Simmons just couldn’t bring himself to care enough to try anymore.
So instead he settled right there, drooling on the pavement. This was good. He didn’t want to fight anymore. He hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place, but—damn Revelen—gah, he hated them. It sucked that they’d done this to him. He was all ready to just live his life, free as the wind, and they’d gone and clipped his frigging wings.
Now he was here, a dead duck on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, listening to some Euro dude count him down to death, and without even enough fight left to object. “Nine … Ten.”
The flames above him got hotter, and Simmons could feel his back start to burn. The pain surged through him, giving him new life, new panic, and triggering his fighting instinct, if only for a second.
But with him … that was all it took.
Simmons lashed out with his powers, more out of panic than genuine planning, and a quake wave shot through the ground beneath him.
Except it wasn’t ground.
It was bridge; steel and concrete, thick enough to support cars, trucks—miles of it, built to hold tons and tons of weight.
But not built to survive an earthquake directed right at one of the supports.
He could hear and feel the bridge column buckle beneath him as Fire-guy burned the layer of skin off his back and reached bone. Simmons didn’t process that, just as he hadn’t processed anything else since his body and will had shut down from the beating. He didn’t care, couldn’t fully feel anything other than screaming pain lashing its way through his back, and it only spurred him on to strike out with his powers even harder.
It came out of him like a sudden blockage being forced out of a tight tube. One minute he hadn’t been using powers, the next he was giving it everything he had, like a muscle contracting from shock to his body. He hit the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with all his powers, giving it an immediate 9.5 on the Richter scale.
The concrete supports dissolved in a second, the bridge deck itself shattered a second after, and the entire thing, from the tunnel entry all the way to the next section, exploded into dust from the sheer force of Simmons’s panicked release of powers.
Simmons felt it, of course, dimly, beneath the layers of agony that Fire-man had just forced on him. But more than that, he felt his body falling, falling among the dust and steel as the bridge came down around him. He left the heat behind—thank goodness for that!—and plunged, plunged into the darkness of Chesapeake Bay below, the cold water like heaven on his burns as he drifted down into the black, the world falling in with him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sienna
“Holy hell,” I said as we watched the chopper-eye view of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge explode under the assault of Eric Simmons’s powers. He’d been getting his ass kicked by that guy on fire, not putting up much of a fight, and then suddenly—
Whoosh. The bridge imploded underneath him, and Simmons disappeared in a cloud of dust while fire-guy just hovered there for a few seconds, like a candle in the night. Except it was midday.
“Wow,” Eilish said. It was just the two of us glued to the TV, but glued we were, unable to move. I was watching something really astounding unfold before my eyes, and it was a unique situation, because …
Normally, in these types of events … I would have been there in minutes.
Instead, here I sat, in Panama City Beach, Florida …
Powerless to do a damned thing.
The dust cleared a moment later, and Fire-guy just hung there, staring down into the dark waters below. The news choppers caught him on video, just silently floating there, watching. After a few seconds, he seemed to have decided that there was nothing else to be done, because he turned skyward—
And shot off into the heavens.
“Geez,” I said, taking a breath that I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “I guess that settles Simmons’s hash.”
“That was a pretty epic fight,” Eilish said, “from one side, at least.”
“What happened?” Reed asked, emerging from the hallway, suitcase in his hand. His eyes found the TV before we could answer, and he dropped the suitcase. “My God.”
“That guy was pretty powerful,” Eilish said. “Flying and fire. That’s not a normal combo, is it?”
My lips twitched. “I’ve seen it before.” Hell, I’d been it before. Aleksandr Gavrikov had both those powers.
My stomach twisted, hard. Thinking about Gavrikov was like a dash of salt in a fresh wound.
“But I mean—they’re two separate powers, right?” Eilish asked, though I suspected she knew the answer and just wanted to talk about what we were seeing. “Flight’s one, and fire’s another. This guy has both, so … it’s unusual to have two powers, right?”
“Yeah,” Reed said, and I deferred to him, because I didn’t want to comment. “It’s unusual. Not as unusual as it used to be now that these different serums are out there, but … still unusual.”
“See, that’s what I thought,” Eilish said, with a little satisfaction.
“What’s going on now?” Augustus said, emerging from his room with his own suitcase, Taneshia a few paces behind. Augustus had—I kid you not—a suitcase twice the size of his girlfriend’s, plus a backpack and a shoulder bag.
“You pack like a girl,” I announced, making Augustus look over his luggage.
“It takes a lot of work to look this good, all right?” Augustus said, unabashed.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Kat,” I said.
“Mission parameter change, I’m guessing,” Reed said, staying focused on what was actually important and not getting lost in the details of Augustus’s girlish packing habits. He pointed at the spectacle on the TV, a helicopter shot of the fallen bridge. “Did Simmons do that?”
“Presumably,” I said, still anchored to the couch, lead in my ass keeping me from getting too excited. Or at least from showing it. Part of me wanted to get up, to go with them, but there was enough sense and enough of a feeling like I was an old dog that should stay on the porch to keep me seated. “This new guy—fire and flying powers—had him down on the bridge, and then it went kaput. Fire guy flew off, Simmons was gone, so … my guess is that he’s out of the picture, one way or another. You’ll probably have to get Scott to comb the bay to be sure.”
“He’s already on his way to the airport in Eden Prairie,” Reed said, and then answered another call. “Go for Treston. Yes, I just—yes. We’re on our way, we’ll be there in a couple hours.” And hung up, looking at Taneshia and Augustus. “Let’s go. I’ll call Greg and Olivia, have them meet us en route.”
“Sounds fun,” Eilish said, in a tone that told me she did not think it sounded fun. If possible, she sounded less energetic than even I did. “Be safe, you lot.”
“Why?” Augustus asked, giving her a sour eye. “So you can keep fleecing us at cards?”
“Yep,” Eilish said with a curt nod. “That’s exactly it.” She was a cutthroat card player. I hadn’t dared to face her, personally, but then I had other hobbies lately.
Like scotch. Scotch was a perfectly valid hobby.
“Let’s move,” Reed said, and nodded toward the door. Augustus and Taneshia went for it, while he stayed anchored in place, all serious now, the mom-combo gone—or at least transformed. No guilt; just pressure. “You going to be here when we get back?” he asked, looking right at me.
I looked up. “Where the hell else am I going to go?”
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t get any ideas,” Reed said, a little cautiously.
“My big idea is to count down the hours until five o’clock,” I said, pointing at the bottles against the wall on the counter in the kitchen, “so I can kick off this evening’s festivities.”
There was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. “All right,” he said, postponing that argument for another day. “Don’t drink and swim.”
“Pffft, too cold for swimming,” I said, brushing off that idea. The sound of
some idiot proving me wrong outside came in the form of a screech of joy.
“I left you some cash, and one of the rental cars is downstairs,” he said, making his way to the door. Augustus and Taneshia were just standing there, waiting. “Don’t wander far. Your disguise is okay, but a sharp eye could still pick you out.”
My disguise was dyed hair and being starvation thin, a little thing that had happened during my time in Scotland, and which I hadn’t exactly striven to change since I’d come back to the US. Scotch helped. Scotch, and skipping a lot of meals. “Aye aye, captain,” I said, and saluted.
He bit back his response, but I could see the worry in his eyes. “Just …”
“Dude, you’re the one going into danger,” I said, shooing him with a hand motion. “You be safe. And don’t forget to call your girlfriend. You promised her you’d check in on the regular, and I don’t want her to be madder at me than she already is for keeping you down here for months on end.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, easing through the door with something that felt like lingering regret. “Just … take it easy, okay?”
“You too, bro,” I said, way too casual. Seeing him walk out the door was like a gut punch, but I waved him off anyway. “Be safe. Augustus, Taneshia … watch out for my big, worrying bro-mother, will you?”
“We got this,” Augustus said, and he and Taneshia were off.
“I’ll see you when I get back,” Reed said.
The door slammed behind him with alarming finality, and a nervous pit in my stomach that had started to subside over these last few weeks and months that we’d been here, all together …
It started to grow again—this gnawing, aching feeling within, like a black hole aiming to consume me.
CHAPTER FIVE
How was it that the minutes leading up to five o’clock could feel so impossibly long?
They were piling up, the minutes, but not accumulating nearly fast enough. I was sprawled out on the couch still, engaging in a kind of torpor to preserve my energy and ignore the hunger pangs that rattled through my body. I kept eyeing my bottle of scotch, just sitting there on the counter, calling to me with its beautiful siren song. It was right there, for the taking, minutes and miles away.
With a sigh, I turned back to the TV screen, where a clock presented itself.
4:47 Eastern Time, it read in the bottom corner of the news icon. Thirteen minutes to glory.
“I wish someone looked at me the way you look at a bottle of scotch,” Eilish said, ever helpful.
“Sometimes I wish you stayed as quiet as a bottle of scotch,” I said. I actually didn’t. I’d had way worse voices than her in my ear for the last few years, and now that they were gone …
Well, Eilish wasn’t a replacement for them, as such, but man … it was nice not to be totally surrounded by silence here.
“Why don’t we go out tonight?” she asked, a hint of wheedling in her tone. “You’re sporting the bottle-blond look, no one’s going to recognize you. There’s that nice Italian restaurant down at the terminus of this road—what do they call it again?”
“It’s called 30A,” I said, watching the clock. Twelve minutes.
“Right. They make it sound so damned iconic,” she said, annoyingly chipper. I’d be a lot happier myself in twelve minutes. “30A. It just sounds cool. Anyhoo … we could go to the Italian place, or that breakfast-y all-day spot down by Publix—”
“Waffle House?” I turned my head to look at her. “They have burgers and such, you know.”
“I’m not really interested in the ‘and such,’” she said. “Ye ask me, you order something non-waffle from a place called Waffle House, you’re just asking for trouble. Besides, those waffles—they’re amazing. I don’t think we have anything like them in Ireland—”
“Your whiskey’s not bad,” I said. But it wasn’t scotch.
“Uhm … I was talking breakfast-food wise,” she said, a little nonplussed by my reversion to alcohol every other thought. “So … what do you say? Or we could get some of those marvelous sub sandwiches at Publix—I know you have a hankering for that Cuban from time to time—”
I rolled at my eyes at her transparent attempt to get me to engage with the world. “You can take the car and pick something up if you want. I’m just going to chill here tonight.”
“Uhm, ye’ve chilled here every night for the last umpteen many, to borrow one of your favorite words.”
I shrugged. It appeared I was running out of enablers. “I’m a fugitive, trying to lay low. Going out to Publix or Waffle House or local Italian places on the regular seems like laying high.” I frowned, trying to make sense of what I’d just said. “Or … something.” Laying high sounded dirty, and there’d been no laying, high or low, for me in entirely too long.
Which was fine. Because scotch was strong, and ever ready, and he would see me through.
“But—but–” Now she was into the spluttering. “But you like Publix, don’t you?”
Here I didn’t shrug, but only because, yes, I did like Publix. It was my favorite supermarket ever. “It is ‘Where Shopping is a Pleasure,’” I conceded. “But I don’t want to go out tonight, Eilish.” I looked at the clock on screen. Ten minutes.
“I don’t know if I can stay in again tonight,” she said, making eyes toward the door and the balcony.
“So hang out outside,” I said. “Chill by the pool deck. Literally, since it’s like fifty degrees. That’s gotta be like a balmy summer day for a fine Irish gal like you.” Nine minutes. “You could probably even work on your complete lack of tan.”
She made a hard scoffing noise. “You should talk.”
“No, I should shut up, watch the news, and count the minutes until five o’clock.” Because damn, this watched pot was steadfastly refusing to get to boiling.
The bridge mess was … well, a mess. Whoever Fire-guy meta was, he’d prompted the wrecking of a huge span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The news was all in a tizzy about it, probably because catastrophes meant ratings—I tried to imagine a scenario where I somehow got bonus pay for things going to shit and realized, with the agency still under my ownership, I kinda did.
Eilish fell into a silence that was beautiful and lasted until 4:56. Four more minutes.
“It’s my first time in America,” she said, now crossing straight into whine-baby territory, “and I just don’t want to sit around the bloody condo all the time.” She hit me with pleading eyes. “We could go walk on the beach. You could even bring your drink.”
I just stared at her, my patience hanging by a strand. “You want me to walk on the beach with an aged Lagavulin in my hand?”
She nodded. “I won’t mind.”
“If you’re feeling like you need to go out,” I said, letting the words filter out ever so slowly, “why don’t you just go and enjoy a fine evening alone?”
“That’s no fun,” she said. We’d passed whining into whatever lay beyond. Whimpering, sniveling, I dunno. It wasn’t just tap-dancing on my nerves; it was a herd of elephants in tap shoes Riverdancing on them. “Come with me. Show me your beloved America.”
“I’m really more interested in my beloved scotch at the moment,” I said, holding my shit together by a thin thread so as not to lose it all over her. I glanced at the clock. Two minutes. Thank heavens.
Like thunder from above, a knocking came at the door in an almighty fury. I froze in my chair and Eilish’s eyes widened next to me. She looked like she was about to shit kittens, maybe squeeze out a brick.
I regained my calm and meta-whispered to her. “Just don’t answer it. It’s probably no one.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “Someone’s knocking, it can’t be no one. Empty air doesn’t bloody knock.”
I controlled the eye roll, but only barely. “I mean it’s probably no one important, just a solicitor or something.”
She made a confused face. “Why would a lawyer be knocking?”
“A salesperson, you UK baby,�
� I said. “Not a lawyer.”
“You Americans. Your word choices are just strange.”
The knocking came again, even harder, and I looked at the clock on the TV screen.
One minute to go.
I took a steadying breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. I got up, started to make my way over to the beverages in the corner. The knocking sounded again, loud and horrendous.
“What if it’s Reed? Or one of the others?” Eilish asked.
“They have keys,” I said, brushing off her tiny, irrelevant, annoying concerns.
“What if it’s the police?”
“They wouldn’t knock, they’d bust the door down and shoot us, holding any questions until after they’d processed us at the morgue.”
“Sienna!” someone shouted through the door, and I froze about two feet shy of my scotch.
A cold, clammy, crawling sensation worked its way up my arms, turning the skin all bumpy with gooseflesh. It made its way up the back of my neck and across the top of my head, down my forearms and wrists to stop at my hands, and, for good measure, went ahead and made it feel like someone had slid an ice cube or twelve down the back of my pants at the base of my spine. An icicle-based tramp stamp.
“Sienna, open up!” the voice came again. It was female, kinda small, but clearly pissed off. The knocking came again, a rattling, and then I heard a wheezing cough from the person standing at my door.
“Oh, f—” I started to say, but it was interrupted by another round of knocking.
“I’m going to stand out here and make a scene until you open the door,” she said. “Because I know you’re in there, and—”
Closing my eyes for just a second, I whirled, crossed the distance to the door in a hot second, ripped it open, and dragged the person standing out there inside before she could so much as wheeze in surprise. That done, I closed it back up, locked it, and took a deep breath.
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