“Whoever’s using it is either odd or cautious,” Parks suggested. “They might have seen your team bag Fries and figured you could track them down if they left the phone on for the networks to follow.”
“Or they might just be on planes or not wanting to be disturbed,” J.J. said with a shrug. “It’s not usual behavior for most users to go dark for that long, though, so I think we can assume that the phone is probably disposed of.”
I stared at the map on the tablet computer. “So that’s a dead end unless the phone goes active again. What about the other number?”
J.J. broke into a little smile. “That one is a landline for a house in Des Moines, Iowa.”
“Iowa,” Parks said as though it were some sort of curse. “I hate Iowa.”
“Why?” I asked, and caught a flash of the wolf on Parks’ face when he came around to answer.
“Because between it and the damned Dakotas, there ain’t a more boring place to drive in the entire United States.” He bared his teeth again in a scowl. “I’ll get M-Squad together, though, and we’ll—”
“No,” Ariadne said. “I want you to remain here with Bastian and Eve.” She let her eyes flick to me. “This seems like another good opportunity to test our new team in the field.”
“What do you think this is?” I asked. “An Omega safe house?”
“Based on anomalies in the property records, yeah,” J.J. replied. “It’s registered to a Peter and Sophia Larson, but the names and social security numbers in the property tax rolls don’t match any employment records, birth records, et cetera, that are legitimately alive anywhere. No employment history? No social security work or payment history for either?” The geek raised a hand as though he were offering an open palm. “Not likely to be a real person. No bank records, either, so who knows how they’re paying the property taxes and gas bill.”
“So I take my team, we reconnoiter the house, and if it seems suspicious, we break and enter?” I gave Ariadne the eye, waiting for her approval.
“Yes,” she replied. “But take Clary with you.”
I felt the enthusiasm for what I was about to do wither and die in a half a heartbeat. “Please, no. Can I have Bastian instead?”
“Bastian is M-Squad’s leader,” she said, as though patiently explaining why I was wrong. I looked at Parks and cocked my head to indicate him. “Parks has been your instructor, so you’re more likely to defer to him and his judgment rather than cleanly lead like I want you to.”
“There may be some virtue in drawing from superior experience,” Parks said to her with an edge of reproach.
“No doubt,” Ariadne said, “but this is a time of trial.”
“What about Eve?” I said hopefully.
Ariadne’s face flickered with a moment’s hesitation before she answered. “She won’t take orders from you, she’s too stubborn.”
I let that hang in the air for a moment, not letting her escape my gaze. “Know that from experience, do you?”
Ariadne stared coolly back. “Clary will listen, and he’s strong enough to be of use if you run into trouble, powerful enough to overcome almost any meta you run into.”
“He’ll listen?” I asked, dubious. “First time for everything, I suppose.”
Ariadne ignored me. “Go to Des Moines. Find this house, and get to the bottom of what Omega’s up to.”
“Don’t you have anything ominous to say about this?” I asked. “Something like, ‘Our very existence hangs in the balance’ or ‘the fate of the meta world depends on you’?”
“No offense, but if I thought the stakes were that high, I’d send M-Squad. Experience trumps youth and enthusiasm. Besides, Omega is headquartered in Europe. Whatever you find won’t be more than the five of you can handle.”
I let my jaw hang slack, and favored her with my best disbelieving stare. “So...what I’m hearing you say is that there will probably be a whole army of Omega’s thugs and minions there, as well as some of the old gods. Got it.”
She blinked and drew back in disbelief. “I just said...how did you get that out of what I said?”
“You jinxed me.” I started toward the stairwell. “I can’t believe you just jinxed me like that!”
“It’s a safe house!” she said, trailing along behind me. “A house, in the city of Des Moines. Two-thousand square feet, tops. It can’t possibly house more than a few metas—no army, no minions. And I think gods would travel in a bit higher style.”
“You don’t know.” I pushed through the exit door. Parks and J.J. had been left behind, but Ariadne trailed in my wake. “They could have one of the old gods in this place.” I paused and held the door for her. “They could have Thor. And when he smacks me upside the head with Mjolnir—or possibly mesmerizes me with Chris Hemsworth-like abs—I’m going to say, ‘I told you so, Ariadne’.” I frowned. “Assuming I survive.”
She squinted at me with one eye crinkled, slightly appalled. “‘Chris Hemsworth-like abs’?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, and started up the stairs. “The point is, I’m not the biggest believer in luck, but Omega has this tendency to whack us every time we underestimate them. It’s like turning the crank on a jack-in-the-box, and when the damned song is over, the jack pops out with a mallet and beats the hell out of you.”
“Wait...what?” She shook her head. “You’re talking about abs and jack-in-the-boxes. This is a straightforward mission. Go to Des Moines, do recon, if it looks bad, call for backup. Don’t endanger your team unnecessarily. There’s no shame in admitting you might be in over your head if you see something suspicious. We can dispatch the rest of M-Squad if needed.”
I paused at the top of the stairs. “Yeah, all right.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” She halted next to me, her eyes looking into mine with the barest hint of concern. “You don’t normally get worked up about these things—you’re cool, calm, efficient—not predisposed to rattling on about jinxes or some faux God of Thunder’s abs. If you don’t want the assignment, it’s fine. I’ll send M-Squad.”
“It’s not that,” I said, feeling my fingers wrap around the thick metal safety rail. “It’s just...” I halted. “These guys sent Wolfe after me and Henderschott. They tried to get Fries in my pants, then flipped Mormont—or whatever you called it—and turned loose a couple of bloodthirsty vampires to try and catch me.” I shook my head. “It feels like every time we’ve got a grasp on what we’re dealing with, something else comes popping out that’s more horrific than the last thing they set loose.”
“You think Henderschott, Mormont and the vampires were worse than Wolfe?”
I felt myself freeze and stiffen, all motion stopping around my body. “No. Nothing is worse than Wolfe. And nothing has stayed with me like him, either.”
“Yes, well, having a monster stuck in your head isn’t the sort of thing that goes away, I suppose,” she said. “This is our best chance to get to what Omega’s doing now, and if you don’t feel comfortable with it—”
“I’m going,” I said, firm, feeling it all the way down. “I’m just...cautious, okay? They’re not world-renowned for coming at us open-handed. You’ve got their slimy mouthpiece in there, and he’s just grinning up a storm, like he’s just having a conversation with us sitting on his couch. It worries me that Fries is so cool. They must have known we’d come for him—that I would, after what he did.”
“He hid,” Ariadne said. “He changed identities, he changed apartments, he probably thought we couldn’t find him after Eagle River. He was wrong. Just because he’s been trained to play it cool when most of us would be showing some concern doesn’t mean anything. Omega is not some invincible organization with limitless resources and the ability to know our every move before we make it. The fact that your mother hit them so hard, in places they did
n’t expect, proves that they can make mistakes.” She lowered her voice. “The fact that they lost Andromeda, someone so important an entire facility was dedicated to her, proves they’re not invincible.”
I felt a sliver of fear mingled with sadness at the mention of Andromeda’s name. “And I might feel better about that if we had turned that win into something, anything that worked to our advantage. But even the autopsy left us with no clue what she was, or why they wanted her, or anything really, beyond the fact that we pulled two traitors out of the Directorate’s inner circle that we wouldn’t have had a clue about if she hadn’t told us before she died. Let’s face it Ariadne—these guys have been kicking our asses since day one, and we know almost nothing more about them beyond the fact that they used to be gods, than we did when we started. I don’t know about you, but when someone’s pounding my skull in, I like to think that after nine months of it, I’d have at least some handle on who they are and what they want.”
“We know what they want,” she said. “The same thing they’ve always wanted. You.”
I hissed, expelling all the air from my body. “But ‘why?’ is the more valid question. And, by the way, just as an aside, sending me to their secret safe house when we have no idea what’s contained within? Not the best idea ever for keeping what they want out of their hands.”
She twitched and looked away, her gaze swiveling to the white concrete block that surrounded us in the stairwell, looking out over the banister. “The Director thinks you’re one of our best resources against them because whatever they throw at you, you seem to be able to turn around relatively easily.”
“Relatively easily?” I stared at her openmouthed. “Wolfe nearly killed me. Fries nearly—” I stopped. “Mormont would have taken me to them if Zollers hadn’t saved my life.”
“You’re not going after them alone, nor do you have to go at all if you don’t want to,” she said. “Your choice.”
“You’re damned right I’m going after them,” I said. “I just...ugh. I hate everything they’ve done to me so far. I hate them.”
“I’d feel the same if I were you.”
“Whatever.” I shook my head. “When does the chopper leave?”
She looked at me in surprise. “Chopper? I’m not having you take the chopper to Des Moines. Not for this. The uncertainty of the mission coupled with the recon element means you’ll need to approach quietly, with some subtlety, and a chopper hovering over a suburban neighborhood with people deploying out of it on zip-lines doesn’t exactly fit the bill. You’ll take a van; it fits the mission profile better.”
I grimaced. “How long of a drive is it to Des Moines?”
“Four, maybe four and a half hours?”
“Dammit,” I said, and my hand came up to massage my eyebrows. “This is bad.”
“What now?” Ariadne said, her voice rising with alarm. “What is it?”
“I’m going to be stuck in a confined space with Clary for the whole drive.”
6.
“...and that’s why I left Nebraska,” came the droning, cornpone voice of Clyde Clary. Scott was driving and Kat was riding next to him, her face suffused with boredom. Reed and I were seated in captain’s chairs directly behind them and Clary was in the back in a massive rotating chair that was anchored to the floor in front of a computer console. It was all kind of sci-fi, or FBI, but I didn’t really care. I was so annoyed and bored by Clary’s stupid stories that I was ready to reach forward and yank the wheel out of Scott’s hands so I could put us into the ditch and end all of our suffering. I had mentally checked out of Clary’s stories throughout the whole ride, until they all blended together. The parts I remembered involved a grain silo, three heifers and an old Cadillac. For all I knew, they were all from the same story.
“We’re almost there,” Scott said with a note of hope. “GPS says it’s off the next exit.”
“Thank God,” said Kat and Reed in perfect harmony. I was thinking it.
“You know, this reminds me of this one time when—”
“Hey, Clary,” Scott said, raising his voice to talk over Clyde. “Can you do me a favor and start booting up the computer?”
“Yeah, sure,” Clary said, and after a moment, he spoke again. “Say, you weren’t telling me to boot up the computer because you’re sick of hearing me tell stories, are you? Because I figured none of you were talking because you thought they were interesting.”
“If you could just go ahead and start it up—” Scott began.
“You really didn’t think that, didn’t you?” Clary said, and I could hear the rising disbelief. “Y’all are assholes. At least when Bastian and Parks want me to shut up, they come out and say it.”
“Shut up, Clary,” Reed said, his arms folded in front of him.
“Hey, you can’t talk to me like that, Alpha dog.”
“Sure I can, Beta dog,” Reed said. “Pretty sure I just did, in fact. What are you so pissed about? You told me to come out and say it, so I did.”
“Yeah, like an hour late.”
“More like four hours,” Scott said from the driver’s seat.
I felt Clary seething behind me as Scott took us off the exit ramp and into a neighborhood that didn’t look that different from the one I had lived in back in Minneapolis; tall oaks jutting skyward around us, red leaves falling and clogging the gutters, filling the channels on both sides of the street. The houses were older but not in bad shape, for the most part. Some were stucco, some siding, with the occasional brick facade just to break up the monotony. The lawns were all beginning to turn brown, the cool weather leeching the lively green from them as a signal that vitality and warmth were retreating for the season.
Older cars were parallel parked at the sides of the streets. The houses were built high off the road on either side of us. They had no front yards to speak of; instead a concrete terrace came four feet above the sidewalk, with a staircase in front of each house that led up to front porches. The whole place had the feel of a valley, with the houses overlooking the street.
“Omega put a safe house here?” Kat idly mused from the front seat. “Why?”
“If they’re recruiting metas like the Directorate,” Reed said, “it helps to have operations all over the map. That way, say a meta in Sioux Falls manifests and you get wind of it, you can dispatch someone to get to them before anyone else does.” He shrugged. “It makes a difference when you’re building an army.”
“An army?” I paused and turned my head to favor him. “Alpha doesn’t have safe houses all over the U.S., do they?”
“Nope,” Reed said with a casual shrug. “They have intermediaries like me to keep an eye on things, to try and get to any really powerful metas that come to our attention; our main focus is Europe. We’re really more of a token presence here, though, trying to watch Omega’s North American operations rather than offer any serious interdiction efforts.”
“Well,” Clary said, leaning forward over my shoulder, causing me to almost gag from the stink of his breath, which smelled like rotten fish, “you better watch and learn, Alpha dog, because we are about to do some serious interdicting.” He giggled, a low-pitched sort of thing that reminded me of the time I’d heard Scott choke on a hotdog in the cafeteria.
“Interdiction means interfering or stopping,” Reed said, looking at Clary with undisguised disgust.
“Well, we’re gonna do that too,” Clary said with a nod.
Scott slowed the vehicle as he looked across Kat and out the front window as the GPS dinged. In the back, we had no windows to speak of; there were none on the sides, and the rear windows were covered with a Velcro foam that kept anyone from looking in at us while we were running surveillance.
“I’m gonna turn us around,” Scott said, as the van accelerated again. “I’ll park us with a clear view and we can get
the cameras going.”
“Or we could just go up and ring the doorbell, see who’s home,” Clary said.
“Clary, our mission is to recon first,” I said. “Ringing the doorbell isn’t exactly a subtle way to find out who’s inside.”
“What, you wanna sneak around the back and peer in the windows or something? Screw that.” I heard his seatbelt unsnap and he was already moving toward the back doors, even though we were still moving. “Let’s get this party started!” The back door swung open and he was out.
“What the hell is he doing?” Scott said, and he slammed the brakes. “Is he seriously going to go knock on the door? What is he thinking?”
“Clary doesn’t think, does he?” Reed asked.
“Dear God, I hope he gets the right house,” I said, already unfastening my seatbelt. I ran the ten feet to the back door and jumped down to the pavement, racing to catch up with Clary, who was already up on the sidewalk. The air held a dampness, and the sky was hazy, a light fog still lingering thanks to the cloud cover.
“Clary!” I said, trying to keep my voice down, knowing he could hear me. “Clary!” I said again, now only a few feet behind him. He had reached the steps at the bottom of the house and was starting to ascend the first when I caught him. “Clyde,” I said with a hiss as I laid a hand on his shoulder. He brushed it off.
“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” he said as he continued up the steps.
“What are you doing? I am in command of this mission—Ariadne is going to have your ass if you don’t get back in the damn van.”
“I’m gonna get this show on the road,” he said as he reached the front porch. A squeak of an old floorboard caused me to cringe, as though it were attached to a wire that would report directly to Omega HQ that we were, in fact, here. I felt as though they were watching us through a pinhole camera and could see stupid Clary in his Ugg boots and me trying to get him to listen to reason. “Why tiptoe around these clowns when we can just push ‘em right out into view and start kicking ass?”
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5 Page 6