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

by Robert J. Crane

  Chandler just looked at me like I was about to slap him. “What about it?”

  “Dude, you’re Indian,” I said. “I don’t mean to racially stereotype, but I think the Venn diagram for overlap between ‘people from India’ and ‘Those Who Like Country Music’ might be you and no one else. Explain, please.”

  “Hey, country music has more broad-based appeal than you think,” Chandler said, making a show of reading the menu that he hadn’t had an iota of interest in a moment before. “But like I told you, I grew up in small-town Tennessee. Country music was big there in the nineties. I mean, I listened to other stuff. Rap, alternative-”

  I frowned. “Did alternative die? Because it doesn’t really seem like an active category these days.”

  “It’s taking a rest. Like grunge, I assume,” Chandler said. “I was an awkward kid. Fitting in was not super easy. I was into Star Trek and video games and whatnot. Things that were too geeky for the cool kids. But the geeky kids were all into whatever was mainstream popular, music-wise. But I don’t know—I really liked country music. It had a different sound. Anyway, my group turned out to be a bunch of working-class kids, with working-class parents, and they turned me on to their music.” He shrugged. “It’s strange, I guess.”

  “I know a little of what it’s like to feel like an outsider,” I said. “And I get developing a contrarian interest to avoid being sucked into the conformist whatever of that...elite class, I guess?”

  “But that’s the thing,” Chandler said. “I didn’t do it just to differentiate myself from the elite kids. I was already differentiated just by who I was. I really liked the songs about men who worked hard and got screwed by life or their loves and had bad shit happen. I got that, I could feel it, you know, even though I actually had a really calm upbringing, overall. I could empathize with someone, like in ‘Workin’ Man Blues,’ who’s just working his life away trying to get by.” He tapped the center of his chest. “It made sense to me here. And even though I knew I wasn’t exactly the target demographic for those songs, they really felt like they were being sung to me. That’s probably weird, I dunno.” He shook his head.

  “Speaking as someone who had a very, very unconventional upbringing...that doesn’t sound all that weird to me,” I said. “And I know exactly what you mean about not fitting in.”

  “Your, uh...current FBI situation?” Chandler asked. “That what you’re talking about?”

  “I definitely don’t fit in there, either,” I said, “but no, I meant how when I first came out of my house, I got picked up by a group called the Directorate. There were...socialization issues, let’s put it that way. I don’t play well with others.”

  “I did hear something about body bags coming out of that sex trafficking house,” Chandler said with a muted smile.

  “I like how casually everyone takes my killing around here,” I deadpanned.

  “I have a hard time working up moral outrage about you capping sex traffickers,” Chandler said. “If you drowned a bag of kittens, I’d be pissed. But those guys...?” He made a face, rolling his hand left to right on a horizontal plane. “I mean, I know on a basic level they were human...ish...but it’s hard to read much humanity into someone whose job is renting the bodies of teenagers they’ve enslaved with drugs.”

  “Their job is to dehumanize and trade the girls, yeah,” I said. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, look—I have a hair trigger, personally. I used to really beat myself up over it. Then my bosses stepped in to beat me up over it. Now I’m just sort of over it. I kill people. Bad people. Like you, I have no attack of conscience over planting those guys in the ground. I’m not bloodthirsty; I don’t regret not killing the two that survived or anything, I’m just...” I shrugged. “Jaded’s a good word for it. I’ve seen enough of what the evil people do to cast life in black and white terms. I’ve developed the oddest moral line, and it just...doesn’t even bother me anymore. It’s stark; you do this much harm to others, present this much threat—Sienna kills you. And it has nothing to do with their humanity. I do see them as human, weirdly. I just...they crossed the line.”

  “I think everyone’s got that line, somewhere,” Chandler said. “That doesn’t make you an outsider. You’re not strange—at least not in that regard.”

  “My willingness to kill and my body suggests otherwise.”

  “You have a little more power to maybe exercise that will,” Chandler said. “Plus the threats you generally come up against are either superhuman or—”

  “Mercenaries,” I said. “I’ve killed a lot of soldiers for hire.”

  “I have a hard time getting upset about that for some reason,” Chandler said, frowning. “I mean, I should be, right? You’re casually admitting to killing people—”

  “Yes, you should be.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.” Chandler shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me for some reason. Maybe because I’m not a soldier of fortune...?” He tapped his fingers on the table. “So let me ask you this—what would it take for a guy like me to get on the bad side of Sienna? Cross that line you’re talking about.”

  “Point a gun at an innocent, unarmed person,” I said.

  “That easy?” Chandler nodded, thinking. “What about if they were a meta, with powers that were threatening—”

  “You just undermined your premise. You said ‘innocent’ and ‘unarmed.’ That would be ‘hostile’ and ‘superpowered,’ and thus it changes the scenario, so your actions are totes valid in Sienna world.”

  “Oh, fair enough, I guess,” Chandler said. “Is there a line for redeemable people?”

  I blinked. The server was heading our way with a plate of nachos stacked with all manner of excellence and I didn’t have my meal picked out yet. “How do you mean?”

  “Like, if someone’s done something really bad,” he said, “but then they want to give up—”

  “I accept their surrender. Duh. I’m not an executioner.” I thought about that guy trying to surrender to me in the trafficker house. “I mean...up to a point, probably. If they’re looking to surrender because they’re trying to play me—you know what? I don’t actually know. My rules of engagement are probably more fluid than I’d like to admit.”

  Chandler raised an eyebrow as the brisket nachos were set in front of us. He kept his peace while we ordered. He got the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich, and I got the Redneck Burrito. Pulled pork, baked beans and coleslaw wrapped up in a burrito shell. I could already feel my mouth watering thinking about it, but first—nachos.

  As soon the server was gone, I hit the nachos like I’d hit that sex trafficker house—viciously and without mercy.

  “Okay, another hypothetical,” Chandler said, mouth full of delectable nachos. There were black beans in there, sour cream, jalapenos—plus the brisket and a healthy dab of barbecue sauce. It was heaven, and I loved him for recommending them. “What if the person is genuinely sorry for what they’ve done? Because I get the feeling what you’re talking about in the last example—correct me if I’m wrong—but they’ve done such wretched shit you can’t find it in your heart to believe they’re redeemable, basically.”

  “Almost everyone has the capacity for redemption,” I said, trying not spatter nachos everywhere as I chewed with the enthusiasm I usually (these days) retained for getting a new gun to play with, “but most people—perps, I mean—don’t exercise it. How many times have you caught a criminal and they’re genuinely remorseful?” I arched my eyebrows at him. “Go on. I’ll wait. Because I can count the number of times it’s happened to me on one hand.”

  “Does that count you, though?” Chandler asked. “Like, the things you did you got pardoned for?”

  He was watching me carefully on that one.

  I almost choked on a tortilla chip. Or maybe the question. “Some of the things I’ve done I regret,” I said, after catching my breath and washing down nacho detritus with some sweet tea. “Some of the people I killed and was pardoned for—yeah. I wi
sh I hadn’t done that. Others?” I pondered it, but had a hard time mustering much remorse for killing Roberto Bastian as he tried to turn into a dragon and kill me, or Eve Kappler, even though technically I’d stalked both of them.

  Glen Parks, though...him I felt remorse for killing. I even felt a little for drowning Clyde Clary, right at the end of that. Sometimes I’d wake up and hear his piteous cries right before the gurgling started.

  “Others...I think they had it coming,” I said, and suddenly the nachos were no longer of interest as my appetite faded. “Or maybe I just justify it to myself that way, because I know that I never killed a person who hadn’t either killed people themselves or ordered it. So I justify that, neatly, to me. That’s how I started to live with it. Like we’re all players in a grand game, and once you’re on the board, these are the rules. It applied to metas trying to take over the world with Sovereign, it applied to mercenaries hired to protect bad people, like cartel members doing murder, or on garrison duty in Revelen.” I pressed my lips against each other. “I guess it even extended to those sex traffickers. I don’t know if they ever killed anyone, but they were sure armed to, and they were clearly doing plenty of non-lethal harm. They were in the game, all of them.” I stared at the nachos. “And I took ’em off the board, some of them before they could do the same to me, some of them before they could do it to someone more innocent than me. Or after they did.” My voice felt suddenly hoarse and scratchy.

  “I didn’t mean to make you justify yourself,” Chandler said, clearing his throat. “You don’t have to do that to me.”

  “Kinda felt like I had to,” I said, with a bittersweet smile. “But this is the problem I run into, right? My FBI bosses? They’ve seen the practical side of this. Never asked the questions you have, about my own special rules of engagement, but they’ve seen the reports, watched the body bags come in. Everyone in the world knows who I am and a good portion of what I’ve done, for good and ill. And they don’t—mostly—see me in the shades of grey that denote the nuance that is my life. They see either black or white. The ‘Holy shit, she’s a murderer,’ or ‘Damn, she’s a hero who will do whatever it takes to protect us!’ Not a lot of in between.” I thought back to this morning, and the rage I’d felt boil over at what I’d seen in that house. “And I think there’s a fair amount of ‘in between.’”

  “That’s something people don’t like to talk about,” Chandler said quietly, lowering his head. “How order has costs. You can’t have zero punishment or lawful consequences for crimes like robbery or stealing or murder, or you’ll get a lot more of it.” He shook his head. “The flip side—and boy, do the boys in blue hate talking about this—is that if you get too crazy with your imposition of order, you get cops who act like they have godlike powers and no accountability. Some of them won’t abuse it, I guess, but most men—”

  “Enough men are weak that they would,” I agreed. “I heard a story about cops in Minnesota dragging this mouthy kid into his garage and beating him so hard he never walked again. He was a little douchebag, for sure, but did he deserve not to walk again for being a prick?” I shook my head. “You’re right. This isn’t an argument anyone wants to have. It puts too many noses out of joint. And it’s something I think about a lot, as pertains to me. To my behavior.”

  “I like that you can see it, though,” Chandler said, pointing a finger at me. “You said you didn’t have to justify yourself to me, and that’s true. But not going to lie, I’d be terrified of you if you did the things you’d done and weren’t as self-aware as you are of the lines you cross. Because that’s power without any accountability. Or humility, really. And that’s...frightening.”

  “I’ve seen that,” I said. “Worse than me. So much worse than me. I think a lot of people who criticize me see that as my endgame, maybe. ‘Sure, she’s killing sex traffickers today, but what if her moral line shifts and suddenly little old lady shoplifters are fair game?’”

  “‘Then the thievin’ old bitches clearly had it coming,’ your staunchest defenders would say.” Chandler wore a ridiculous grin.

  I broke out laughing, then cut it off suddenly. “That...shouldn’t be funny. But it is.”

  He had dancing laughter in his eyes. “It really is.” He gestured to the nachos. “Come on. Let’s talk about something better and happier, huh?”

  “I like that plan,” I said, scooping up a nacho full of brisket and cheese and sour cream and sauce and—hell, everything—and shoving it in my mouth. I couldn’t entirely put aside the feeling of malaise that had come over me in the wake of my conversation with Chalke, but I damned sure tried as I chowed down at that table in Puckett’s.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Brance

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Brance said, following Jules down the sidewalk in downtown Nashville. He was looking around worriedly, sure someone was going to see him.

  They were on 5th Avenue downtown, between Broadway and Commerce Street. The construction site across the street took up the whole block, but the brick building next to them seemed surprisingly small for the outsize importance it carried.

  “You need to relax, kid,” Jules said. The older man almost seemed to let it out in a growl. He was probably tired, which Brance understood totally.

  “I just don’t see how I can do this,” Brance said. He fumbled with his hands, wiping them on his jeans as he looked up at the arched windows. “I don’t—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jules said.

  Brance paused. He’d known where they were going, but...

  Now that he saw it...

  The Ryman Auditorium.

  The former home of the Grand Ole Opry. The Mother Church of Country Music.

  Brance felt his mouth gape open, jaw flapping uselessly as he attempted to shut it. No good.

  Jules cast him a look. “Oh, that’s what quieted you down? I would have brought you here earlier if I thought that was the thing that’d make you stop protesting like a girl who’s all fussed about her modesty.”

  Brance frowned. What the hell did that mean? Jules didn’t explain it, instead just stepping up and opening the front door. Brance followed because...well, because following was apparently what he did now.

  The Ryman. It really was the Ryman. He’d driven past a few times, but he’d never actually been in here. The brick facade gave it an aged look, white highlights brightening it. The doors and signage looked old, but some new digital additions made it a little more modern. Regardless, a breathless feeling settled in on him, like he’d exhaled everything out of his lungs and couldn’t get it back.

  He blinked, trying to take it all in, make time slow down somehow.

  Here he was, though. At the Ryman.

  If only his granddaddy and grandmaw could see him now. How many times had he watched the Opry with them? Every Saturday night he’d been at their house when he was a kid, which was plenty. Sure, it had moved on to its own theater by then, but still...this place had real significance. It was a part of tradition that wove into his own past.

  “Impressive,” Jules said, beckoning him forward, through the door, which was held open by Gil. Down the aisle they went, Brance unable to say anything. The seating was pews, like a church. The stage was curtained, but Brance had a brief vision of himself standing there...

  Jules was nodding his head. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

  “I...” Brance started to say.

  How many legends had performed on that stage? How many had launched their career trajectories upward from here?

  He covered his mouth, unable to hold back his awe at the sight of this place.

  Jules turned around to favor him with a look of pure amusement. “I don’t know, kid, what do you think?” He shot a long look at that stage, that legendary stage. “You think you want to do some singing from up there? Or nah?”

  “Tonight?” Brance asked, those reservations about hurting others fading in the sight of his dream.

  “Tonight,” Jules said. “
I’ve got a very special guest list in mind, and Leo is already working on it.” He checked his phone. “Oh. Looks like it’ll be very well attended.”

  Brance could sing from that stage. To real, live people.

  What the hell else had he ever wanted as badly as this?

  All he had to do...was keep this...other thing...under control.

  How hard could that be?

  “Tonight,” Brance said, and saw Jules smile out of the corner of his eye. Tonight.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Sienna

  “You know what really bothers me about all this?” I kept my hands firmly on the wheel as I steered the car on I-65 North, heading back toward Nashville. “I went up to the door of that sex trafficker house and knocked, playing all drunk, and the jerkoff that answered?” I paused for comedic effect. “He didn’t even try and sex traffic me.” I swept a hand over my tank-topped and braided self. “I mean, look at me. Do I not look like a ripe, Gen Z runaway to you?”

  Chandler, poised and waiting for what he must have thought was going to be a deep, profound, case-related clue, took a second to realize what I’d done. He cocked his head, then his mouth went slightly agape, and finally he let out a snort and broke out in a laugh. He shoved his hand in front of his face and cut it off a moment later. “That...uhm...that shouldn’t have been funny.” After he got control of himself, he let out a low whistle. “You like the dark humor, don’t you?”

  I didn’t quite hold in a smile of my own. “I live in the darkness, Chandler. If I didn’t laugh there, I wouldn’t laugh at all. Especially lately.”

  We cruised along the green-lined freeway, trees blurring by on either side. To our right, that bizarre, pyramidal radio antenna came back into view, and I pointed at it. “What’s that, Mr. Tourist Guide?”

  “What, you expect me to know every random object on the side of the road around here?” Chandler asked, sounding vaguely offended. After a short pause, he chuckled. “Actually, I do know what it is. That is the broadcast antenna for WSM 650 AM radio, which is the original home—and still to this day broadcasts—the Grand Ole Opry. It has a historical landmark sign on it and everything.”