Free Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) by Ben Bequer, Joshua Hoade Page A

imagined her German had been.
    “Was a time that kind of thing would impress a girl,” I muttered, turning my attention back out the window.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from her call. “What did you say about me?”
    I recoiled, “Huh? I didn’t say anything about you.”
    “You said something, stop lying.”
    I almost stood, but the low bulkhead kept me seated.
    “I haven’t lied to anyone, lady.”
    She smiled, shutting off her phone.
    “I’m going to call the Carabinieri,” she said.
    “You really don’t want to do that,” I said.
    “Oh, because you are a super villain and you’ll kill me?”
    I said nothing, fighting the growing scowl forming on my face.
    “This Blackjack you pretend to be was halfway across the world just last night,” she said.
    “What?”
    She tapped at her phone, and turned it to show me a website for the French newspaper, Le Monde. The headlining link was an image of Blackjack, and while I didn’t know if this was the same guy who attacked me, this guy was swapping arrows with Captain Miraculous and the rest of Rising Sun in Los Angeles. It looked like they were fighting on the Santa Monica pier, my old surfing haunt. Along with my copycat was another known villain on the screen, a twelve-foot tall gorilla-man called Silverback and still another that I couldn’t recognize from the poor quality of the picture.
    “A guy dressed like this tried to kill me the other night,” I said, thinking to the attack of, what, three days ago? Apparently, the guy had survived the damage to his skybike and was now back in the mainland causing havoc. “More shit they’re going to blame me for.”
    The woman looked at the image and back at me and her eyebrows pursed, her attention piqued. “This is not you?”
    I shook my head. “A copy cat,” I said. “Poseur,” I added in one of the few French words I knew, but she still didn’t believe me. “That’s fine. I’m sorry I said anything.”
    She smiled, and tapped away at her phone.
    “When where you born?”
    I looked at her, guessing she was checking my wiki.
    “I’m thirty three years old,” I said. “I was born September ninth.”
    “Where?”
    “Modesto Presbyterian Regional Hospital,” I said.
    “What is your brother’s name?”
    “Jason.”
    She read on a bit, obviously reaching the villainy stuff, finding the part where I “kidnapped” Apogee.
    “I didn’t kidnap her,” I said. “And she didn’t develop Stockholm syndrome.” I knew my Wikipedia page well. Her eyes flashed at me, suddenly worried. At least she was starting to believe me. “And I’m not going to kidnap you.”
    She put her phone down, shaking her head, “Then who is this man,” she said, gesturing to the phone.
    “A copy cat, I told you. Someone put him up to it,” I said, though I knew full well who that “someone” was.
    We were quiet for a few miles. It was a new thing, having to convince someone of how awful I was. I thought it would be more fun, but strangely enough, I took umbrage at the idea of having to prove my own identity. With all that I had gained and lost the last few years, I always had my notoriety. On a rational level, I understood it wasn’t something to be proud of, but for all that I tried to distance myself from the things I hadn’t done, some of the things I had done were amazing, good or bad. Now even that was being subverted in the name of Haha’s agenda.
    She raised her phone so that it was in line with my face, though we were still separated by the gap between the cabin’s long couches. I saw her openly staring, studying me, then the phone’s screen, then pivoting her eyes back to me. She was using the wiki page picture as a reference. My hair was longer than the pic, but I made the same scowl I remembered from the image, lowering my chin so it almost met my chest.
    “Oh, my God,” she said, but her expression wasn’t one of fear, but more of someone who recognizes their favorite athlete or