Driven

by Robert J. Crane

  “It really is me,” I said, looking up at him. “And … you guys will really be in trouble if you get caught talking to me. Aiding and abetting is—”

  “Not an issue.” Jamal stepped out from behind his brother, phone in hand. “I’ve got a handle on every phone, every computer, every camera in the place. No data is going in or out right now without passing through me.” He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “For the moment, at least, this building is safe. And I’ve got no read on cops of any stripe, federal, state, local—within two miles of the place. We’re all clear.”

  “Thanks, Jamal,” I said, and he popped in close for a hug of his own. “What are you guys even doing here this late?”

  “We were on a West Coast assignment,” Scott said, coming over for a hug of his own. It was surprisingly delicate, as all of theirs were, save Friday’s. Surprising because … I’m Sienna freaking Nealon. “Delicate” is never one of the words used to describe me, but every one of these guys, without fail, did their best not to knock me over or worse. Maybe it was the gun slung over my shoulder.

  Nah. They’re all just sweethearts for me.

  “Just got back a little bit ago,” Augustus said, holding up a form between his thumb and forefinger like it was a dirty diaper. “Paperwork. You know how Reed gets about that kind of stuff.” Everybody groaned but me.

  “He’s never been my boss, so … nope. No idea how Reed is about paperwork,” I said. “Anyone else here?”

  “Tracy and Olivia,” Jamal said, nodding toward the hallway behind the receptionist desk where Scott had dived. “They ain’t going to say nothing to anybody, though. Shame we didn’t know you were coming. We left Veronika and Kat behind in Cali. I’m sure they both would have loved to see you.”

  “I hung with Kat a couple months ago,” I said, and that drove Scott’s eyebrow skyward. “She gave me a ride to Japan for a … thing.” His eyebrow crept higher. “I finally met Akiyama for the first time. Also …” I tried to figure out how best to say it and just plunged in. “Kat kinda had a baby back in the fifties, and it turned out to be Harry Graves.”

  “Your … boyfriend, Harry Graves?” Scott asked. He was keeping a pretty good handle on his shock, but I could tell from knowing him as intimately as I did that he was blown away by that one.

  “We’re … kinda on a break now,” I said. “Rigors of the job, y’know.”

  The corner of Scott’s mouth quirked up a little as he tried to conceal a smile. “I might know a little something about that.”

  Now it was my turn to blush. I looked away from him toward the hallway to what I assumed was the new bullpen. “Is Miranda’s office through there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, why?” Augustus asked.

  “Miranda’s missing,” I said, moving past the whole cluster of them and into the bullpen, where Tracy and Olivia were both waiting a little stiffly, eyes cast in my direction like they expected an attack to come through there at any time. I’d met them both before, in Scotland, but they never struck me as super comfortable people. At least not when it came to dealing with me, federal fugitive.

  Also, Tracy was a weird goonish sort who had sworn some sort of bizarre fealty to Reed that I didn’t want to delve into too deeply. “As you were,” I said to the two of them. “Just pretend I’m not even here.”

  “Uh … okay,” Olivia said, her mouth left agape when she was done speaking. “That’s … I don’t know how likely I am to be able to forget that Sienna Nealon just … crossed in front of me here.”

  “Legally speaking, it would better for you if you do,” I said, threading my way through the open desks in the bullpen toward the far wall. Apparently they’d done away with cubicles in favor of those faux wood folding tables. Cheaper, I assumed, for when the inevitable destruction of this office came. Most of the furniture looked secondhand. Smart move, budgetarily. I mean, who wanted to invest all this cash in desks and tables that were likely to be annihilated? It was like burning money, really.

  Everybody seemed to be following me like a caravan, from Angel to Friday to the Colemans and Scott, fanning out in the bullpen as I headed for the two offices on the far side of the room. Reed’s was easy to pick out, because it had a videogame poster for Skyrim on the wall. Miranda’s, though …

  Miranda’s office was just squared away, very organized. I tried the door to find it unlocked. It was a good mark for how much she must have trusted the crew around here that she didn’t feel compelled to lock it every night when she left. I thought maybe, for a moment, that someone might have given it a once over, but … there was no sign of it being tossed. It was way too clean and put together for that.

  “Her condo was trashed when they went through it, right?” I asked as I stood at the door. Angel was right behind me.

  “Yep,” Angel said, and we both came in at once. “Not like this.”

  “I think there’s been someone here pretty much all day,” Scott said helpfully, lurking with the rest of the crew at the door, peering in at me like I was going to do something really cool and noteworthy. I mean, I was always doing really cool and noteworthy things, but it probably wasn’t going to happen here in this windowless office, without any sign of trouble about. “J.J. and Abby were heading out when we were coming in, and they said Casey, Chase and Reed were here all day, on call, y’know.”

  That was interesting. I wondered if there’d been any gap in coverage, or if Adoncia and her flunkies were just holding off on hitting the place for some reason. It didn’t make a lot of sense that they would have tossed Miranda’s home but not her office, since she spent a decent portion of her time here. Unless you took into account that she worked in an office filled with metahumans who could fight back.

  Or … unless they’d found what they were looking for in her condo?

  I didn’t share any of this aloud, not because I didn’t want Angel to know—I did, actually, and made a mental note to tell her next time we were alone—but rather because I didn’t want any of the rest of the crew, waiting like eager puppies at the door—to get involved in this mess. And they looked like they would have been happy to.

  “Can we do anything to help?” Augustus asked, proving my thesis.

  “It’s probably better if you guys stay out of this,” I said, slipping in behind Miranda’s desk. “Plausible deniability, y’know?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard this,” Jamal said, brushing past his brother to get into the room, “but it’s a well-known fact that a succubus can take a person’s memories.” He was looking super serious as he said this. “Personally, I have no memory of seeing Sienna Nealon tonight. In fact, I can’t remember anything. Y’all having that trouble?” He looked at Augustus.

  “Hell, I can barely remember to tie my shoes,” Augustus said, “or what I had for dinner.” His stomach let out a subtle rumble at that moment, audible to all us metas in the room. “Oh. Right. Nothing. Stupid time change.”

  “Seriously, guys,” I said, sitting down in Miranda’s chair and adjusting my AR and my bag so neither banged the armrests, “I don’t want to get any of you into felony-types of trouble.”

  “But you’re cool with getting Angel into it?” Scott asked, a little pointedly. I could feel our long history in the jut of his barb.

  “I asked for her help,” Angel said quietly. “I knew what I was getting into. This is for my cousin. None of the rest of you need to stick your heads in the oven, y’know?”

  “Hey, if Miranda’s in trouble, that’s all I need to know,” Jamal said. “I’m in.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah, Miranda puts up with all my bullshit,” Friday said, hulking slightly and forcing Scott to take a step back to avoid his suddenly swole arm, “I gots to help her if she’s in need.”

  “No, no you don’t—” I said.

  “You ain’t even got to ask,” Augustus said. “We’re on this.”

  “Look, it’s all under control, people,” I said, trying to wave them off. �
��No problems. Really. We’re just looking for a little clue to give us a hint as to where Miranda might be or what the, uhm … bad guys pursuing her might be up to—”

  “Oh my gosh,” Olivia said, popping up from where she’d been sitting outside in the bullpen, casting wary looks at us while she wrote—distractedly—on whatever paperwork she’d been dealing with before we came in. I’d noticed she wasn’t making a lot of progress, probably because there was something way more interesting going on across the office in the form of moi. “You … you were the one who got into that brawl in South Minneapolis earlier tonight, weren’t you? And that thing in Richfield just a little bit ago?”

  “What? No …” I said, not really selling it. “I have had absolutely no troubles since arriving in town this afternoon. Everything is going wonderfully fine for me, and I’ve—ah, hell, I can’t even keep a straight face. Okay, yes,” I said, “We’ve got bad guys after us. But it’s under control, really. I’ve already killed one of them, and there are only two. Laser Eyes is totally next. We’re good.”

  “What’s that thing the kids are doing on Twitter these days?” Scott asked. “‘Narrator: It was not all good.’”

  Jamal held up his phone, and on the screen was the burning wreck of the gas station from earlier tonight, the one that I’d torched trying to escape Adoncia and Miguel. “This is your idea of ‘good’?”

  “It’s just a few million in property damage,” I said, blowing it off. “I usually do way worse than that at the outset of a case.”

  “And this?” Augustus held up his phone to show me the wreckage of the Mazda on a lawn, Cassidy’s house burning in the background. The other, wrecked one was also in the frame.

  “I did not even do that house thing, okay? Neither of them.” I waved my hand at him. “Okay, I’ll cop to the car, but—again, there were some extenuating circumstances, and come on—an old Mazda? That’s like the least valuable thing I could be destroying. The replacement value is probably only a couple thousand. And the house—it wasn’t even on fire when I left. Adoncia probably did that out of spite. Or maybe Cassidy had a self destruct system. Either way, that wasn’t me.”

  “Same old Sienna,” Scott said with a barely concealed smirk. “Come on. You could use our help.”

  “I could use an army behind me at all times,” I said, “especially lately. But I gotta balance what I can use with what keeps my friends off the most wanted list.” I saw that one hit home, Scott’s eyes falling. “It’s okay, guys.” I looked around the room. “I swear … if it was that bad, I’d call for help, trust me.”

  “Okay,” Augustus said, and I could tell he was cutting through the skepticism in the room and speaking for them all. “Because we went across the damned ocean and fought a living, seemingly invincible ginger goddess for your sake. Defying the law? Wouldn’t even be my first time running afoul of them this year.”

  I scrunched my face up at that. Augustus was a law-abiding dude. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He backed off it in such a way that made me believe there was something more to that story than he was telling. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Jamal cleared his throat, expertly taking the heat off his brother. But I didn’t forget what he’d said, and I made a mental note to ask him about it at some point. “What are you looking for?” He brandished his phone. “Maybe I can help speed you along.”

  I exchanged a look with Angel, who was inscrutable, arms folded in front of her. She gave a grudging nod, and I spoke to Jamal. “We’re looking for hints of a safe house. Somewhere Miranda would have gone if she felt like she was in trouble.”

  “Why wouldn’t she just come here?” Friday flexed, his biceps threatening to explode from beneath tensed flesh. “There’s nowhere as safe as being behind these guns.”

  “In all seriousness, though,” Scott said, tearing his gaze away from Friday’s display of hulkitude, “he’s got a point. She works with some of the strongest metas on the planet. Why wouldn’t she come to us if she was in trouble?”

  I looked to Angel, and Angel seemed to turn that over a few times before answering. “When Miranda gets in trouble … and it doesn’t happen often … she doesn’t like going to anybody for help.” Angel clammed up, and I got the feeling there was something else she was keeping back, some nice illustrative example that might help make her point, but that might also give a room of people more insight into Miranda than Angel felt comfortable giving.

  “Okay, well, let’s start with the financials, then,” Jamal said, and sauntered over to the desk, brushing his hand across the back of the laptop sitting on the blotter. It was at a perfect forty-five degree angle, positioned aesthetically rather than for easy use, because no way could you type with it there. Jamal closed his eyes, apparently submerging himself in the digital world of Miranda’s PC. “Huh.”

  “‘Huh’ sounds promising,” I said. “Whaddya got?”

  “Well,” Jamal said, blinking his eyes back open, “I don’t see any signs of a safe house, but … there is one transaction that keeps showing up.” He looked right at me. “Safe deposit box. Bank in uptown.” He leaned over and took one of Miranda’s myriad colored post-it pads and scrawled an address, then tossed her pen aside and left the pad askew. I wasn’t much for organization, but if Miranda saw it like this I bet her teeth would have ground. “Everything else looks like normal recurring charges.”

  I held up the note to Angel, who shrugged. “I didn’t know about it. It could be something.”

  “But what?” I asked, looking at the address. I knew in general where it was, and it wasn’t exactly the middle of nowhere. “And how do we get to it?”

  Augustus supplied the answer. “I think if you really want to know what’s in there … you’re probably going to have to … you know.”

  “Yeah … “ I said under my breath. “This is not what I had in mind for my night … “

  “But hey,” Augustus said, “you’re already a felon, so doing a little bank job? Won’t even make a dent in those charges already against you. Still … if you ever want to be proven innocent? Might wanna wear a mask. And gloves.”

  I sighed, sliding the duffel bag over onto my lap and unzipping it. I carefully put away the AR, because I didn’t really need it right now, and dug into the deeper part of the bag. Not too deep, though, and what I was looking for came right out. A full zip-top plastic bag, which I threw onto the desk.

  “Wow,” Jamal said as everyone stared, and the air seemed to be sucked out of the room. “I guess you’re all ready, then.”

  Because there in the stuff that Harry had packed for me were two ski masks and two sets of black leather gloves, all zipped up in the same bag together, a ready-made burglary set for the girl who wants to commit a crime but doesn’t need any more felony charges to her name.

  “Looks like it’s fate,” I said to Angel, who stared at the masks and gloves glumly and nodded, once. “Inescapable fate,” I muttered to myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Idon’t really want to do this,” Angel said as we sat in the car about a block away from the Two Cities Bank Uptown branch. The engine was still purring, and she was already wearing her mask.

  “Don’t be such a pansy,” I said. “This is your first offense, you’ll be fine. Just tell them you got roped into this by me. I’m a terribly bad criminal seed, so everyone will believe it,” I spoke through the mouth hole in my own mask. “Besides, I’m the one who actually has to bust into this place, and you don’t hear me complaining.”

  “You’re already wanted,” Angel whined. “What do you have to lose?”

  “My freedom,” I said, looking down the darkened street. It was only a few hours until dawn. “Or some limited derivation thereof.” Very limited, especially of late. Chafingly so. I leaned over into the back seat and slipped out the giant metal pole that Uncle Friday had so sweetly offered me, procured out of the bed of his massive F-350 pickup truck. I’d say he was overcompensating for something,
but really, Friday was just the kind of guy who went big or not at all. “All right. Let’s go break down walls.”

  I checked my mask and stepped out into the warm night air, watching Angel do the same. Jamal was handling coverage of the nearby cameras, available to talk if necessary directly through a burner phone in my pocket. My plan was to keep all of that crew way beyond arm’s length of this mess, though, because I wasn’t sure I entirely believed him when he said, “No, this will be totally untraceable to me.” But there was an uneasy tone in his voice that made me think someone out there might just have the means to tie this to him.

  But … I kinda needed the help, so I didn’t look this gift horse too carefully in the mouth. Walking across Lake Street toward the bank’s wall, I didn’t feel real good about it though.

  We slipped into a back alley, dodging dumpsters and moving along the side of the building that faced another shop. It wasn’t the best of locations, but it was off the main drag of Lake Street, so at least I didn’t have to worry about cars rolling by seeing me do my thang.

  “You want to play lookout?” I asked Angel, who was lurking behind me, her body so tense I thought she might launch into the sky if she heard a loud noise.

  She moved a little past me down toward the mouth of the alley onto Lake Street and just stood there. “No cars coming,” she breathed, meta-low.

  “Okay then,” I said, raising Friday’s borrowed wrecking bar. Taking a deep breath, I stared at the brick in front of me and visualized shoving the bar a good six inches into the facade, where it would be stopped by steel plate.

  Then I raised the bar, swung it back, and plowed it into the side of the building.

  Brick crumbled and shattered, the wall coming down. I blinked in surprise. This was a bank; shouldn’t it have some sort of reinforced supports or something to keep someone from doing just this? But with a car, maybe?