Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11)

by Robert J. Crane

  Harmon chuckled, and again it was so strange to hear his laughter channeled through Scott. “I met him, you know. Sovereign. A man thousands of years old, desperate for love, someone who wanted his mommy to hold him.” He sneered. “I harbor no such weakness.”

  “Why are we talking about Sovereign?” I asked, glancing at Harry, whose eyes suddenly widened.

  “Oh, I’m just stalling you,” Harmon said, grinning with Scott’s mouth. “Only another second and—”

  The first missile came crashing through the roof, and the house exploded around me.

  64.

  Harmon

  “What a terrible conversationalist she is,” I said, shaking my head. “‘Me, me, me, me, me.’” I made a faux gagging noise.

  The house on the screen was blossoming as the drone-shot Hellfire missiles came raining down on that quaint Salt Lake neighborhood. The view was such that I could see they were tearing into the houses next door, half of each them hauled down into dust and wreckage. It was a regrettable tragedy, but necessary, in the scheme of things. Just as Mr. Byerly, Mr. Coleman, and Mr. Treston’s unfortunate demises would be—

  I blinked. Something was wrong. I could still feel Coleman, Treston and Byerly, which meant—

  “DAMN YOU,” I said, rising out of my chair in a fury I seldom felt. I forced my way back into Byerly’s mind, determined to end this one way or another—

  65.

  Sienna

  “Put ‘em down over there,” Harry ordered Colin, and Colin obliged, picking up Augustus and Reed and dragging them both around the corner at warp speed. The house was at least two blocks away now, explosions still echoing through the dawn. We were spread out over a lawn, cars moving past on the streets. People were sticking their heads out their doors all up and down the road, and we were exposed, like a butt with no pants to cover it. Colin zoomed back, picking up Scott, who was staring straight ahead like automaton, ready to carry him off away from us—

  Scott smacked Colin sideways with a blind, writhing throw of the hand, and fell to his knees. When he raised his head, Scott was wearing Harmon’s maniacal, utterly-out-of-place grin. When the house had blown up, Harmon had ditched out of Scott’s mind and he’d keeled over, making it easier for Colin to zoom us all out of there in an eyeblink. Colin had even saved the surviving members of the Revelen squad, though he’d had the decency not to bring them anywhere near us when he set them down. I couldn’t decide whether I approved or not, but he’d moved too fast for me to really make a choice. It was done, and I hoped wouldn’t have to kill them later, because I was pretty tired of those guys already.

  “I can see that I’m going to have to take the kid gloves off,” Scott said in Harmon’s voice. “I’ve been too nice about this—”

  “Oh, that was nice, droning neighborhoods filled with innocent people?” I asked, staring right at him.

  “It’s as nice as I get,” Harmon said, and Scott lurched upright. “Did you ever realize what happened to Edward Cavanagh?” Scott leered, and suddenly his eyes pitched up, as though someone had grabbed him and wrenched his head back.

  “No!” I lunged forward, throwing out a hand. I needed to get to Scott, though I had no idea what I’d do when I was there. I didn’t have the power to kill a telepath, not from this distance, and I couldn’t just—

  Not kill, Bjorn said in my head, but perhaps distract for a moment—

  “Yesss,” I whispered, and unleashed the Norseman.

  Bjorn’s power was the war-mind, and he loosed the mental attack on Scott, who was already making a choking sound from what Harmon was doing to him. On his knees, Scott was jerking, insensate, but the moment the war-mind hit, his entire mien changed.

  Scott screamed sharply, clearly in pain, but no longer mute with it. It was something almost physical, and it started as Harmon’s voice, just briefly, then died as Scott’s own took over. He clawed at the asphalt pavement, his fingers coming up bloody and then tracing across his scalp and cheeks, leaving trails of crimson that glistened in the dawn’s light. His eyes rolled up, and then caught mine.

  “Help me,” Scott moaned, and then his eyes rolled up again as Harmon seized control once more.

  “That was annoying,” Harmon’s voice overpowered Scott’s, and I knew my gambit had failed. “Now watch me—”

  “Nope!” Harry shouted, and I looked back in time to see him riding on Colin’s shoulders as the speedster zoomed over to me, scooped me up in his arms, and before I could protest—wail, scream, fight back, anything—he shot off down the street, leaving Scott in the clutches of President Gerry Harmon …

  To die.

  66.

  Scott

  The pain was exquisite, head-bursting. The ravens had come and brought a spell of relief in the form of their own agony—Scott had an aunt, Judy, who had visited that particular torment on him once or twice when she’d lost her temper—and then Harmon had reasserted himself, shoving his way back into Scott’s brain like he’d rammed a hand in through the ear canal.

  Death was now sure, death was now certain, and it would come as a sweet relief after all that had happened. Harmon’s voice coming through his throat, his lips had been like scourging fire sweeping through his brain and out his voicebox and mouth. He could feel the president’s grip on his brain tightening as he squeezed, blood vessels reacting to the pressure. It would build and build, feeling like it would be eternal, but he knew it would not last forever.

  Sooner or later, the blood vessel walls would fail, would rupture, and his head would experience a glorious explosion within. He’d stroke out and drop, his muscles losing all control, his body forgetting to breathe in the catastrophe of the damage. He almost couldn’t remember to breathe now, the pain was so great—

  Sienna’s face was there, and he could see it—like an angel in the light, like a monster when his view changed and she seemed to fall in shade. She was the crux of the problem, the solution to it, and she was reaching out for him. He feared and longed for her touch, knowing it brought death and perhaps, somehow, salvation.

  But it didn’t last. She disappeared in a blur, just a flash and she was gone, monster and hero disappeared from his view. Scott fell, face down, President Harmon still clawing at the back of his head, ready to release the pressure in his brain in one glorious blast that would surely—thank heavens—lead him into death.

  67.

  Harmon

  I almost killed him right there. Byerly, I mean. I certainly wanted to, even after she was gone. She probably assumed I did. Now that she was aware of my control over his mind, I’d essentially inflicted almost maximum damage. Killing him in front of her was the last thing I could do to torture her, and unfortunately, her compatriots—the Speedster and that other man—knew it. Quick thinking on their parts, getting her out of there.

  I let him go. Well, I let the killing pressure go, anyway. I held onto Byerly’s brain, because he was still the head of my FBI task force, even in his somewhat reduced condition.

  I sagged back in my chair in the Situation Room. “What am I going to do about you?” I asked, peering loosely into Byerly’s thoughts. Until recently his mind had been a well-organized place; if you pictured it as a long hall covered on both sides by filing cabinets, it had once been all in order. Every file in its place, and I knew where they all were. It had been easy to manage him then, when he didn’t know I was inside, peeking around, adding a few files here and there as needed to give him motivation in the appropriate directions.

  Now he was aware of my presence. Aware and aggravated, as though I was the one who’d fiddled with the files to begin with. Now the cabinets were upended, some fallen over into the aisle, others with their contents simply strewn over the floors. It was unfortunate, but it was also a product of me reaching my limits.

  I was so very sick of my limits.

  I pushed the button on my phone, holding tightly to Byerly’s mind. “Ms. Krall, would you be so kind as to tell the girl in my office to join me in
the situation room?”

  There was a short pause. “I—there’s no girl in your office, sir—”

  “Yes, there is,” I reached out and brushed her mind, telling her that there was nothing unusual about this. Keeping Cassidy in the White House without anyone noticing or commenting had been a fairly easy thing to do for me. I anticipated that if I had to maintain an iron grip on Mr. Byerly, it would perhaps not be so easy in the near future.

  “Ah, uh … yes … sir …” Ms. Krall went off to do the job I’d asked of her. I didn’t have to push her like this, usually. I must have been slipping.

  I sighed. Jana would surely waiting outside the Situation Room as well, on call in case I needed her. I probably would soon. I stared at the screen, and spoke to the speakerphone after taking myself off mute. “Are you tracing the movement of that speedster?”

  “Yes, sir,” the nameless colonel said. “We’ve got him. He’s in downtown Salt Lake City, and we’ve got him—uh … uh …”

  I closed my eyes. “Your report, colonel?”

  “They’ve … entered a local Starbucks, sir,” he said.

  “Good,” I said and readied myself to dive back into Byerly’s mind so I could get this done properly. “Let’s finish this.”

  68.

  Sienna

  At Harry’s orders, Colin stopped at a Starbucks and we all went inside, casually smoothing our air-ruffled clothes. I smelled smoky but not burnt, which was a plus, but it had still felt weird being carried like a bride by a guy, especially one traveling at several hundred miles per hour on foot.

  Colin must have done a lot of cardio, because he wasn’t even breathing hard when we bopped into the Starbucks. I was dressed in scuffed-up jeans and a worn-out hoodie that Harry had apparently dressed me in, my mohawk on plain display now that I’d pulled my hoodie back. He’d even brought a pair of crappy boots that were pretty much my style. Harmon and company knew about my new look now, but odds were the general public didn’t, which was the only advantage in our favor. “Here,” Harry said, and offered me a pair of glasses that weren’t too far off from the ones I’d been wearing for the last month.

  I put on the glasses and found one of the lenses cracked. I flicked it out into one of those dome-topped trash cans, scoring a nice two-pointer by swishing it straight through the top. “Nothing but net,” I pronounced as I navigated overcrowded tables with young professionals typing away, mostly on Apple products, their coffees and Chai teas steaming in front of them.

  “Should we order something?” Colin asked, a little nervously. He was wearing running pants—no surprise—along with a matching wick-away top, and his hair was long enough to get in his eyes. He would have looked just as normal in a beanie cap and a vest, or whatever hipsters in Seattle wore nowadays.

  “What?” Harry shook out of a daze to look at him. Our resident Cassandra was dressed in a slightly more classic style—a rumpled dress shirt that looked like he’d slept in for a week, khaki trousers with as many wrinkles as Harry probably would have had if he’d aged like a normal person, and scuffed-up dress shoes that looked like they’d been bought at a low-end department store. He wore a belt that was one of those woven leather ones worn by men in the seventies or possibly before. I wasn’t alive then, so I couldn’t be sure. “No, we’re not ordering anything.”

  “I’m hungry,” Colin said plaintively. “It takes a lot of calories to do what I do, you know?”

  “Steal something, then, but make it quick,” Harry said, mostly ignoring him as he answered. “We’re heading out the back in two minutes.” He swiped a coffee cup off an abandoned table and handed it to me.

  “I’m not drinking that—” I started to say.

  “Hold it as a prop, and ditch the hoodie,” he said. “Leave it in the garbage in the ladies’ room.” He rattled the cup at me. “Go. Now.”

  “Fine,” I flounced away, taking the cup and heading for the women’s room. I rolled my eyes as I disappeared inside. I quickly crammed my hoodie into the trash can, which left me sporting a sleeveless tee that exposed a little cleavage. I stared at myself in the mirror for a second, appalled, and not for the first time since I’d done this changeup. I had it in mind to go with something frumpier next time. Maybe a nice full-length frock. Or one of those Mormon girl dresses. Those would cover me nicely, though they’d probably look slightly out of place wherever I landed next.

  I came out of the bathroom to find Harry and Colin waiting for me, lingering like perverts just outside. Harry had a coffee cup of his own now, and a newspaper. “All right, here’s what we do—”

  “Did he get food?” I asked, pointing to Colin.

  “Yeah, I got a few cold things out of the case out front,” Colin said uneasily. “Not proud of it, though. Shoplifting is beneath me.”

  “Yeah, no, you should totally leave fingerprints and a credit card trail for the government to find,” Harry said. “Wouldn’t want Sienna here to suffer the only consequences of these crimes.”

  Colin stared straight ahead. “I left fingerprints at the house—”

  “It got blown up, remember?” Harry waved him off.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that was gonna happen,” Colin said, frowning. “And you didn’t make me wear gloves at any point—”

  “I see short term, not long,” Harry said, sounding like he was annoyed with this line of inquiry. “Get out that door in the next ten seconds, or start planning how you’re going to fight your way out of a full encirclement. You walk with Nealon, I follow along two blocks behind you and a street over.” He leaned in close to both of us, peering past just to make sure no one was listening. I checked too; they weren’t. “Follow my instructions, walk arm in arm, and you’ll make it to the rendezvous point, ninety percent certain.”

  “Wait, what—what’s the ten percent uncertainty?” Colin asked.

  “You get handsy with her, it gets bad,” Harry said, causing me to shoot a laser look at Colin, who blushed. “Oh, the odds just improved nine and a half percent, as if by magic,” Harry deadpanned. “Go. I’ll be behind shortly. Arm in arm, but … you know, politely. For your health.” And he gave us a shove out the door.

  “Were you really thinking about getting handsy with me?” I asked as we walked along, Colin’s sleeved arm locked in my bare one. It was chilly, wind whipping through the streets of Salt Lake City, which was waking up.

  “To add to the cover!” Colin said, a little too quickly. “I think it would have, uh, given depth to the role that we’re, uh, playing—”

  “Just hang on to my arm, Cassanova,” I said, and walked up the block as Harry had suggested.

  This part of town looked as though it was torn between antiquity and modernity. Next to old brick buildings stood sleek, modern ones with glass-and-sandstone facades. I suspected a lot of renovation was going on, but I didn’t have time to indulge my curiosity by stopping and studying the architecture. Not that I would have even if I hadn’t been walking down the street arm-in-arm with an apparently handsy speedster while the government was pursuing me.

  The block passed quickly, buildings giving way to a park as we strolled, arm in arm, Colin slightly twitchy at the low speed, along the street. I saw Harry pop out on the corner ahead, casually waiting for the crosswalk symbol to go green, which it did almost as soon as we arrived.

  “Fancy meeting you two here,” he said as we caught up to him. He kept his head down and cleared his throat. “Stay back at least ten feet from me. We’re going into this parking garage up ahead.”

  “What then?” I asked, looking around to make sure no one was around to hear us. A couple people were across the street, but no one was in earshot.

  “We’re going to steal a car and get the hell out of town,” he said, and disappeared suddenly as he changed direction and entered a glass-fronted door to the garage.

  The garage was expansive and looked like it served both a residential building as well as public parking. I thought that was odd, but admittedly I didn’
t know squat about municipal parking. I was used to the suburbs, where there was abundant land and you parked in any lot you wanted for free. In cities, where space was at such a premium, I’d seen the signs proclaiming hour parking, extortionate rates, and all that fun stuff. I avoided the hassle whenever possible by flying.

  I sighed. I didn’t think I’d be doing much flying for a while, not with AMRAAM missiles greeting me every time I went aloft lately.

  Harry led us up to the second floor, where he walked down the line of vehicles, looking at each in turn and muttering so low that only meta ears could hear him. “No,” he said, shaking his head at a Chevy Volt.

  “But it’s so eco-efficient,” Colin said mournfully.

  “Fancy being pulled over in Provo?” He glanced back. “No? We’re going with something less likely to cause the owner to immediately file a stolen vehicle report. Something like …” He walked down the line five more cars. “… This,” he pronounced, stopping before a Chrysler 300C.

  Colin’s face fell. “Oh, man.”

  “In we get,” Harry said, walking over to the door and opening it. I blinked; man, people must have been honest in Utah, because that was the kind of stupid you couldn’t get away with in most cities. I let Colin take shotgun cuz he was taller than I was, and I squeezed into the back seat as Harry fumbled under the dashboard. “You know, this used to be easier,” he said, staring hard at a bundle of wiring. “Alas.” He ripped three wires apart and started crossing them until the car honked the alarm once and then started without further protest. “This will get us as far as Idaho Falls.” He brought the long, silvery beast into motion and headed for the exit. “We can get the plane to meet us there, I think.”