, defending Mrs. Dorothy Cordero from a knife attack by one of the alleged perpetrators.”

Terrible TV, terrible, Jeff thought, while sitting in the studio, but it was live, it was real, it was going out right as it came in, and that made up for an awful lot. He checked the monitors—13 was still going out from the scene, breaking into Saturday Night Live, which took guts. He wished that one of the anchors was still around the studio, having someone here to help organize this and do some voice overs would help a lot, but it was just Mandy and him, trying to mix the take from the two cameras and feed Metheny with enough direction to keep going. This is how it used to be done, he thought, how it still gets done when things go to cobs.

“Door’s opening, here comes Hippolyta on Keri’s camera,” Mandy said. “Going to one.”

“Switching to one, Jason,” Jeff said into the return line.

On camera two, they watched Jason head out of the field of view and saw Brett turn to follow him. God, what an evening, Jeff thought again. They’d managed to catch most of the action, just by switching back and forth—Mandy had made the major hit, switching to two just as the fight erupted, catching Rodriguez knocking Jason down on the way to trying to knife his girlfriend, the cop jumping over the downed reporter—then switching back to Keri’s camera just in time to catch Hippolyta’s sword strike as the officer took him down on a tackle. Just good instincts, and hard to do any better in an editing room. When they got a minute, he was going to tell Mandy that he owed her a beer for that one. As soon as the action died down, they were going to be re-cutting the take and shipping it up to network. Damn, this was a good one!

Keri had her camera on Hippolyta now. They could see that Brett was moving off for another angle. Jeff wished that he had downlinks to the cameramen, he’d have a little better control, but Brett and Keri were both pros, they knew to take different angles. Damn, he was lucky Keri had stayed and he had them both still on the scene. For once, the overtime hassles were paying off, and big time. It would be a good tape going to New York.

He glanced up at the monitors again. The cameraman from 13 had a little better angle than Keri, but not anything to really complain about. Hippolyta was standing on the porch, and all the cameras were down on the lawn, looking up at her. It made her seem like a giant, and tonight, she really was.

“Good evening,” the dark-clad Amazon said. “I’ve been asked to make a brief statement. As to my own actions here tonight, I was merely doing my sworn duty as an Amazon to protect women and children. As you have seen, the situation was considerably more complex than first thought. I was not aware of the cocaine until Mrs. Cordero mentioned it to everyone, and I am told that packages appearing to be cocaine have indeed been found. Mrs. Cordero went to great lengths to protect her children from many dangers and to bring this evil to an end as any citizen should. She is truly an Amazon, and is the real hero of this evening. As I have said before, it is the duty of a citizen—every citizen—not just of an Amazon, to fight evil where it is found with what weapon comes to hand. That concludes my statement. I must now return to the shadows, as I have other duties yet to perform this evening.”

“Hippolyta,” the loudmouthed guy from 13 piped up. “How were you informed of this situation tonight? There seemed to be a lot of difficulty in getting hold of you.”

“I was otherwise occupied,” she said. “I heard the statement on Channel 5 First to Know News and came as quickly as I could.”

“Holy Shit!” Jeff yelled excitedly to Mandy, only a couple feet away. “I can’t believe she said that!” God, that cut was going to be a promo forever!

“What’s more, it went out live on 13!” Mandy yelled back. “Oh, my God, they must be pissed over there!”

“Hippolyta,” Jason piped up after a couple of seconds. “Why all the secrecy about who you are?”

“Secrecy, sir? I am merely an Amazon named Hippolyta, sworn to do my duty. There is no secret about that. My work is in the shadows, and therefore I must let the shadows conceal me. And now I must return to them. Thank you for your attention tonight, and, as I said earlier, please remember that Mrs. Cordero is tonight’s real hero. Mr. Parker, are you ready to provide transportation?”

“Whenever you’re ready, Hippolyta,” Parker piped up from his station near the reporters on the lawn.

“Then let us proceed,” she said, stepping slowly down the stairs, and walking across the lawn next to him. Brett swung the camera to follow the two of them heading into the darkness.

“Jason, get Keri on you, we’re coming back to you,” Jeff said into the uplink. “Wrap it up.”

“That was the mysterious Amazon, Hippolyta, who has played a part in several recent incidents around Toledo, speaking live in a brief press conference on the scene of several extraordinary events here in south Toledo tonight,” Jason said into the camera. “Quickly summarizing, Hippolyta was instrumental in ending a four-hour standoff between police and Mrs. Dorothy Cordero, which resulted in the arrest of four alleged drug dealers and the apparent seizure of multiple kilos of cocaine. For Channel 5 First to Know News, I’m Jason Metheny, and we’ll now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.”

“Great job, Jason,” Jeff said into the uplink. “Leave Brett on the scene with the remote truck in case something else happens, you and Keri get Unit 4 back here. We’ve got to cut this puppy to uplink it to network.”

“Damn,” Jason said, still on camera over the remote. “I want to try to tail Parker, see if we can learn a little more about her.”

“Would be nice to know,” Jeff said. “But it’s a long shot, and we need you back here. But get rolling, if you move quick and pick them up, give it a try. Otherwise, get back here as quick as you can.”

“Brett, stay here with one,” Jason yelled. “Keri, drop the cable and come with me. We’re taking four. Hurry!”

“What’s the rush?” Keri said.

“Something else, tell you in a minute,” Jason said, not wanting to tip off the other reporters hanging around. He took off at a dead run for the van, while Keri rushed to follow. It was fifty yards to the vehicle, and he had a head start. He was in the driver’s seat and had the engine running by the time the black camerawoman came hustling up to the van and dived in the passenger-side door.

“Now will you tell me what the fuck is going on?” Keri puffed as she wrestled with the camera, made harder by the lurch the van gave as Jason stomped the pedal. Along with the vans from the other stations, they’d been parked on a side street around the corner from the standoff.

“Hippolyta. Maybe we can pick up Parker and tail him, find out a little more about her.”

“Not much of a chance of that,” she said, one hand for herself and one for the camera as the news van lurched again.

“Worth a try,” he said, screeching around the first corner, taking them in the direction that Hippolyta and Parker had gone. “Stranger things have happened tonight.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she said, finally getting the camera under control as Jason raced up the street to the next corner, stood on the brake, and raced around the corner, seeing headlights come from the other direction. “Shit! That looks like Parker’s sport-ute!”

“Hey, we got ’em!” Jason yelled, stomping hard on the brake, throwing the wheel over and stomping the gas again. Luckily, the street was wide enough here, for the van spun with a screech of tires and burning rubber, now heading back the direction it had come from.

“Jesus Christ, Metheny, where the hell did you learn to drive?” Keri complained with a scowl. “The Dukes of Hazzard?”

“What the hell is that?” Metheny frowned, seeing the taillights of Parker’s sport-ute not far ahead. By God, he had them!

“Oh, hell, you’re not old enough,” Keri said, wishing the hell she were somewhere else rather than riding with this certifiable lunatic. She remembered the old TV show, the wild driving, the bootlegger turns like Jason had just done. It wasn’t the sort of things black kids usually watched, but she’d thought it great fun. Fortunately, Jason was settling down now; Parker wasn’t hurrying, and it looked like they had him. “Damn, that Hippolyta is something else, isn’t she?” she continued, trying to calm the reporter down.

“Sure is,” he replied with a tone of awe in his voice. “Damn, more guts than all the cops there combined.”

“Oh, shit,” Charlie said as he glanced in the rear view mirror. “We’ve picked up a tail.”

“You sure?” Sally asked from the passenger seat. She had stripped off Penthesilea, the corset, and hood, and was now down to Goth Girl, just in case they had to stop at a light and someone might look in from another car.

“Pretty sure,” Charlie said, making a quick corner onto a side street without signaling. “We’d better find out.”

Sally turned sideways in the seat to better look out the back window. Sure enough, there was someone following them. “Oh, crap,” she said, watching the van behind them turn the corner. “It’s a Channel 5 van. It about has to be Metheny.”

Charlie laughed. “Well, that’s good news. We can deal with Panty Raid. I was more concerned that maybe those druggies had an over watch that didn’t get picked up. Guys like them might be more persistent and carry more fire power than just Metheny and his mouth.”

“Yeah,” Sally said, turning back to the seat as Charlie turned another corner and watched the lights behind follow. It had been hard to get up for Hippolyta’s persona on the drive to the scene, especially with Charlie wanting to shoot the shit. Finally, she’d just told him to shut up and let her get her mind set for it. After working to put the Amazon into a closet for days, it hadn’t been easy to bring her out again. Really, the thing that had helped the most was the rich smell of the Anatolian leather from the country where the Amazons had been said to come from. That had brought the hard-case woman warrior persona out to the front of her mind. “I sure never expected all that,” she said weakly, letting the adrenaline shock wash over her after the tense half hour on the scene.

“Me, either. Someone’s pissed right now, that’s for sure. Two million bucks worth of snow. We haven’t had a hit like that in this town for a while.”

“Is that going to cause trouble?”

“Hard to say,” Charlie said as he pulled back out onto Bryne, heading for the spot where Sally’s car was parked. Neither he nor Sally was very concerned about the tail. They’d worked out how to deal with that problem before the news conference, days back, and since it hadn’t been necessary to ditch a tail that time, they’d set it up the same way again. “Druggies know they’re going to lose one once in a while, it’s part of the cost of doing business. That Cordero woman, well, I sure hope somebody’s bright enough to get her and her kids out of town and change her name quick, because some of the WarLords are going to be a little ticked with her. But Turner realizes that, I hope, and I’ll remind him of it again, just to be on the safe side.”

“God, Charlie, I’m glad I did this tonight, but it seems like every time I turn into Hippolyta, it just opens a whole new can of worms.”

“You didn’t when you did that deal at the Women’s Crisis Center.”

“The hell I didn’t,” Sally said with a snort. “Where do you think Mrs. Cordero got the idea to call Hippolyta? Out of that news story, that’s where. That’s what she told me when I went inside the first time. Now I’ve probably got druggies pissed at me. And who knows what the hell else is going to come out of the woodwork?”

“Sally, don’t feel like that. Hippolyta has done a hell of a lot of good every time she’s slid into that outfit.”

“Yeah. And every time she does put it on she gets more notorious. If you don’t believe me, look in the rear view mirror. Charlie, if it ever gets out who Hippolyta really is, that’s the end of the news business for me, and right at the moment my career is going real well. I wouldn’t even be able to go to my fall back position of being a cop. I’ll be lucky to get a job working the drive-up window under an assumed name in a no-name fast food joint in some nowhere place like Adrian.”

“Come on, Sally, it’s not that bad.”

“The hell it’s not. If I’d just let it go after the Shop’n’Go, never called you about trying to hassle Metheny back there, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“And Missy Spangler would be dead, Mrs. Cordero would be either dead or in jail, probably for a hell of a long time, and there’d be two million bucks worth of coke hitting the streets in the next couple days,” Charlie told her. “That’s really not a bad trade-off, even if we were to stop right now, pull Panty Raid over, and do an interview on the spot.”

“Don’t you think I realize that? That’s what makes it so freaking hard. I ought to burn this whole damn outfit, but I won’t, damn it, because something else like tonight could happen, and there we go again. I’m just depressed right now, Charlie. At least I’ve got your shoulder to cry on for a minute.”

“Whatever you need, Sis. I’m just proud as hell of you and the jobs you’ve done so far.”

“I know you are, Charlie,” she sighed. “But, Jesus, right now I wish I was a cop.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Because sooner or later they’re going to clear that scene. It won’t matter whether it’s two in the morning or five in the morning. Rick and Janice and Bill and a lot of the others will get together someplace and have a few beers to unwind, just let the evening work out. You can’t imagine how much I’d like to do that, like we did the night after we rescued Missy. At least I could take my part of the praise secondhand and work out the tensions.”

“I could probably corral Janice and Rick.”

“No, you can’t. You could get away with it the other night, since I’d been on the scene as Sally, and I was part of the adventure. Shit, all I can do is go home alone, maybe have a couple good stiff shots, and then lie awake the rest of the night trying to go to sleep.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I guess. God, sometimes this doublethink and conspiracy gets a little hard. Look, I can stop off and get a twelve-pack after you make your escape, then meet you out at the house and we can get shitfaced together.”

“It’d be nice. I’d really like to do it but you can’t do that either. You’ve still got a story to cover, and a deadline that’s only a few hours off.”

“Yeah,” he said in grudging agreement. “At least I get an exclusive interview with Hippolyta out of it, and that gets me a step ahead of everyone else. I’ll try to include some hints that lead away from you.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Maybe that’ll help a little. But shit, that’s the part Stan Lee never told us about in the comic books we grew up with.”

“What’s that?” he asked, pretty sure he knew the answer.

“That it’s goddamn lonely being a superheroine,” she said bitterly. “The worst part is that I have to go in and anchor tomorrow night. You know damn well that this story is going to be the lead, and I’ll have to look at Hippolyta’s heroics on the monitor and somehow keep a straight face.”

“Try to get some sleep. Take a sleeping pill, or have a few shots, or something. Maybe we can get together tomorrow and talk about it a bit.”

“I don’t think so. Rick and I have plans to get together first thing in the morning and do some fencing. I’ll have to listen to him tell the whole damn story from his viewpoint and keep a straight face there too. I’d love to give him a wave-off for tomorrow, but he’s coming along too well as a practice opponent to blow him off.”

“Superman pulled off that kind of shit with Lois Lane all the time.”

“It’d be a damn big help if I was Supergirl,” she said. “I’m just Sally Parker, and I’m doing this for real, not in some fantasy comic book. I’m in way the hell over my head, too.”

“Hey, look,” he offered, starting to pick up on Sally’s nerves now. “We could lead Panty Raid around for a while longer while we sit and talk about it some.”

“I’d like that, but maybe we’d better not. The longer we toy with him means more chance of slipping up. I’ll just have to go home and cry myself to sleep.”

“Hey,” he said, getting an idea. It wasn’t much of one, but it was a straw to grasp at. “Would Hippolyta cry herself to sleep?”

“No,” she said with a smirk. “She’d sleep soundly, taking pride in doing her duty.”

“Then maybe she’d better not put on her Pjs.”

“Maybe not,” Sally replied, with half a smile. “I’ll think about it. And while I’m at it I’d better start turning back into Hippolyta so I can make my getaway.”

“We’ve got maybe five minutes, unless they give up or I take them out of the way farther. I’m going to jink around a little bit more like I’m trying to lose them.”

“Fine with me,” Sally sighed, pulling Hippolyta’s corset out of the back seat and starting to wrap it around her, while Charlie ducked down a suburban side street, again with no signal to warn the news van following half a block behind. Over the course of the next few minutes, as Sally zipped up Hippolyta’s corset, then pulled on the hood and slung Penthesilea over her shoulder, Charlie made several more turns, once down an alley. By now it was dead clear that they were being followed, and the news van had closed in on them a little.

“Plenty of time. You should have about ten seconds. Get set to bail out, right around the next corner. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you, Charlie. Let’s get together sometime, anyway.”

“Fine with me, Sis. I’ve got the dome light off, so be ready.”

He swung around another corner into a narrow alley, but rather than stomping the sport-ute’s gas like he’d done the past couple corners, he dropped down to low and jake braked down to walking speed so his brake lights wouldn’t flash. Sally already had the door unlatched, saw the spot just ahead, waited for the right time, then scrambled out the door. She swung it closed the best she could as Charlie stomped the sport-ute’s gas pedal, which finished slamming the door closed. She hustled off behind a pair of dumpsters they’d picked out earlier and hunched down, watching Charlie’s taillights recede down the alley. In a few seconds, she saw the Channel 5 van come around the corner into the alley and heard the driver stomp it to close the distance. In only a few seconds, it was nothing but taillights, too.

Hippolyta let out a sigh as she pushed the remote button to unlock the door of the Mustang, sitting just around a corner. Damn, she thought. Even as an Amazon, it was hard to go home alone.

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