Super Villain Grandpa (Cape High Series Book 15) Read Online Free Page A

says.
    “I almost… drowned,” I say between breaths.
    “I’m sorry,” he repeats, “but Technico was coming.”
    “We don’t have a boat,” I say, trying to get the hair clinging to my face off. “We’re out here with nowhere to go and no boat and—and you almost DROWNED ME!”
    “I know, I know,” he says, looking at the sky instead of me. “He’s left,” he says, sounding stunned. “Come on, let’s find some dry land,” he tells me, taking to the air. I grab on, not used to this method of flying. Mom flies like a bird, her legs behind her, her wings catching the air. This is the sort of flying that the other capes use. It’s a hovering sort of weightless feeling that has me glancing down apprehensively.
    “Why did he leave?” I ask, feeling abandoned.
    “I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t care to find out. Maybe someone did something worse than kidnapping their own grandkid.”
    “There’s nothing worse than that!” I say.
    He actually laughs at that. “There are millions of things worse than that—at least in our case,” he says. “I’m going to get you closer to flying.”
    “What?”
    “You came out here for some reason, didn’t you? Your grandmother was going to train you, I bet.”
    I find myself nodding.
    “Then I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ve only got a short amount of time before they find me and toss me back into the Cape Cells.”
    “If you knew that, why did you break out?” I demand. “You could have just stayed in there—”
    I let out a little yelp as he wraps his arms tightly around me, burying his face in my neck. “This is the first hug I’ve had in almost forty years,” he says roughly. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to other than a handful of vicious criminals. We had five minute meetings once a year, if we were lucky. If it was Mimic I got stuck with, I didn’t even get a decent conversation half the time. Mimic is moody. With Deathblow it was all about how many of our kind he’d killed—”
    “What—what did Nico talk about?” I ask, drawn into his story.
    He lets out a rough laugh. “Technico told me about whatever machine he was designing at the time. He’s a genius—I tinkered, sure, car parts, old-fashioned bombs, but Technico—” he pulls back, grinning, “he could do anything he wanted with machines, even when he was in a power-blocking suit. You could hear music and television playing from his room, even if he didn’t have an actual radio or television. I had no idea how, but I wanted music so badly. It helped me think when I was trying to design things,” he says, his smile softening. “I mentioned it once, so he hijacked one of my robot guards when people weren’t watching.”
    “You were friends?” I ask, stunned.
    “Up until he set the thing to play Mr. Boombastic on repeat for an entire week,” he says dryly. “Then I was irritated with him for an entire year.”
    “Mr. what?” I say blankly.
    “It was before you were born,” he says, “thank God for that,” he adds dryly. “The rest of the Cells have called me Boombastic ever since.”
    “Isn’t that your name?” I ask.
    “Bombastic and Boombastic are different,” he says. “Don’t you go calling me it, too.”
    “Grandpa Boombastic sounds kind of okay,” I say, trying not to laugh.
    He groans and takes off, heading through the sky at top speeds. A smaller island soon appears on the horizon and I let out a sigh of relief. Land—we’re going to be on land again! He lands on the beach and looks around, heading for one of the trees to the right and pressing his hand to it. A panel flips open under his touch and he pushes a button. The ground slides open and he heads down. I hesitate, walking closer and peeking into the hole.
    “Grandpa?” I ask.
    “Just checking the backup supplies,” he says.
    “Did you tell Technico about you and Grandma?” I ask, sitting down next to the hole. “Also, do you have water down there?”
    “There’s