Music: Out of the Box 26 (The Girl in the Box Book 36)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Months,” said Dan, the sound guy in charge of the studio space. He had long grey hair and a goatee, and he was hunched over his sound board messing with the slider panel like tweaking it properly held the secrets of life itself. Jules had so little interest in the minutia here he felt he might keel over of boredom if not for the commanding possibilities in front of him if this plan worked.

  “You’re recording all this, right?” Jules asked, looking at the sound tech with jaded irritation.

  “It’s running,” Dan said, not looking up from his slider panel. “But your boy’s going to have to sing.”

  “He ain’t my boy,” Jules muttered, settling back in his seat to listen. Gil offered him earplugs, and Jules took ’em while Dan put on electronic headphones that were hooked to the mics in the studio. Jules eyed him as he got set up; this would be interesting to watch.

  “You want one of these, too?” Dan turned to offer him a set of headphones plugged into the sound board.

  “Nah, I’ll listen to it on playback,” Jules said, trying to suppress a smile and failing. He didn’t mind watching the misery of others unfold. He spared an idle, musing thought about how Dan was going to take it when shit went sideways here and ended up chuckling heartily to himself. It’d be fun to see if it lived up to his vision when it played out.

  “Yo, boss.” Gil leaned down, whispering in his ear before he got that left earplug in. “What if he don’t...you know. Go off.” Gil twerked his eyebrows significantly, like an idiot. As if Jules wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Jules said, rolling the earplug between his thumb and forefinger, ready to put this conversation behind him and get on with his day. Such exciting possibilities.

  “He made it through a few songs last night without it happening,” Gil said. “Maybe he really is learning to control it.”

  Jules didn’t bother fighting to hold in a smile that twisted his lips. “Don’t fret. Let’s see what plays out.”

  “All right, you ready in there?” Dan asked, his voice seeping through Jules’s earplugs, muffled.

  Brance was nodding, and he said something. Whatever it was, Dan seemed to think it indicated go time, because he hit a couple buttons on the panel and said, “Let’s roll!”

  Jules watched, chin resting on his hand, finger stretched along the side of his jaw as he waited. How long would this take? You couldn’t rush greatness, but it’d be nice if he could get this ironed out quickly and get back to Bones. He hadn’t read the paper yet, and he already had some ideas on how he was going to use the recording once he had it.

  “You want to warm up a little?” Dan asked, responding to something Brance had said.

  Brance nodded through the soundproof glass.

  Jules tried to contain himself. This was going to be great. And, hopefully, work.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Sienna

  I rolled my BMW to a stop outside a police perimeter in a slightly older neighborhood apartment block. It was brick and aged, stains along the sides. I’d followed a couple of Metro squad cars to this location, and we all popped out to gather behind a building on a nearby street corner. Five local blues were already waiting, guns drawn, one officer—a black lady—looking around the corner every few seconds and providing an update, which I caught the latest of as I hopped up the curb and joined them.

  “...selling to kids,” she said, her eyes narrowed and her mouth returning to a stiff line when she finished speaking. I got the gist.

  “What’s the merchandise?” I asked, stepping into the circle and getting a few looks from the cops present. They all knew me, so it was mostly double takes that I would deign to step down and talk to them out here, I guessed.

  “Heroin or fentanyl,” she said. “Vice detectives were supposed to be quarterbacking this, but somehow we got handed the job of picking these guys up. I thought it was a little funny at the time, but...” She gave me a very jaded look. “I guess we know why, now.”

  “I’m plainclothes; how about I go in and take the heat,” I said, stealing a look around the corner. Sure enough, there was a guy standing on the corner, well above legal age. That was interesting; lots of times they stuck minors out there holding because the penalties were much less harsh if you got busted. This guy, though? He was doing it for himself, and I had to respect that kind of brassy stupidity. “You guys work your way around behind him, then we pop him in one good move.”

  “He’s got a partner doing lookout and holding behind him,” the lady cop said. Her name plate read Smythwick.

  “You guys circle and grab him, I’ll take care of this guy,” I said. “Maybe even get him to sell me something first.”

  Smythwick gave me a look. “How you going to do that?”

  I glanced at the BMW parked behind me. “Well...you said he’s selling to kids...and I’ve been told I can still pass for a teenager if I wear my makeup right...”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Jules

  The first hint that something was wrong wasn’t something Jules heard, but rather something he felt.

  It was a tremble in his chair, a warble that ran through the metal armrest, vibrated through the seat, quivered in his bones. He’d been almost dozing, ignoring Dan’s entreaties to—well, whatever the hell he was telling Brance to do. The relative quiet was enough for Jules to feel the sleepy drain of not getting his forty winks last night. Time was, he remembered being able to stay up all night.

  But that hadn’t been true for years, and pushing it had him dozing in the chair when shit started to go off.

  When his eyes snapped open, the soundproof window between the studio and the booth was shaking, the lights wavering in it like the fixtures were shaking. They weren’t; it was the window itself that was flexing, bowing as though the room were being pressurized and depressurized in turn.

  Jules sat up straight in his seat, looking over at Dan, who was staring at the window as though something alien were happening. He didn’t register a hint of pain, which was also interesting in its own way, Jules thought dimly—

  Brance was inside, eyes closed, mouth open, letting it rip with everything in him. He didn’t seem to realize what was happening, had no clue what he was causing until—

  The window shattered. Jules threw himself backward and upended the chair, almost taking out Gil as he fell. He thumped to the ground and felt the pebbled soundproof glass rain upon him. It felt more like plastic than shards, and he brushed it off, frowning as he picked himself up.

  Brance was standing in the middle of the studio next to a half-melted microphone that looked like an ice cream cone that someone had left in the sun. No ice cream, all cone, it ended just above where the stand clamped around it. The singer was just looking at the broken window stupidly, as though he couldn’t wrap his pea brain around what had happened.

  “Did you hear anything?” Jules looked down at Dan, who had not been so quick to move as Jules, and now had shiny pieces of the broken glass sprinkled in his grey hair for additional sheen.

  Dan blinked and looked up, pulling off his headphones. “What?”

  Jules repeated himself, keeping his voice under control. Barely. Maybe the dumbass was deaf now.

  Dan shook his head once he’d got it. “No. I didn’t hear anything but him singing. And some feedback.” He stared blankly. “How the hell...?” He looked back at the soundboard. “Whatever it was, I think it fried the recording!” He slid over to another console, where something was smoking. “It did!”

  Jules looked up. Brance was watching him, eyes all teary—again. He contained himself—barely—in time. He looked over his shoulder at Gil. “Let’s move.”

  Dan stirred. “Hey, man, there’s a lot of damage here—”

  “I’m not responsible for your equipment failure,” Jules said as he stood, stopping himself from belting the sound tech for being a dumbass. He snapped a finger at Brance. “Session’s over. We’re out of here.” When
Brance didn’t move, he raised his voice to jar the idiot out of his stupor. “Come onnnnn!” Clapping his hands once, loudly, he beckoned for the door.

  Brance stirred, nodded once, and followed Jules, who was already chafing under this failure. On the plus side, he had an idea for what to do next.

  On the downside, he reflected as he held open the door to the alley out back for Brance, the moron, he wasn’t going to be able to just dump this idiot and be done with it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Sienna

  My hair was in a braided ponytail, put there by Smythwick, who’d glared at me sullenly the whole time she worked on it. I felt it was some nice work, personally, and went well with the halter top I’d picked up at a nearby Goodwill. I was as close to teenager as I could make myself look, and I pulled the BMW up to the curb next to the dealer on the corner and rolled down the window. We’d removed the dash lights and radio antenna, of course. “What’s up?” I called out to him.

  He looked at me suspiciously, but sauntered up to the window. “Yo. Whassup with you?”

  “I need to lay my hands on something fun,” I said, smiling. If he knew my face, the makeup and braided hair weren’t going to fool him for long. “Someone told me I needed to come down here for that.”

  He looked up and down the street, probably searching for cops. They weren’t obviously in evidence, though, so his gaze tracked back to me. “Maybe, maybe. If you got some green, you can make your dreams come true.”

  “Look at my car, baby,” I said, leaning over the center console. “You think I don’t have any money?”

  He looked around again, making a decision. “All right, I got you. Whatchoo looking for?”

  “I got friends who have been around the block, y’know?” I made eye contact and didn’t shy away. “We’ve done everything, almost. So I need something...exciting. Nothing boring. Not the shit you sell the tourists looking to have an easy high, you know?”

  He rubbed grubby fingers over the scattered facial hair that surrounded his mouth and chin. This guy was in his twenties, probably the early side, but the wear and tear on him suggested he had been using his own product at least lightly for a while. “I feel you. I have something you might like. If you’re strong enough.”

  “Baby,” I said, still smiling, “you won’t find many stronger than me.”

  He nodded and stood up, looking around one last time. He stuck a single finger up, telling me to wait one minute, I assumed, then turned and hustled back down the alley.

  Dutifully, I waited, looking around like somebody might spot me at any time. Because, really, they could. I was sitting in a BMW looking like a teen with more of daddy’s money than brains of my own, for all the world to see. It was my good luck that this drug dealer hadn’t noticed I was the world’s most well-known superhero. That happened sometimes. Hell, it was the reason I’d been able to evade the cops for two years while on the run. People just couldn’t reconcile that I was Sienna Nealon when I wasn’t dressed in my signature way, or in the places where I would normally be seen.

  My phone buzzed with a text and I pulled it out because a teenage girl would totally do that.

  It was Smythwick: In position.

  Wait for my signal, I sent back, and then put my phone down when I saw my quarry returning with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I had my HK VP9 pistol wedged in the crack between my seat and the center console, hidden from the dealer’s view but ready to draw in case things got hostile. I watched him walk back with that same eager smile, and added a sniff, wiping my nose with my left hand for effect. “What you got for me, baby?” I asked as he leaned down into my window.

  He checked the street one more time and then reached deeper into his pocket. I watched him very carefully in case he decided to pull a gun, but a moment later he came out with a plastic sandwich bag filled with a tiny corner of...something. Fentanyl, I was guessing, based on the proportion.

  “I don’t care how strong you are,” he said, holding up the baggy, “this shit will kill your ass if you ain’t careful. Go light, y’hear? Real light.”

  “Mmmmm,” I sighed, trying to make it as luscious and lusty as possible, like I really was a strung-out idiot in need of a fix. “I like the sound of that. How much?”

  “Two grams for a hundred,” he said, and once more he was sweeping the street with his eyes, and completely ignoring the much more real danger staring at him like a hungry shark from inside my car. “That’s the discount price.”

  “Awesome,” I said, and reached out, snapping a hand around his wrist. He looked down, curiously, for a second before trying to pull it back.

  That did not work.

  “Yo, whatchoo doing?” he asked, voice a little higher but well below the panic threshold.

  “You’re under arrest,” I said.

  “What?! Bitch, let me go or I’ma—”

  I yanked his wrist so hard it would have dislocated his elbow and shoulder if he had mounted any resistance whatsoever. As it was, he was unprepared to fight back, and that saved his joints—at a cost.

  The cost was he got jerked forward and rammed his head on my car. It was loud, it sounded painful, concussive, even, and he immediately sagged to his knees, dropping the Fentanyl on my passenger seat.

  He lost interest in the fight after that, and Metro PD officers stormed in all around him. They had him cuffed on the hood of my car thirty seconds later, eyes still struggling to focus as they searched him, legs spread and unable to hold his own weight.

  “You’re coming with us!” Smythwick’s voice came from the alleyway. I hopped out of the BMW and jogged over to lend a hand. Four officers were warring with a guy about twice the size of the one currently being felt up on my hood. “Stop resisting!”

  I walked down the alley as the big guy threw his weight against one of the cops and sent the whole pack of them staggering in one direction. The officer behind him—a smaller lady named Munoz—crunched between him and the wall and I saw her lose her grip on him as she slid down, clutching the back of her head.

  “Y’all ain’t taking me in!” the big guy said. Apparently we’d paired off in teams of big versus little, and the Metro PD cops were on the “little” side today. Whoops. If I’d been running this—really running it—I might have gone with a more even distribution of muscle to this group, because as I made my way toward them, the big guy reached over and grabbed hold of one of the smaller cops, a guy named Braddock, and physically shoved him back down the alley. Braddock hit the ground and rolled, but he looked like he might have landed on something uncomfortable, like a bottle, because I saw blood on his hands.

  “Hey, big fella,” I said, calmly walking toward him. He snapped his attention to me, his eyes all on fire like he was looking for his next target.

  He needed a new target, too, because he elbowed Smythwick and sent her staggering, her vest unable to do much more than muffle the impact of his elbow to her midsection.

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I asked, looking up at him as I kept coming.

  “Ain’t no one my size, girl,” he said, giving me a savage smile. He slapped a fist into his other, meaty hand, and took a couple steps toward me. He swung a fist toward my face—

  Except my face wasn’t there. My hand was waiting, and caught his fist in my grip.

  “I’ve met bigger men,” I said, holding his fist in mine like it was nothing. Really, it was, thanks to my super strength. “Taller ones. Braver ones. Ones that don’t scream like a bitch when you break their hand.”

  He stopped struggling to get his hand back—with no luck—when I said that. “Wha...?”

  I flexed my grip and shattered half the bones in his hand like I was Superman squeezing coal into a diamond. It sounded like I’d stepped on a cockroach, at least until he let out a scream that drowned out the sound of the tiny bones breaking.

  With a quick yank, I brought him closer, pulling him to me and down as I raised my knee to greet his face. The s
nap of his nose breaking was like sweet music, and his eyes fluttered as he swung back and I caught him before he hit the ground, gently lowering him to his face.

  Smythwick, still recovering from his attack, scooted over and cuffed the big bastard, then looked up at me with hints of pain and recrimination in her eyes. “Why didn’t you just take him to begin with?”

  “What? I was busy out on the street, soliciting drugs,” I said with an impish smile. “I only came back here when I heard your honor needed avenging.”

  Munoz let out a dry laugh that sounded like it hurt, because she stopped immediately and clutched her ribs.

  “Call it in,” Smythwick said, settling back against the wall of the alley.

  “Will do,” I said, and hoofed it back to my car to grab my radio. When I had it in hand, I depressed the button again. “Echo One to dispatch. Officer-involved ass-whooping, situation resolved.” I couldn’t hide my smile, because...dammit, it felt good to be doing something useful.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Jules

  “I can’t believe it happened again,” Brance whined, sitting in the back of Jules’s car. His head was leaned against the window, a perfect picture of despair.

  It made Jules sick just looking at the waste of flesh, waste of talent. Somehow he’d ended up with the power to make people hurt from across a room, and this little whiner was sad about it. Jules held that in, though. Instead, he said, “Every dream has its setbacks, kid. We need to practice a little more, that’s all.” He waved a hand to Gil. “Take us back to the warehouse.”

  “Again?” Brance sounded like he was just a little short of crying. “Jules, it’s not working.” The sad sack looked down at his lap, and his voice broke. “Maybe we should just give up—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Jules said, letting fly with the sarcasm. Less than a day and he was already sick of coddling this weakling. It was time to put some screws to this little bitch. “I thought you wanted to be a star, but if you want to be a loser and just tuck your little tail between your legs and mosey home to your mommy and daddy back at the ranch, we can do that. Lemme get you a bus ticket.”