“Chill, people,” I said as I let the gusts die down. “No need to get violent.”
The crowd made a noise that sounded like they disagreed. I heard a lot of disparate shouts, some real disgruntlement coming out of them. Some profanities, but mostly muttered. They’d been quieted by my forceful entrance, I guess.
“Wow,” said the guy with the shirt and tie. Clearly management. He looked up at me with glowing, watery blue eyes. I’d probably blown some grit into them. “Mr. Treston.”
I nodded at him. It was kind of nice now that people knew my name. Sure, most of them knew me as Sienna’s brother, but hey...my name recognition was rising. That wasn’t nothing. “What’s up?”
“You showed up just in time,” the guy said. He had blond hair, looked to be in his mid-twenties. “It was getting pretty tense there.”
I threw a look over my shoulders. Some of the workers—all clad in navy overalls with LOTSOSTUFF written on them; must have been the company uniform—were carrying baseball bats and lead pipes and other such lovely blunt instruments. The cops were outnumbered at least ten to one, which was not a good thing to be in a tense situation like this. It was getting a little mob-like. One guy clapped his bat into the palm of his hand; another, who walked with a limp, just glared at me through brown hair that hung in front of his eyes, apparently blown wild by my gusts. “It does look like you were dealing with some tension,” I said.
“I’m sure Mr. Mills is going to be very relieved you’ve arrived,” Mr. Shirt and Tie said, pushing open a gate and re-entering the fenced compound of Lotsostuff.
I just stared after him for a moment as he bustled back toward the warehouse. “Ah...uh...what?” I asked, then looked to the nearby cops. They weren’t listening to our conversation, though, being too focused on the crowd and the danger they posed. After standing there for a moment, trying to figure out whether I should just stay here, I realized—aw, hell, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this thing if I didn’t start talking to the major players. So off I followed Shirt and Tie, hoping to get some sort of answers about how this started and where it was going before it could turn into...
Into...
Well, whatever the hell Harry Graves had envisioned it was going to turn into.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sienna
“Ms. Nealon!” A thousand reporters descended on me as I stepped out of my cab and walked toward the terminal at JFK Airport. Someone had tipped off the world about my departure, apparently, because it felt like they were all here, all snapping pictures and calling questions at the same time. It was lucky for me that epilepsy wasn’t a thing for metas, because the sheer number of flashbulbs going off around me would have triggered even the most latent case.
“Do you still stand by your homophobic statements, Ms. Nealon?”
“Do you people even journalism anymore?” I asked, rhetorically. “I mean, really. Attributing a quote to me I never even said—aw, forget it. You suck. Go get better at your job. Or find one that you would be better at. Have you tried being Stevie Wonder? Or is his sight-reading level just too aspirationally out of reach for you?”
“Ms. Nealon, how do you respond to Anna Vargas’s complaints about you?”
“I don’t,” I said, stepping into the terminal, my roller bag clinking along behind me. Director Chalke had sent me a very lovely, formal email instructing me—in the parlance of our times—to STFU. Which I was not doing a very good job of now, but hey, try having your optic nerves obliterated by enough flashbulbs to blot out the sun while having ten thousand questions shouted at you, and see how you do at shutting up and taking it with dignity.
I rolled my way to the counter and chucked my suitcase at them, flashing my FBI ID at the attendant. “Got me?” She nodded. “Great. Send that on, will ya?” I caught a flicker of distaste on her face but, pursued as I was by the press, I decided to hightail it for the security checkpoint in advance of a thousand thundered questions and a million more flashes of blinding light.
When I got to the checkpoint I flashed my badge and sailed through with only a little glare from the TSA guys. I’d already checked my weapon in my bag, after all, and I had FBI credentials, so they skipped the invasive bodily searches and let me wander past. The press got stuck there, taking pictures and yelling questions until long after I’d gotten out of sight. I could still hear them trying a concourse away.
I caught a lot of attention on the way to my gate. Double takes were pretty common for me, even among the jaded New Yorkers who frequently saw celebrities in their midst, dining and brunching and whatever else. A few people commented. A few people muttered less than flattering things, mostly related to Friday’s stupid ass Socialite post from months back. Chicken shits didn’t even have the guts to say it loud and proud.
I bought the most touristy I HEART NEW YORK baseball hat I could find in the gift shop, and matched it with a hoodie that bellowed that I was a supporter of the FDNY. Hood up, cap on, hair back and sunglasses dark as good coffee, I strolled toward my gate with my head down and my eyes up, scanning for trouble.
When I got to the gate I settled in with my phone, my earpods, an audiobook about criminology, and the soothing voice of the narrator lulling me as my eyes darted behind my sunglasses, looking for threats.
I still caught looks of recognition, though my disguise gave them enough doubt to hold them at bay, thankfully. When they called my flight, it was a sweet relief, and I boarded quickly into my window seat, positioning my hood so no one could see my face and settling in against the bulkhead for a mind-numbing flight, my audiobook’s narrator my only company.
My head thumped against the bulkhead as the plane landed, surprising me out of a sleep I didn’t know I’d entered. I guess the history of La Cosa Nostra circa 1935 hadn’t been the eye-opener I’d figured it would be when I’d bought the book. Or at least not enough to counteract the lack of sleep I’d had the night before, wherein I’d basically packed a healthy portion of my apartment. I didn’t know exactly when my move to DC would be required, but I’d made a decent start on preparing for it. Chalke had sent me a short email formalizing things. Vague enough that I didn’t know the timetable, short enough to let me know she assumed full ownership of my ass. Like she hadn’t already made that abundantly clear.
I smacked my lips dryly, staring out into the sunlit day as green grass stared back from beside the grey tarmac strip. It had been a while since I’d seen green, what with February being something of a dull, brown and snowy month in New York. Not quite as much as Minnesota, but still...dull.
The plane taxied up to an airport that looked not much different than any other I’d been to as the flight attendants announced we were now in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Central Time Zone. I yawned but kept my head down, glancing to my side only to make sure that neither of the people sitting to my right weren’t giving me undue attention. The problem with the turtle strategy I’d employed was that it did leave me vulnerable, but I had to hope my disguise and the doubtful occurrence of being attacked on a plane would protect me. Apparently it had.
I debarked with all due speed, keeping my head down as I went. My phone lit up with messages as I turned it back on. I had a couple of WTF?!? messages from Holloway and Hilton, my remaining squadmates. I tentatively thanked my lucky stars neither had been assigned to go with me on this detail. I was tasked to help the locals, so I’d get state-level help from Tennessee rather than the FBI’s federal-level assistance. If it kept me from having to deal with Holloway’s aggravating ass or Kerry Hilton’s overly chipper and enthusiastic one, good.
If, on the other hand, they paired me with some local yokel that was more concerned with protecting his little fiefdom, pissant territory than catching the bad guy? I might be praying for Hilton or Holloway before this was all done.
The terminal at Nashville Airport was pretty well maintained in my estimation, though the carpet was a reddish-orange horror out of the nightmares of any interior decorator with reasonab
le aesthetic sense. Still, I’d seen worse, and the place made up for it by having the aroma of barbecue wafting through the air as I passed a restaurant to my right. It smelled like heaven, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes front and try to recall that skipping breakfast was a smart move for caloric intake control but probably a terrible one given that my missions always resulted in me missing several meals and being extra crabby.
There was a guitar player singing some country song as I passed the TSA exit checkpoint, a bored agent leafing through a magazine the only protection against some terrorist bolting through and purchasing fried chicken from the Popeye’s I’d spotted in the food court. I caught a few bars of the song and had to concede the singer was pretty good, especially for an airport performer.
Riding down the escalator to baggage claim, I steeled myself. I’d flown into and out of New York airports a few times, and whenever the press knew I was coming, it was a shitshow all the way. I was pretty sure I’d be dealing with paparazzi soon, especially given the level of fevered attention that had been on me when I’d left NYC. There was no way that level of heat subsided just because I left the Eastern Seaboard.
But when I got to the baggage claim, there was...no one. At least, not paparazzi or reporter-wise. The place was quiet, clean, people getting their luggage from the carousels and leaving without any undue fuss. I stared out the glass windows into the loop where buses and cars and cabs and Ubers picked up arrivals and saw...
Not a damned thing out of the ordinary.
No cameras.
No reporters.
Nada.
“Hm.” Pleasantly surprised, I sidled over to my carousel to wait for my bag.
It never showed up.
Now, some thousand miles away from New York, my brain put together the clues. The lady asshole behind the airline counter had flashed me some attitude that I’d blown off at the time. Now it seemed clear: she didn’t like me, so she’d probably sent my bag somewhere else. A quick check with the apologetic agent behind the luggage counter confirmed it.
“I am so sorry, Ms. Nealon,” she said, and she really seemed like it. “Somehow your luggage got sent to—well, I’m not sure.” She folded her hands in front of her, and by the look on her face she seemed certain I was about to punch her into oblivion. “I am so, so very sorry.”
“It has a gun in it, you know,” I said. “Two, actually. Plus a knife or two. Maybe three. And a spring-loaded baton—”
The agent cleared her throat and turned her attention back to her computer. “Yes. Of course. Um. We have tracking on it. It’s not lost. It’s just...in the wrong place. I will get it here as quickly as possible. End of day, if I can.” She reddened. “I have no idea how this happened.”
Really? Cuz I had a sinking suspicion I did. “Just get it back to me,” I said, sighing as I checked my phone again. My local contact had texted me a few times, just quick, to-the-point messages about where to meet them, which was just outside.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “And again, on behalf of the airline—”
“You’re sorry—yes, I caught that,” I said, heading for the exit. The sun was shining, the sky was blue out there, and I tried to put the dark clouds behind me as I stepped out into the fresh, pleasantly cool-but-not-cold Tennessee air.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My local contact was sitting in a black SUV with Tennessee government plates just outside the door. Crossing guard airport cops were buzzing around, making sure pedestrians didn’t get run over in the busy pickup circle, which was, like most airports I’d been to, a sort of tunnel beneath the departing flights floor of the terminal. Since 9/11, though, the airport cops tended to shoo people along to parking lots inside the beltway road that banded most airports. It wasn’t true of every airport I went to, but it was true of most, though some were more viciously aggressive about it than others. Depending on the day, Minneapolis/St. Paul airport cops could let you sit there for an hour or roust you less than a minute after pulling up to the curb.
A law enforcement SUV could sit there as long as it wanted, though, and that’s just what my guy was doing. I could see he was a guy by his outline, though his texts hadn’t given a name.
I walked up to the passenger door and hauled on the handle. It opened easily, sparing me from ripping open the lock and shearing it off in my annoyance at the baggage loss. My contact looked up, and his dark skin and slicked-back black hair stood out against wide, white pupils with nice brown irises. His surprise knocked his customary expression off his face, but to me it looked like he had smile lines.
“Hi, Sienna Nealon,” I said, flopping into my seat and slamming the door. I flipped my hair as I entered, not because I wanted to but because sleeping with the hoodie up against the bulkhead had really messed it up.
“Chandler,” he said, offering a hand to me.
I tried not to hit him with a suspicious look at the name. “Just...Chandler?”
He chuckled, and I saw his smile lines. “That’s what they call me.”
“But there’s a story there, right?”
He looked like his breath caught in his throat. “Sure, but—”
“Hit me with it, Chandler. Let’s do this ‘getting to know you’ thing fast, huh? Since you probably already know me.”
“Okay, you got me,” he said, smiling. “My name—full name—is Amit Chandrasekhar. Born in Hyderabad, came to Sweetwater, Tennessee—” he put on a perfect Southern accent for a few seconds “—when I was three. No one could say ‘Chandrasekhar,’ and Friends was huge back then, so I made it easy on them—Chandler. I’m funny, anyway, so it works.”
“Oh, good, a partner who’s funny,” I said. “Haven’t had one of those in a while.” I flipped my finger forward in a point. “Let’s roll, Chandler.”
“Uh...do you not have any more luggage?” He eyed my total lack of a bag.
“The bitch behind the counter in New York got shitty with me and ‘lost’ my bag,” I said. “No luggage, no gun—if we run into trouble right now, I’m going to have to rip apart your car and beat someone to death with a tire.”
“We can get you a gun at TBI,” he said.
I frowned. “‘TBI’?”
“Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.”
“That’s...” I twitched. “That’s a thing?”
“Yeah,” Chandler said, blowing it off as he put the SUV into gear. “You know how bureaucracies are. They went with the familiar name instead of going all original. I mean, what’s the FBI going to do? Sue for copyright infringement?”
“You make a fair point there.”
Chandler slid us out from beneath the tunnel of the baggage claim pickup and we started to cruise. Sunlight shone down from outside the tunnel area, blue sky just glowing out there. I hadn’t noticed it being freezing when I’d walked to the SUV, so I looked for the external temp on the dashboard but didn’t find it.
“What’s the temp out here today?” I asked, peering at the dash, still looking for it.
Chandler tapped a number in the middle of the display screen. 72 degrees.
I blinked. I’d thought that was what the air conditioner was set to. “Nice,” I said as we rolled along the airport ring road.
The grass was already greening from its winter fading, and as we came around a corner at the parking garage, a series of cherry trees in the median were covered in bright white blooms that seemed to have an almost surreal glow about them. I indicated the window button. “Do you mind?”
“Go right ahead.”
I rolled down the window, hoping for a scent of cherry blossoms as we went past, but didn’t get anything but a faint aroma of it. I took another deep breath. Spring was actually in the air here, funny as that sounded. In February. Six more cherry trees in full blossom greeted us along the way out of the airport.
“Do we need to file a stolen weapon report with the ATF?” Chandler asked over the roar of the wind rushing in. “For your lost guns?”
“Not yet,” I
said. “They say it’s not lost; that pissy attendant in New York just decided to detour my shit out of—hell, I don’t know. Pique, I guess. I should have noticed her, but I was too busy speed-walking from the damned paparazzi.” I shook my head, rolling up the window. Chandler was speeding up as we were leaving the airport’s ring and riding a long, curving ramp toward a wide, eight- or ten-lane freeway. “I’m surprised they didn’t pick me up on this side of my flight.”
Chandler made a face. “We don’t really do...paparazzi...here.”
“Say whaaaaat?”
“This place is the home of the country music stars,” Chandler said as we merged onto the interstate. It was mildly busy but not bad at all compared to, say, the Midtown tunnel or one of the bridges at this time of day. “Their privacy gets respected around here; we don’t do the whole—cameras and craziness thing. If you’re a local, it’s considered kind of gauche to even go up to them, really.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re used to in New York, but I suspect here you’ll be able to walk down the street and be mostly left alone.”
I thought about all the yelling at me that had happened in the wake of the San Francisco mission, the occasional angry mob-like chants that broke out around me as I was walking down the streets of New York. In a way, it was reassuring that people felt comfortable enough that they weren’t going to die horribly that they could safely chant nasty things at me about something I hadn’t even done.
In another way, it was really aggravating to be eating lunch and suddenly have people shouting at you across a restaurant about how much you suck. It made me want to go back to being in disguise full-time, something I had dabbled with again in recent months.
Not having to worry about that? Hell, I could use a few days of calm.
Chandler must have sensed at least a little of what I was thinking. “Welcome to Nashville, Ms. Nealon.” The car just rolled along the relatively quiet freeway, taking us toward the city.
Music: Out of the Box 26 (The Girl in the Box Book 36) Page 6