Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I heard,” Lethe said.

  “I'll be back as soon as I can, I swear,” I said.

  “Hey, Sienna, if you want,” Scott said, in what he must have thought was a helpful gesture, “I can take her around, show her the sights while you're gone.”

  I couldn't see my grandmother's face through the phone, but I could imagine it. And I imagined it was not good.

  “I'll catch a plane to South Dakota,” Lethe said quickly.

  “North Dakota,” I said.

  “Like anyone can tell the difference,” she said.

  “It's the one that's on fire,” I said. “But I don't know how long we're going to be here.”

  “You sure you don't want to stay?” Scott asked, wheedling. “She'll probably be back real soon. She resolves these things pretty quick, you know. And we could get lunch. I'm famished – hey, are you booking a ticket already?”

  “I'm catching a flight in an hour to Minot,” Lethe said. “Text me your location. I'll get a rental and drive from there.”

  “Look at that,” Augustus said, distracting me. I looked; another fire, this one to our left and blazing brighter than any of the others. I almost gagged, the smell of burning oil was so damned oppressive.

  “Sorry, what?” I turned my attention back to the call.

  “Never mind,” Lethe said. “See you soon.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Scott said. “Glad I could facilitate this...uh...meeting of the minds. I'll let you go, Sienna, unless you need anything else?”

  “I do need one thing, Scott,” I said, and lowered my voice a register where hopefully only he and I – and presumably my friends with meta hearing sitting around me – could discern it: “Stop drooling over my grandmother. I mean, really. She's literally thousands of years older than you.”

  “I am not dr – that's – absolu–” And with that, Scott lost the ability to string words together in sequence.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “State burning and all that. Think about what I said. She's killed more men than sepsis.” I hung up.

  Augustus was snorting in the seat behind me, which he disguised by turning into a coughing fit. “Gold. Pure gold,” he managed to get out, finally.

  “Don't be too hard on Scotty,” I said, meta-low. “He's got a type, and Lethe is right there in the bullseye of it.”

  “When you think about it that way, it actually makes a lot of sense he'd be into her,” Jamal said, joining our meta-low conversation. “I mean, where else is he going to find a killing badass? You know, without dipping into that elusive pool of female serial killers?”

  “I'm not sure you can quite count my grandmother out of that pool,” I said tentatively. “But she did grow up in a different age, and as the daughter of the God of Death, and she's moderated, so I cut her some slack.”

  “Good,” Reed said, “because you're the last person who should throw stones.”

  “Harsh, bro,” I said. “So harsh.” I leaned forward to Leon's seat. “How far out are we?”

  “I'm taking you to the first oil field they hit,” he said. “It's–”

  “Officer down!” the radio crackled. “Officer down on Highway 2, Pleasant Valley. He's been all shot to shit by a car – by a car full of kids or something – I – this is a civilian...I'm using his radio. Holy hell, man, he needs an ambulance right now!”

  Leon stiffened. “Change of plans.” He pushed pedal to metal, and we took off. “That's twenty miles ahead.”

  “Someone shot up a cop?” Jamal asked. He was in the passenger seat, and was tapping at his keyboard, thinking out loud, apparently. “This a normal morning here? Metahuman attack followed by a cop getting whacked?”

  “No,” Leon said tightly. “It's not.”

  “Maybe the two are connected?” Reed asked.

  “This is dispatch,” the radio crackled again. “Be advised. 2 Charlie 12 was on an 11-54.”

  “Suspicious vehicle,” Leon translated.

  “And they shot him,” I said. “Sounds like he nailed it.”

  “Four adults,” the radio crackled. “Two male, two female. Vehicle is a late model red Ford Edge. Be on the lookout.”

  “Sounds like a BOLO,” Augustus said, leaning forward. “We are on.”

  The radio crackled to life again. “This is 2 Charlie 18,” a male voice said. “Red Ford Edge heading north on State Highway 40, south of Tioga.”

  “That's about five miles away,” Leon said, straightening up. “Better buckle up.”

  “In pursuit,” the voice crackled again.

  “This is 2 Charlie 13,” another voice cut in. “One mile out in the opposite direction.”

  “Not far enough to have time to set up a spike strip,” I said, concentrating. Another officer chimed in, then another, both within a couple miles.

  Leon picked up the mic and keyed it. “This is BCI. I have the metahuman backup and am approximately five miles out, heading that way.”

  The radio crackled again. “Setting up two miles south of Tioga. We'll nail 'em with a spike strip.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” I said, leaning forward. “That's a terrible idea. They cannot engage with these people yet.”

  Leon's teeth were bared like a wolf. “They can. They will. They'll just shoot 'em dead.”

  I cringed. “I'm sympathetic to the urge to pay them back if they downed one of your officers. But you need to get on that radio and tell them to hold off until we get there. Yeah, you might be able to drop them, and good on you if you do. But it could also go really wrong, and then you'll be looking at more than one officer down. Trust me on this.”

  He thought about it, but only for a second, before he shook his head. “Best thing we can do is let them handle it,” he decided, and in his voice I heard the rage of a man who'd snapped into pure, revenge-based thinking. I was well familiar with the, “they hit us, we hit them,” brand of thinking, having been a product of it myself for...so long. And it was clear to me that Leon was hoping the officers would drill them all, Bonnie-and-Clyde-style, before we were able to arrive on scene, because maybe we'd catch them alive. Which would clearly be a shame to him.

  I recognized a lost cause, so I sat back in my seat and traded a look with Reed. He, too, looked pained. We sat in silence, the dark clouds and distant fires providing the apocalyptic atmosphere for what we both knew was coming.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Scout

  “There's a cop behind us,” Francine announced after they'd gone a couple miles. “Just sitting back there, not doing anything.”

  “We're made,” Isaac said, turning around to look. “He's following so he can call in his buddies. They'll come in a swarm.” His eyes flittered over the car behind them.

  “Should I take 'em out, boss?” AJ asked, lifting the AK up.

  “They're already on their way,” Isaac said, looking at Scout. “Might as well.”

  Scout's breath caught in her throat. This hadn't been part of the plan, but it had been a distant possibility.

  AJ rolled down the window, a smirk on his lips. Then he released his seatbelt, rolled his shoulders a couple times like he was preparing for some athletic event, and stuck his upper body out the window–

  With a shout, he loosed a barrage of rounds. This time, Scout had her fingers in her ears. The gun being outside the car muffled it. Maybe.

  She turned her head in time to see a line of holes stitched across the windshield of the cop car. It slid sideways in a spin, then rolled when it hit the ditch, going end over end. The cop had gone from over seventy miles an hour to nothing in a matter of seconds, and in the worst way possible.

  Scout shut her eyes and sunk lower in the seat, breath quickening. This hadn't been the plan, but they had planned for it. She tried to slow her breathing as the smoke – that they'd caused – blackened the skies around them to match her mood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sienna

  “Officer needs assistance!” the call blared through the speaker. “Police unit in a rollove
r crash outside Tioga! Dammit!”

  “Crapola,” I said, lifting out of my seat again. It was always a bad sign when radio discipline was breaking down. It usually signaled everything was going to hell. “Leon, you have to stop them before this gets out of hand.”

  “It's in hand,” Leon said, voice strain telling me it was most definitely not.

  I thrust myself against the seat in frustration. Reed looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “People are going to die,” I said, meta-low.

  “Lookin' that way,” he said, matching my tone.

  “So what do we do...boss?”

  “We could flight out,” Reed said. “Engage the perps ourselves.”

  I almost jumped at it; almost. “We're operating under the legal sanction of Leon's department. Pretty sure he's not going to be happy if we do.”

  “True,” Reed said. His eyes ran over Leon, who was in plainsclothes. “We might even lose said sanction, because I'm not sure of his rank, but it's probably high enough to make some waves.”

  “Dude is pissed,” Jamal said, entering our conversation. He didn't turn his head to look at us, but we could hear him all the same. “I got an eye on him up here and his body language...he's heading for a herniated disc just from the muscle tension. Not a man you want to piss off right now. Not if he's got any sway over your fate.”

  “Great,” I said, “we're in the hands of a man who's so blinkered he can't see he might have just cost another cop his life.”

  “We could be there in minutes,” Reed said mildly. “But I'm pretty sure we'll be declared rogue by the time we get there.”

  “You could try at least asking the man,” Augustus piped up from the back. “See what he says.”

  Reed looked at me, then shrugged. Worth a shot. “Hey, Leon,” he said, loud enough to be heard this time, “I could fly ahead. Start dealing with–”

  “No.” Leon shook his head, eyes anchored on the road ahead. He was a man on a mission. “I want to give our officers time to work.”

  I closed my eyes. Ahab had the scent of his whale.

  “Welp, now we'll definitely lose sanction if we fly out of here,” I said, back to our side conversation.

  “Seems so,” Reed said, sounding utterly chagrined. “I see why you operate under the 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' principle, but I don't think it would have gone well if we'd done that here.”

  “Agreed, he's too far up his own ass,” I said. “So...what do we do?”

  Reed's lips moved almost imperceptibly. “You gettin' a bad feeling about what's going to happen when those cops roadblock these people?”

  “The worst,” I said.

  Reed nodded. “Well, I'm going to see what I can do to lessen the tensions there.” And I realized, for the first time, that his hand had been moving the entire time we'd been talking. Slowly. Subtly. Two fingers extended, moving in a slow circle by his leg.

  I looked up; the black, billowing smoke that had filled the air to the horizon seemed to be sweeping across the plains, rushing as if the wind was pushing it ahead of us. It was converging, as were we, in a swirl of black smoke some miles off.

  “Can't hit what you can't see, after all,” Reed said, with a very slight smile. Credit to my brother; he was thinking ahead.

  The only question was – would his plan come together in time to save the officers ahead? Or would they already be dead by the time we got there?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Scout

  They sped along the highway, skies black with smoke all around them. It was as if they were passing through the eye of a storm. The clouds seemed to be drawing closer, though, the ebony eyewall like a hurricane of darkness sweeping through, blotting out the spots of orange glow on the horizon where they'd done their work so well.

  “What is this?” Francine muttered at the wheel. She had the pedal all the way down, and had for several minutes. The whine of the Ford's engine was sustained and unchanging, and the speedometer needle had been pushing against its bottom limit since they'd left their encounter with the last police officer.

  “Looks like the prairie winds are circulating the evidence of our good deeds,” Isaac said with some amusement. He looked puckish, his lips pressed together. “They'll be seeing it in Minnesota soon, I'd think. Then Wisconsin and Michigan...eventually New York, maybe?”

  AJ let out a high hoot of pure glee. “Imagine those skyscrapers clouded in with this. They'd get the message.”

  “Maybe,” Isaac said, though some of his interest seemed to fade. He looked behind them and Scout matched his move. “Damn,” he whispered.

  Cop cars. Lots of them. Holding their distance this time, but definitely back there.

  “Getting harder to see up here,” Francine said. “Visibility is down to a mile or so.”

  “We have bigger problems,” Isaac said. “They're on us, just like I feared. They'll set a trap ahead, try and close the road.”

  “Well, that's part of the same problem then, isn't it?” Francine asked. She adjusted her driving not at all to compensate for this news. “What if I can't see them and we run up on them?”

  “It'll be okay,” Isaac said after only a brief pause. “We committed, remember? This is the cause.”

  He didn't need to say any more. They all got it.

  “Scout, watch behind us,” Isaac said. “I'm going to go out and take a look around ahead.”

  “Don't.” Scout reached out and seized his hand, letting go after only a second.

  Isaac smiled in reassurance. “I'll be right back.” And he flung open the door, which fought back against the pressure of the wind against it. He was up and over the car, out of sight in a moment.

  “I don't like this,” Francine muttered.

  “What's not to like?” AJ grinned. “I already dropped two cops and I've got clips to spare.” He lifted his gun and pointed it at the windshield, toward the black clouds massing ahead on the horizon. “This is what we came to do. We're sending the message, loud and clear.”

  “Yeah, but wouldn't it be great if we were around to see it received?” Francine asked, fidgeting as she white-knuckled the wheel.

  A thud against the roof of the car jarred them all, and Isaac slid down against the window a moment later. “Slow down!”

  Francine complied; the car dropped from maximum speed and soon was down, down to sixty miles an hour or so.

  Isaac opened the door and slid back in, stonefaced. “Roadblock ahead. Spike strips laid out everywhere. Plains are way too bumpy to offroad, too. We're gonna hit 'em.”

  “Why don't I turn us around, then?” Francine asked, hands wavering at the wheel.

  Isaac shook his head. “We flip around, those cars behind us try and block us there, too. We're in a pinch.” He flashed a grin. “No, sweat, though. I have an idea.” And the grin just got wider.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Scout was paying particular attention to their surroundings as Francine dropped the speed to forty, then thirty. The roadblock was ahead and obvious in the smoggy mix, and they were creeping toward it, less than a half mile out now.

  “They've got snipers,” Isaac said. All four of them were crouched down, slumped in their seats below the level of the window. Francine was operating the car by virtue of the forward camera, which she'd hacked into working at this speed somehow with her lightning powers. Scout had seen the dancing lights and then boom, the vehicle's protests about disabling some features at higher speeds vanished. “We're protected behind the engine block here if they try and shoot us, but the minute we step out, we need to move fast, because we're going to be targets.”

  “But you got this, right?” Francine asked, nerves all shot through and making her voice waver.

  “I got this,” Isaac said with a grin at Scout – the others couldn't see her – and then he opened the door again, popping out–

  A sonic boom hit the car from above, rattling the windows. Scout let the door hang open, though it squeaked against the wind
and the momentum of the car. Isaac would take care of the snipers. He'd promised.

  “Everybody ready for some fun times?” AJ asked; he sounded like he was excited.

  Scout bit her lip; this was the part she was least certain about. But that was probably because her part of it was destined to be the least involved. She was just riding along for now. That was, to her, the major bummer about her discovered power.

  “Getting close,” Francine announced. “The big boss man's about to do his thing.”

  Scout waited, head down, looking out the open door. It was swinging, threatening to close. She stared out to the golden plains of grass beyond, watching. If there were snipers out there, beyond the gully at the edge of the highway, surely she'd see–

  A sonic boom cracked across the car, and it felt like it shuddered under the feedback. A streak so fast it almost escaped Scout's eye moved down like a falling star in front of her.

  A falling star in the color of Isaac's clothing. A thud in the distance and the sound of bones cracking were followed by another sonic boom.

  “Hoo hoo!” AJ crowed. “Got one!”

  Another sonic boom followed a moment later; this time the sound of crunching bones didn't make it to Scout over the engine noise, and she didn't see the trace of his motion path this time.

  She knew he was out there, though, doing exactly what he promised.

  Killing the snipers hiding in the fields around them before they could fire so much as one bullet at his crew.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sienna

  The radio crackled purest alarm, radio discipline just gone:

  “Sniper down! Repeat, sniper down!”

  “We just lost another one!”

  “I hate being right,” Reed said, shaking his head. He did not bother to go meta low with this.

  Leon let out a loud expletive and hammered the steering wheel, causing the SUV to wobble. At ninety, there wasn't a lot of margin for error in the steering, so he stopped that immediately and seethed instead of beating a deadly message into an unfeeling steering column.