Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11)

by Robert J. Crane

  I escaped the apartment complex and debated breaking into flight. I might have gotten away, too, but there was a chance she could have seen me, and that wouldn’t do me much good, either. The last thing I needed was stupid Sandra shouting that some girl had flown away from her last night. It wasn’t like the US was replete with flying girls, after all. It was pretty much just me, and so that would throw up a flag for law enforcement agencies that would tumble them to my hideyhole here in a flash.

  “Shit,” I said, making it about halfway through the rear parking lot before I stopped, resigned. I had a lot of options, but most of them I deemed pretty bad: beat the shit out of Sandra—bad. Fly away from Sandra—bad. Cause an extreme ruckus—bad. Burn her body to ash before she could so much as scream—probably bad. It was hard to say on that one.

  I looked at the windows of the apartment complex. No lights were on, which meant hopefully Sandra and I hadn’t woken anyone yet with our little confrontation. I took a few more steps backward, toward where the complex’s dumpsters waited, open, bugs buzzing under the light poles.

  I sighed. I’d come up with a lot of bad options, and had settled on what I deemed the least bad one. It was definitely the most humiliating, though, especially for me, but also the path of least resistance.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to … step on your Kool-Aid or whatever,” I said, holding up both hands in surrender. “He’s all yours—”

  Sandra was drunk, and she telegraphed her punch. I could have dodged it even if I’d been blind drunk, or just blind. But I didn’t. I took it right to the cheek, the unsatisfying sound of her knuckles slapping against my bone causing my head to whip around. I put a little extra gusto into it, playing it like it was worse than it actually was. I took a knee, too, and rolled my eyes in the darkness when I knew she couldn’t see it.

  “Haha, I’ll show you!” Sandra crowed. She followed with a slap-punch, the kind of thing that would have made me yawn if I wasn’t playing dead. One of her rings dug into my scalp as her knuckles cracked against the bone at the top of my head. She grunted in pain because the hit had been terrible—probably worse for her than for me, not that I cared.

  I put on a frightened face and looked up at her. I teared up a little, too, but not from pain. My pride was stinging like someone had dumped this freshly opened wound into a vat of alcohol. “Please,” I said, trying to make it sound like I was begging.

  “You ain’t nothing but trash,” Sandra said and grabbed me by the hair. She yanked me halfway to my feet and I went along with it, trying to remember that murdering stupid people was naughty and not entirely satisfying. She punched me again, though it was more of a poke, in the side, and I folded a little, but kept walking as she tried to drag me toward the dumpsters. I rolled my eyes again, seething inside, and decided that no one would go entirely willingly and without a fight into this, so I gave her a little tap to the face with my open palm.

  Her eyes blazed from the hit, anger rolling off her in equal measure with the drunk and the crazy, and she breathed whiskey breath right in my face as she jerked my hair hard. I was suddenly not so happy I had the mohawk, because it was a real tight pull, all her strength concentrated on the ponytail line across my scalp rather than spreading the force out over the entire thing. “You hit like a bitch,” she slurred. “Hell, you are one. Trashy little bitch.”

  I kept my insults—and there were oh so many—to myself, controlling my tongue as I took this humiliation. I made mewling noises to cover the rage-filled words I wanted to sputter instead. “Please …” I said again.

  “In you go, trash!” And she half-shoved, half-pushed me, trying to get me into the dumpster. It didn’t go so well because I was not light, and she was really drunk. I sighed at this indignity, and heaved myself into the dumpster, figuring it would be easier than punching her skull into Jello and reaping whatever consequences followed.

  I landed in a pile of trash bags that were not entirely filled with soft things and lay there, staring up at the bugs buzzing in the light overhead, like tiny stars with wings swarming around the sky.

  “You just stay in there and … think about what you’ve done,” Sandra said, shaking a finger at me like an angry parent. I noticed she’d cracked a nail in the scuffle. “Yeah. You just … do that.” And she shut the lid.

  It reeked like diapers, like rotten food, like something had died in here decades ago and had never been properly expunged. I could hear Sandra’s footsteps across the parking lot as she stalked away in satisfaction, muttering to herself. “Showed … her …”

  I blew air out of my lips and almost choked on the rancid smell as I counted backwards from a hundred, hoping I’d hear Sandra’s footsteps fade out of earshot quickly. I was determined not to start another brawl with her, especially not tonight. So I lay there, in the trash, thinking about how that had happened. “Best. Month. Ever,” I said with all due sarcasm, and hoped I’d finally hit rock bottom.

  25.

  Harmon

  I studied the grainy security camera footage that Cassidy had brought up to the residence. She was standing in silence with me in the Treaty Room over a beautiful, cherry-stained desk. I could tell she was worried about my reaction as we watched Palleton Labs of Portland, Oregon, covered in a haze of dust from various angles. She zoomed in on a frame of Sienna Nealon flying off with the burden of a metal vault on her shoulders, captured from a skyline camera miles away, and I just stared.

  “Do you want any other angles?” Cassidy asked, voice quivering.

  “I think I get the point,” I said. “She stole the vault, and with it … well … you know.”

  “I didn’t know, actually,” Cassidy said quietly. “So Palleton Labs was one of the—”

  I walked past a painting of Ulysses S. Grant that hung over a leather-covered bench and sat down. “You’re a smart girl. Put it all together.”

  “I don’t … know nearly all of—”

  “Come on,” I coaxed her. “Draw conclusions. This is what you’re best at.”

  “You had an idea,” Cassidy said, starting tentatively. “But it was beyond your ability to execute.”

  “Right on one,” I said, and eyed the phone. I was tempted to summon a butler to bring me a drink. I didn’t drink much, but tonight felt like the sort of night when I might just choose to get hammered. Then again, we’d probably end up in a nuclear crisis with Russia or China, or the Middle East would end up going further to hell, and I’d be blitzed. Being president was not an easy job in that regard. I wouldn’t have relied on my VP, Richard Gondry, to drive a bread truck, let along manage a crisis. He’d been a senator from Michigan before he’d been tapped for the VP role, mostly for the sixteen electoral votes he could deliver. If he was in charge, we’d end up in a nuclear war for certain, if only because he’d use the hotline phone to Moscow to order a pizza. I sighed at not getting my drink. Forbearance. The price of leadership.

  “It required … skill you didn’t have,” Cassidy said, again speaking the obvious. “But you knew a guy—”

  “To use the parlance of our times.”

  “—a guy who could … make it happen.” She swallowed heavily. “Except he didn’t.”

  “He tried,” I said, leaning my head against the back of my seat. “He tried very hard. He had an incredible mind, too, probably one of the most genius ones on the planet, with a track record in industry to match it. The Howard Hughes of our day, but with slightly fewer strange predilections.” I sagged against the back of my familiar chair. Days in the presidency were long, and this one had been longer than most. I had been exhausted in Chicago this morning, and now I was almost ready to sag to sleep in my chair.

  “But Sienna Nealon caught him experimenting on human beings,” Cassidy said.

  “She caught him doing more than that,” I said. “Bribery, corruption, murder, cover-ups, human experimentation … Edward Cavanagh was a genius. It’s a measure of how effectively he covered his tracks that his crimes didn’t catch up to him e
arlier. The whole city of Atlanta was in love with him—hell, the whole nation.” I thought of the million photos I’d taken with the man, the millions in donations he’d provided my campaigns over the years. “Until that all came out and he became toxic. I was worried I might have to answer some uncomfortable questions, but fortunately the press didn’t dig too deep.”

  “Okay,” Cassidy said. She was speaking like she was expecting an axe to drop on her head at any moment. “But Cavanagh—”

  “Yes, Cavanagh,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “He tried. He farmed it out to others, attempting something of a cellular approach to making a breakthrough. Some of the groups came … close, I suppose. Palleton Labs had some success. There were findings, obviously, like the one in Chicago earlier this year—”

  “The one Sienna Nealon stopped?”

  “She stops everything, haven’t you figure that out yet?” I smiled weakly. “That professor in Chicago, though … he wasn’t doing the research that Cavanagh set him to. He discovered something revolutionary, true, but …”

  “Not exactly what you were looking for,” Cassidy said. “It was a plague, wasn’t it? Designed to kill every metahuman on the planet?”

  “Yes. And now Cavanagh is dead,” I said, staring at the far wall of the residence. “He was likely to break, anyway, if he hadn’t died in jail.”

  “Did you … have anything to do with that?” Cassidy asked, probing carefully.

  “You’re a smart girl,” I said, not daring answer that. I’d long ago disabled the recording devices in the White House used by the Secret Service to monitor my activities for safety purposes, but I didn’t feel any need to answer that honestly.

  Cassidy stewed in the silence for a moment. “So you think whatever Sienna took from Palleton Labs … might have held the answer we were looking for?”

  “I don’t think it was the answer, per se,” I said. “But it was a promising avenue that I would have liked you to explore.” I glared up at her. “I want it back. I want Sienna Nealon dead, too, for real this time.”

  “The Revelen squad you brought in is working on—”

  “Work with them,” I said. “I’ll give you Scott Byerly’s phone number. Whisper some suggestions in his ear. He’s pliable. He’ll listen. Make her death happen and find that vault.” I stared at her evenly. “Yes?” I gave it the force of command.

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered meekly and gathered her computer, still paused and zoomed in on Sienna Nealon, flying away with the vault on her shoulders. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Do better than that,” I said, trying to make it a threat as she left me alone with my churning, miserable thoughts – all of them focused on how best I could crush Sienna Nealon.

  26.

  Sienna

  It took a while to get the smell of garbage out of my hair, and the whole time I was washing it, I was cursing Bilson for ever opening his trap to speak to me. As interesting as the possibility of sparring with a real person or persons was, I was pretty sure it wasn’t worth the admission price of being tossed in a dumpster.

  I sat wringing the water out of my hair for a while before switching to my threadbare towels, because I hadn’t bought a hair dryer yet. (Give me a break. Wal-Mart was across town and I had to walk everywhere in Cedar City. They don’t exactly have Uber Anonymous—Wanted Fugitives Edition, y’know?) As I sat there, staring at myself and twisting my dyed locks, my eyes narrowed. Not at myself in the mirror—though I did see the look, and it worked nicely for my expert-level RBF game—but at the thoughts of Sandra. That woman was a hazard, dangerous, and I was clearly sworn to destroy such things.

  Of course, if I destroyed her, it was probably going to blow up in my face in the form of raising questions for local law enforcement, but still … she could have “disappeared” into the mountains. Maybe go for a late night flight and drop mysteriously into an isolated gorge. From two thousand feet up. Something like that. Could happen to anyone. Especially if they pissed me off.

  I sighed. Tempting as it was, I wouldn’t have killed her even if I wasn’t trying to hide. I generally matched the punishment to the threat level, and as annoying and shitty as she was, murder was an excessive punishment for her bullying. Well, it was at least a mildly outsized punishment.

  I got impatient with getting my hair dry and threw it up on top of my head in a ponytail, then put my glasses on. I picked out an ensemble that just about showed my ass cheeks out the bottom of my shorts. Not because it was weather appropriate, but because Sienna Nealon wouldn’t have been caught dead in it. I also put on something that reminded me of a German beer waitress’s top, and added a pair of suspenders just for kicks. The local Mormon girls were easy to pick out in their uniform dresses, and I’d caught more than a few of them staring at me and whispering to each other in the grocery store. I couldn’t blame them, I thought, as I stared at myself in the non-full-length mirror, then floated a few feet above the ground to consider the whole look. It wasn’t my speed, but there wasn’t a hope in hell that anyone would guess it was me.

  As I was showering the trash out of my hair, I’d thought of a plan, but I couldn’t really implement it until nightfall this evening. It didn’t have anything to do with the vault, or Harmon, or the task force, but rather with an untied loose end that was wiggling out there, somewhere. It might have been related to the others, but I couldn’t see the direct connection.

  And that loose end’s name was Cassidy Ellis.

  I had a plan of attack, but with hours to spare before I could implement it, I was reduced to menial tasks. I checked the internet as I played with my wet ponytail, then decided that yes, today would be the day I’d go to Wal-mart and get a hair dryer, among a dozen other things the nearby grocery store didn’t stock. There was really no news to speak of, so I turned off the phone and headed out the door.

  I regretted my decision to dress like I had the moment I caught the frigid-ass chill that sent goosebumps up my newly-shaven and definitely exposed legs. Apparently a cold front had moved in some time after I’d come in from the dumpster but before I’d finished scrubbing myself clean.

  “The weather turned on you, huh?” Bilson’s clear voice sounded behind me, causing me to whirl. His bald head was gleaming like a billiard ball in the crisp, cold sunlit day. “Surprise. Welcome to Utah.”

  I stared at him as he ambled toward me, wearing a windbreaker. I was feeling a little envious since I hadn’t bought a coat yet. “How do you know I’m new here?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said with a smile, “your complexion—it’s nice—”

  “You a big fan of milk white?”

  “—but it’s not quite what you end up with after a summer at this high altitude,” he said. “You know, with the desert and all. You tend to get a little more swarthy, even if you’re one-hundred-percent Irish redhead.”

  “Oh, I’m totally a redhead under all this dye,” I said, twisting my ponytail. Wait. Why was I talking to this guy again? Dammit.

  “I believe you,” he said, playing impassive. “By chance,” he said, pausing hopefully, “were you heading to my class? I know giving you the card was kinda weird and all, but … seriously … would love to give you a ride if you’re heading that way.”

  I stood there with my mouth slightly open, struck dumb. “Uhm … maybe?”

  He grinned, apparently taking that as a yes. “Awesome. Come with me.” He swept past with a spring in his step.

  I stood there for just a second as my brain tried to get on board with what had just happened. I bypassed the obvious retort, “I didn’t say yes!” because … I really did want to spar with someone, even if I had to do it at human speed. I missed it. And also, in spite of his psycho ex assaulting me, Bilson was not a bad looking guy. Quite the opposite. The shiny bald head and goatee combo was working for me. His lean, muscular figure didn’t hurt his chances, either.

  And … it had kinda been a while. Like, a month, at least. I’d been busy, but still. I was acut
ely aware of how much time had elapsed. I suppose I also should have been acutely aware that I’d left a boyfriend behind when I’d fled Minnesota, but I’d been indicted since then and had shoved him away, and he was probably being watched for contact with me, so that felt like an appropriate amount of closure. He probably wasn’t waiting for me or anything. Hell, given all the crap I’d had happen lately, he could have been helping to hunt me.

  I followed Bilson wordlessly as he led me out to the parking lot and to his car, at which point I stopped and stared. “Really?” I asked as he stood next to the driver’s seat of a grey El Camino and unlocked it manually with jangling keys.

  “You like?” He smiled again.

  “It’s like a Ford Ranger and an AMC Gremlin had sex, and nine months later this somehow got delivered unto the world,” I said, my eyes rolling over the one-row cab and short bed of the monstrosity.

  Bilson feigned wounding. Probably feigned. He smiled again a few seconds later. “See, I like the combo—I can haul stuff if need be, but I’m never forced to play taxi for my friends. It’s all win.”

  “Not sure how you call this win, but okay.” I’d seen the El Camino in the parking lot and just written it off to small town charm. You see a lot of weird things out in the country, after all. Like a girl in hipster glasses with a dyed mohawk wearing short shorts and a German beer wench’s blouse with suspenders. And ankle-high boots. Can’t forget those.

  I got in the El Camino, remembering the warning about not getting in cars with strangers about six years too late to do me any good. I fought with the seat belt, which did not want to release so I could buckle it, and finally got the damned thing to work.

  “These old cars get finicky,” Bilson said, almost an apology.