“Peter!” Liz cried in alarm. Peter turned his head to where both women were reading over his shoulder, regaining enough presence of mind through his fury to follow Liz’s gaze and realize he’d crushed the phone in his hand.

  But right now he couldn’t be bothered to worry about protecting his identity. He only regretted that it hadn’t been Jameson’s throat. “I’m okay,” he said through clenched teeth. “Sorry, I have to go.”

  “We understand,” Jill said. “That jerk, how dare he?”

  “Take care of that hand, okay?” Liz called after him as he stormed from the apartment. But his hand was fine. The injury ran much deeper.

  No, he realized as he climbed the stairs. What he felt was not an injury, not another pang of the guilt that already weighed so heavily on his heart. Something had snapped inside him, yes, but it had brought him a new clarity, a new strength. He had been pushed too far, and now something inside him was pushing back.

  By the time he reentered his apartment, he was still angry, but it was a focused, controlled anger rather than the ferocious rage that had threatened to overtake him before. He sat on the couch with MJ and told her what had happened in a tight but level voice. “I can’t believe it!” she said when he was done. “Jonah’s pushed the limits of good taste before, but putting up photos of injured children?”

  “Believe it,” Peter told her. “Every time I think there’s a shred of decency or restraint in that man, he proves me wrong. And this time he’s really crossed the line. There’s no forgiving this. These are my kids, MJ! Nobody gets away with victimizing them. Nobody!”

  “Too bad you don’t still work for him,” she said. ‘‘You could quit.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said. “I quit. All of it.”

  Her eyes widened. “All of what?”

  “What I do every time something goes wrong in my life. For years, Jameson’s been beating up on me. The cops have been after me. My professors and bosses have lectured me about how lazy and irresponsible I was because I was busy out saving the damn city from psychotic killers. Everyone keeps blaming me for everything that goes wrong in my life— and I’ve been right there leading the blame squad. I’ve been playing Jameson’s game along with everyone else. Torturing myself with guilt, just like he wants. Well, I’m not gonna do that any longer!”

  He rose from the couch. “I’m through letting Jameson tear me down, and I’m through tearing myself down. I’m through with blaming myself for everything that goes wrong whether I have any control over it or not! You were right, MJ—what happened yesterday wasn’t my fault. I was the one trying to stop it! I was the one saving lives out there!”

  “Yes! That’s the spirit!”

  “I wasn’t the one who got those kids hurt. It was Electro’s fault. It was the fault of whoever helped him get those robots. Hell, it was Jameson’s fault for turning this city against me! If I had more support for what I do, I could probably have put Electro away for good long ago!

  “The only thing I’ve done wrong,” he went on, “is letting myself buy into all the Spidey-bashing. Well, no more. I’m through second-guessing myself, questioning every niggling little decision. I’m through being the Woody Allen of superheroes. I’ve got enough people to beat up on me—I’m not gonna do it to myself anymore. I’m not gonna waste energy punishing myself when I should be going after the people who really deserve to be punished!”

  MJ’s arms went around him from behind. “That’s my tiger. I love it when you roar.”

  He smiled. “Thanks, but I don’t know if I’m in the mood right now.”

  “No, I’m serious. You’re such a good man, Peter. It can really hurt to see you always doubting yourself, burying yourself in guilt. You deserve better. You’re a hero, and I want the whole world to know it.” She kissed him. “Including you.”

  “You’re right. I do deserve better. And I’m gonna make it happen, too.”

  “Mmm, tell me, tiger, how will you do that?”

  “By finding out who’s really behind this,” he said. “Electro’s never been much of a mastermind. To pull off something this big, he must have had help.”

  He strode to the window and gazed out at a city that suddenly looked smaller, easier to tame. “I’m going to find out who’s behind this, and I’m going to bring them to justice. And then I’m going to make J. Jonah Jameson eat every last word he’s ever written about Spider-Man.”

  FIVE

  SOMEDAY I’M GOING TO MURDER THE BUGLER

  “JONAH, we need to talk.”

  As Joseph Robertson strode into his publisher’s office, he found Jameson hunched before his keyboard, tapping out more of his deathless (or was it deathly?) prose. “Talk on your own time, Robbie,” Jameson growled. “I’m paying you to edit a newspaper, not exercise your speaking skills.”

  “You need to hear this, Jonah. It’s about your coverage of the robot incident.”

  Jameson turned from the screen and directed an impatient glower at Robertson. At least 90 percent of JJJ’s expressions were glowers, but Robbie had known him long enough to discern the impatient kind from the angry kind, the suspicious kind, the you-expect-me-to-pay-what-for-that? kind, and all the rest. “We’ve been over this, remember? Those photos were already out there. Anyone could’ve Googled them up in ten seconds. They were part of the story, and I covered them.”

  “You know that’s an excuse, Jonah. That creep with the camera invaded those kids’ privacy, and by reposting the images, you were just condoning what he did. That’s why we didn’t print them in the Bugle. Hell, you didn’t even ask me to print them in the Bugle, because you know better!”

  “Blogs aren’t the same as papers, Robbie! The standards are different. The rules are different.”

  “The standards of good taste should be the same in any medium.”

  “It’s my own private forum, Robbie, and I’ll put in what I blasted well please!”

  “They’re Peter’s kids, Jonah!” Robertson paused to take a breath after the outburst, continuing with less volume but not much less anger.

  “They’re students from Peter Parker’s class. He was one of ours, Jonah. He was part of the Bugle family for years. Don’t you even—did you even stop to think about how it would make him feel?”

  For once, Jameson was at a loss for words. He looked away, having the decency to be embarrassed. It was the sort of moment Robertson had experienced many times in his relationship with this man, the kind that made him stick with J. Jonah Jameson despite all his faults. Sure, JJJ was tough, irascible, aggressively opinionated, driven to gain profit and sometimes willing to go to unhealthy extremes to get it. Sometimes those were his worst attributes as a publisher and a man, when they drove him to be a slave driver to his staff or compromise journalistic ethics in his vendetta against Spider-Man. But they were also some of his greatest strengths. A publisher put his reputation on the line every day and had to have the courage of his convictions, the determination to stand up for what he believed in despite all pressures to compromise. And a publisher had to have the drive to do whatever it took to make his business profitable, for the sake of the employees who depended on him. Robbie Robertson had seen JJJ stand up to crooked politicians, crusade for social programs, and fight for the welfare of his employees time and time again. As his editor in chief, Robertson saw it as his responsibility to be a spur to Jonah’s conscience as well, to keep his occasional excesses and bad decisions (driven either by his desire to sell papers by any means or his vendetta against Spider -Man, or sometimes both at once) from overriding the basic decency that Robertson knew existed beneath the man’s harsh exterior.

  But a publisher needed a thick skin, so while Jameson took his point, he didn’t show remorse outwardly beyond a subtle shift in the aspect of his glower. “All right, I’ll make it up to the kid somehow. I know—have Sibert say something nice about his wife in the theater page.”

  “How about taking those photos down from your blog?”

  ‘‘Yeah, yeah, they’ve run their course.” His tone was dismissive, but when Robertson peered around at his screen, he could see that Jonah was already doing it.

  “Anyway,” he said, moving on, “that’s not what I came to talk to you about.”

  “It’s not? Then why have you been wasting my time yammering on about it when you should be working on the evening edition?”

  “Jonah, the Daily Globe’s uncovered something about Cyberstellar Tech, the company that built those robots.”

  “The Globe? Why are you telling me what they uncovered, when the Bugle should’ve uncovered it first?”

  “Jonah! They’re reporting that you own shares in Cyberstellar.”

  “Me?”

  “Is it true?”

  Jonah was nonplussed for a moment, but shook it off. “How should I know? That’s what I pay my investment counselor for. I can’t be expected to remember every line in my portfolio!”

  “Jonah, you should’ve checked. This is a potential conflict of interest. How does it look for you to try to pin this on Spider-Man when you have a stake in the company that made the robots?”

  “You know I had nothing to do with those robots! But Spider-Man was—”

  “Come on, I shouldn’t have to explain to you about the appearance of impropriety!”

  “I’m not reporting here, Robbie! I’m not trying to set the agenda of the paper. These columns, these blogs, they’re opinion pieces. People know better than to take them as assertions of fact.”

  “Do they, Jonah? Do you really think that’s true? And if so, then why do you keep trying so hard to convince them you’re right?”

  Jameson sighed. “Run with the story about my ties to the company. Full disclosure. You get full access to my financial records. The Globe may have gotten this story first, but the Bugle will do it better! We don’t hide from our mistakes like some people I could mention.” A familiar gleam was coming into his eye. “I can see it now. My next post. J. Jonah Jameson won’t hide behind a mask! I come clean and look the public in the eye! I dare Spider-Man to do the same!”

  Robbie chuckled to himself and left Jameson to it.

  * * *

  “THAT’S it!”

  Peter’s sudden exclamation drew the attention of the checkout clerk and the customers ahead of him in line, and a puzzled look from MJ. “Sorry,” he told the others. “Go on about your business.”

  “What is ‘it’?” MJ asked in a more normal tone.

  He called her attention to the Daily Globe article he’d been skimming as they waited in the grocery line. With her rehearsals keeping her so busy lately, shopping trips seemed to be the only chances he got to go out with his wife anymore. “It’s Jameson. He’s a shareholder in the company that made the robots! He must’ve had some thing to do with it.”

  She leaned closer, speaking softly. “That’s quite a stretch, tiger.”

  “Come on, MJ, it would hardly be the first time he’s used ro—” His own spider-sense shut him up, as he realized the others in line were still in earshot, and he was on the verge of saying something compromising. “Uhh, let’s wait till we’re outside, okay?”

  “I would think so, yes.”

  But the idea simmered in his mind as they waited their turn. While Jameson seemed content these days to attack Spider-Man with words (and pictures, he added as his gut clenched in rage), there had been a time when he’d struck more overtly. His hatred had been so fierce that he’d actually hired mad scientists to devise means of defeating Spider-Man. His first attempt had turned private investigator Mac Gargan into the powerful Scorpion, but it had backfired; Gargan had been twisted by the power and turned to crime, and had come to feel a hatred for Jameson matched only by his hatred for the wall-crawler, blaming the publisher for his fate. Spidey had ended up having to save JJJ from his own secret weapon more than once.

  But Jameson hadn’t learned from the experience. Just months later, an inventor named Spencer Smythe had come to Jameson and offered him the use of a robot designed to track down and capture Spider-Man. To be fair, Jonah had initially been reluctant, and the young Peter Parker—in what had hardly been one of his finer moments—had goaded him into trying it, thinking it would be a lark to defeat the seemingly ludicrous contraption. It had quickly proven far more menacing, piquing Jameson’s interest—and the kicker had been the remote control and two-way screen that let JJJ direct the robot himself and have his mug displayed on its video screen (by far its most frightening feature). Unable to resist the chance to effectively battle Spider-Man in person, Jameson had hired Smythe’s services and had the time of his life hunting down his prey. Spidey had escaped only by the skin of his teeth.

  And that had just been the beginning. In the years that followed, Jameson had used two more, increasingly powerful, Smythe robots to hunt down Spider -Man, with the increasingly obsessed Smythe eventually dubbing his robots the “Spider-Slayers.” Smythe had ultimately gone off on his own vendetta against Spider-Man, and like the Scorpion before him, he had turned against Jameson as well, blaming the publisher for the terminal cancer he had contracted from the radioactive power sources of his various Slayers. J. Jonah Jameson’s peculiar charm had struck again.

  But Jameson had abandoned Smythe long before then, seeking a new source for Spider-Slayer robots, namely an electrobiologist named Dr. Marla Madison. Her one and only Spider-Slayer was also the last one commissioned by Jameson; all the subsequent generations of Slayers had been the work of the now-deceased Spencer Smythe or his equally vengeance-prone son Alistaire. Perhaps JJJ had soured on them after the elder Smythe had used his last Slayer to try to kill him. Or perhaps he had simply found other priorities, as Madison had been the exception to the pattern; instead of swearing vengeance against him, she’d actually ended up marrying him. Peter wasn’t sure which was a clearer sign of insanity.

  “But what if Jonah’s decided to get back into the anti-Spidey robot business?” he asked MJ as they made their way homeward with their groceries. “Maybe he invested in Cyberstellar so he could get access to those robots. Maybe he hired Electro to control them.”

  MJ was skeptical. “But didn’t you say the attack wasn’t even aimed at you? That Electro had no way of knowing you’d be there?”

  The walk light changed in their favor and they started across the street, but spider-sense made him pull himself and MJ to a stop just as a bike messenger shot through the crosswalk ahead of them, showing typical contempt for the concept of right-of-way. The kid was braking, but not hard enough; he’d end up halfway through the intersection by the time he stopped. Peter caught the back of his seat with two fingers, jerking him to a full stop safely short of oncoming traffic. The messenger looked around in bewilderment, but Peter and MJ had already moved on. “That’s what I thought at first. But maybe that’s just what I was supposed to think. I mean, it was a very high-profile crime, and one that was taking a while to unfold. Odds are I would’ve heard about it and shown up eventually.”

  “You or any of a couple dozen other superheroes.”

  “The FF and Avengers generally deal with fate-of -the-world stuff. Daredevil focuses mostly on Hell’s Kitchen and organized crime, Doc Strange handles the supernatural, the X-Men tackle mutant problems. When it comes to general street crime, robberies, assaults, that sort of thing, I’m typically the first responder. It wouldn’t be the first time a crime was staged to lure me into a trap. Heck, it wouldn’t be the hundred-and-first time.”

  “But I can’t believe Jonah would put so many people in danger just to get to you. And it’s been a long time since he tried to attack you like that. After the scandal broke about the Scorpion, I figure he must’ve learned his lesson.”

  “I thought so, too,” Peter said, reflecting on the time that a blackmail threat had led Jameson to come clean, confessing his involvement in the Scorpion’s creation and stepping down as the Bugle’s editor in chief. He still remembered the argument they’d had. Jonah had crowed about his integrity in leveling with the public, unlike the wall-crawler. Spidey had fired back that he hadn’t been “honest” until he was in danger of being exposed anyway, and still hadn’t come clean about his involvement with the Spider-Slayers and other unethical acts. Peter had been angered by his hypocrisy. “But if he did hold back after that, I bet it had more to do with the fear of being exposed than anything else. Maybe this time he thought he could get away with it.”

  “I don’t know,” MJ said as they reached their building. Peter maneuvered to hold the door open, relying on spider-agility and sticky fingers to do it without spilling any of the groceries. “Thanks. I mean, you have to admit it’s a major stretch. Jonah’s not the only investor in that company. And you don’t have any actual evidence he’s involved.”

  “Then I’ll just have to see if l can find some.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?”

  “That tone in your voice,” MJ said as they climbed the stairs. “That determined, ominous declaration. If this were one of those cheesy action movies I did, it would be a cue for the music to swell and the scene to change to the hero breaking into the bad guy’s lair or working over informants or something. Please tell me you won’t go off half-cocked on this. Don’t invite more trouble for yourself.”

  “Who, me?” Peter asked, deftly balancing two bags of groceries in one hand as he unlocked their apartment door with the other. “Come on. There isn’t even a director here to yell ‘Cut!’”

  * * *

  ALL right, all right, Spidey thought as he swung through Midtown East later that night. MJ knows me too well. Cut to: Exterior Daily Bugle, night. Our intrepid hero makes his way to Jameson’s office. Under his mask, he smirked. Yeah, right. Like they’d ever make a movie about me.

  To be honest, MJ had been right: he had no actual evidence that Jameson had anything to do with this. In fact, until yesterday he would have agreed with her that Old Pruneface would never put so many people in danger. He may have been a grouch, a miser, and a tyrant, but Spidey had come to think of him as a nuisance at worst, even an entertaining comic foil. And he had shown evidence of a heart every now and then, even if it was a couple of sizes too small.