Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  The GPS guided us to a house in the middle of sprawling suburbia. Houses built in the sixties, seventies and eighties stretched as far as the eye could see when I came down for my landing, in the middle of the day, as fast as I could, Scott holding tightly to me so we could minimize our chance of being seen and photographed together. Probably wouldn’t look good for the head of my task force to get photographed, you know, being carried by the subject of his womanhunt.

  I hovered in the branches of an old tree, the boughs thick enough to shield us from sight as we both scanned the street for anyone watching. No one was around, the kids presumably in school and adults at work, and the weather was probably a little above fifty; not really the temperature preferred by most.

  “I think we’re good,” Scott said, peering through the branches, looking for motion. Other than a squirrel we’d scared the hell out of when we came down, I hadn’t seen any movement at all.

  We set down on the lawn and brushed ourselves off. “Not sure TSA wouldn’t have been better,” Scott said, opening and closing his jaw, probably trying to pop his ears.

  “I could give you a quick grope to simulate the experience, if it’d make you feel better,” I quipped without thinking that one through. I turned away to avoid his reaction and pulled a twig out of the collar of my blouse.

  “Not sure ‘better’ is the word I’d use to describe the effect of a grope,” Scott said under his breath as we walked across the slightly soggy lawn toward the front door. Apparently they’d experienced either some rain or melting snow recently.

  I reached out and rang the bell, taking a moment to fix up my hair, but also let it fall over my eyes in a version of the formerly popular Rachel hairdo. It was jet black right now, because I’d brought a wig with me when I’d dropped off my luggage somewhere on the east coast of Florida. Scott noticed my motion and eyed me warily. “What?” I asked.

  “It’s a good color on you,” he said, and I knew he was lying because—hell, I slept with the man for a year and vacuumed up all his memories of our relationship.

  I didn’t press it, though, and a few seconds later the door opened a crack and an older lady peered out. She wore big glasses, looked to be an inch or two shorter than me, and had that shuffle that seemed to come with advanced age and lessened activity. By looking at her I would have put her in her early seventies. “Yes?” she asked.

  “Ms. Randall,” Scott said, stepping forward and flipping open his leather FBI ID wallet, “I’m Agent Byerly with the FBI, and this is Agent Nelson,” he inclined his head toward me. “We’re here to talk to you about your granddaughter.”

  “Oh, come in,” she said, immediately making way for us. The door opened on a long hallway that was covered on both sides with cross-stitched pictures of various things. I saw one of a very blocky, almost pixelated cat. Another, of the state of Ohio with various landmarks stitched in, sort of leapt out at me as I stepped into the house’s entryway ahead of Scott.

  Grandma Randall shut the door behind us with all her strength, which resulted in the door making the burping sort of noise a Tupperware makes. She clicked the heavy padlock and paced past us, heading down the hall toward a kitchen I could see ahead. To our left sat a formal living room that looked like it hadn’t seen use in years, and she stopped halfway down the hall and then shuffled back toward us. “I was going to get you something to drink, but I suppose I should help you find a place to sit, first—”

  “We’re fine—” Scott started.

  “I’m parched, something to drink would be great,” I said, drawing a sour look from him. “But really, we can just follow you and talk,” I added, to get the conversational aspect of our visit back on track. I knew Scott’s worry, and it wasn’t that Ms. Randall would run. It was that she’d take forever in the kitchen while we sat in the living room and stared at each other awkwardly.

  “All right,” she said, and turned around, painfully slowly, to head toward the kitchen again. We passed a couple of doors to bedrooms that were partially pulled to, keeping us from looking around inside. Yet. Either Scott or myself was destined to pull the old, “Can I use your bathroom?” trick, which we would invariably use to snoop around the house for incriminating evidence on June’s life before going on the run.

  We followed a few steps behind Ms. Randall as she moved toward the kitchen at a glacial pace, trading a look that said we were thinking the same thing: we didn’t trust ourselves to get too close for fear we might just run her over.

  She finally made it about halfway down the cross-stitch-covered hallway where it split out into the kitchen or continued as a hall into what looked like a bathroom. We veered into the kitchen, where we were treated to a decorating scheme right out of the eighties. Green cabinets, white laminate counters, and a modern fridge—stainless steel, probably replaced in the last decade—setting up a hell of clash in styles. Personally, I was rooting for the eighties to win, mostly because after I left, I would never have to see this gaudy shit ever again.

  Ms. Randall hobbled to the fridge and opened it. “I have tea, and Diet Coke, and water, of course … I can put on some coffee …” Her voice echoed out from the depths of the modern fridge as the cooling engine kicked on to replace some of the cold air as she parked herself in the opening.

  “Water is fine for me,” I said as Scott continued to study the room. There was a long counter that made way for an old, electric stove with heating coils that snaked across the cook top. Cabinets overhung almost every surface. They were built low, obscuring the pass-through into the dining room I could see beyond. It was dark in there, and somewhere off to the right, I suspected, was Ms. Randall’s sitting room, because it was clear when I passed it that the formal living room wasn’t getting much use. “Can I use your bathroom?” I asked, figuring I’d just cut straight to it while Scott waited for her to finish getting drinks.

  Scott, wise to my ruse, shot me another irritated look. You snooze, you lose, bucko.

  “Certainly,” Ms. Randall warbled, closing the refrigerator door and halting all progress, which caused Scott to sigh, almost inaudibly, at the knowledge that I’d just screwed him over and locked him into talking to her while she fetched drinks. “It’s down the hall here,” she pointed around the corner back toward where the hallway continued from the entry.

  “Thanks,” I said, and darted off with a smirk at Scott that caused him to twitch a little. “Remember, I wanted a water.” And I disappeared around the corner.

  “What was your name again?” I heard Ms. Randall ask as I left.

  “Agent Byerly,” Scott said in the slightly louder way that people used around those who don’t fully comprehend them, as though yelling it at her might make her remember it better.

  I escaped back into the dark, cross-stitch-covered walls and was greeted with a picture of a vase filled with flowers, but, you know, cross-stitched. I had to give Ms. Randall credit, though; she’d used different colors of thread to give the flowers some shading, which rendered the whole thing a little blocky but still kind of neat. Not the sort of thing I’d hang on my wall in a million years—not that I had walls at this point—but still. I respected the skill.

  I didn’t even bother going to the bathroom. I skipped it and went straight for the nearest bedroom door, dipping inside and closing it before I turned on the light. When I flipped the switch, I knew immediately I had the wrong room.

  How, you ask?

  Why, because of the smell, which was heavy with the scent of cloth and thread, and because there was sewing stuff EVERYWHERE.

  An old black Singer sewing machine that looked like it had been through every year of Ms. Randall’s life with her sat in the corner, and quilt racks lined with (presumably) her compositions hung on one of the walls. Cross-stitch patterns occupied another table, along with the little blocky pattern thingies that one used when making them. My mother had decided we should take up cross-stitch as a hobby at one point in my early teenage years, figuring it might be a good way to keep me
more occupied in my forced incarceration in our home. I hadn’t realized she had superior metahuman dexterity at the time, and I still had a hard time believing it now, given exactly how many times she’d pricked her fingers and sworn during the week that she’d attempted that hobby. I’d laughed a lot during that time, and learned a few new swear words that were now part of my regular vocabulary.

  Good times.

  I gave the room a last glance, and stumbled on the corner she’d evidently dedicated to crochet. Sweet fancy Moses, was there a thread-based hobby this woman didn’t have?

  Turning out the lights, I opened the door and crept out, down the hall toward the bathroom. I was ready to gamble on the next door being the one, but listened carefully for Scott and Ms. Randall, just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything important, like her strangling him.

  “Would you like some orange juice?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, and I could tell by the strain in his voice he was trying to be polite and still succeeding, but barely.

  “Tea?”

  “Uh … no. Again. I’m fine.”

  “… I have some Diet Sprite in the garage refrigerator.”

  Chuckling madly to myself, I kept on down the hall and opened the next door, the one right next to the bathroom. It was so far off the kitchen, I didn’t bother to wait before flipping the light.

  Bingo.

  I found myself in the room of a teenage girl, one replete with posters for girls soccer, a desk in the corner cluttered with old school yearbooks, and a layer of dust that indicated nothing in the place had seen use in quite some time.

  There probably wasn’t anything seriously incriminating here, but I wanted to give it a good look over, just in case, so I slid open the closet door and moved the clothes on the rack. There weren’t many; presumably June had packed most of her crap and taken it with her when she’d cleared out. I made a mental note to ask about the circumstances of her departure, especially since Grandma Randall hadn’t asked us yet why we were here, and didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to, either.

  There wasn’t anything of particular interest in the top of the closet; a couple old shoe boxes filled with notes that looked like they’d been passed back and forth in high school. The content was about what you’d expect: “Oh, Jessie, you’re so my BFF.” “You’re my BFF, too!” scrawled in return. Plainly, they’d lacked cell phones with which to exchange these oh-so-important missives. There were also a couple letters from a guy named Jackson that had red-pen drawn hearts all over them in the same flowery hand that was evident in the other letters. I wondered if she’d gotten these letters back when she and Jackson had done their inevitable and probably drama-laden break-up.

  I rifled through the desk and found the usual mishmash of pens, old tape, paperclips and assorted crap. It had all been picked over a while ago, I suspected, either when June left or sometime shortly thereafter, judging by the thin layer of dust on everything. The desk had a pure white, laminate surface and looked like it could be tilted so that someone could draw on it, but based on the fact that there was no sign it had been used thus even before she’d left, I had to guess June wasn’t much of a drawer or drafter.

  There was a dust shadow in the shape of a square that suggested June probably had a laptop computer she’d taken with her. Not surprising, really. I thumbed through the yearbooks, and it took me a second to realize that the “K.I.T!” scrawled next to a lot of the signatures probably meant, “Keep in touch.” Which led me to wonder if she had, because that would make things easier.

  If she had a laptop, June probably had a cell phone. That was an avenue we needed to pursue, because with FBI resources behind us, tracking her cell phone down was probably one of the easiest ways to find her. Case over, et voila.

  On the other hand … maybe I should hold back on that one, since I didn’t necessarily want this case to end just yet.

  I stood in the middle of the room, thigh brushing against the bed, and had a thought. When had June manifested her toxic powers? I hadn’t found any evidence of a diary, which would have been a hell of a boon because diaries gave insight into how a person thought. If she kept a diary regularly, she probably would have brought it with her, but … maybe not. And if she’d manifested before she left, it was possible that I could get some keen insight from it. Otherwise I would probably have to go talk to her friends, because what teenage girl shares much of anything with her grandmother, let alone the fact that she’s going through an unexpected, superpowered metamorphosis?

  Stooping low, I lifted the skirt of the bed to peer beneath it. There wasn’t anything down there except a couple soccer balls that were just as dusty as the rest of the room, so I lifted the mattress.

  Bonanza! But not the kind I could really use, because it was just a couple of nudie-dude mags. I thumbed through them, just in case she’d hidden a diary in their pages, but alas, all I saw were amply muscled, oiled-up, well-hung men. Drat.

  Soft footsteps and a coughing fit from Scott jarred me out of my search just as I was replacing the naughty magazines under the mattress. Wouldn’t want to deprive June of her entertainment on the off chance she survived this and the stretch in prison she was looking at for multiple robberies. Those dude mags might come in handy in there.

  “Are you quite finished?” Grandma Randall asked from outside the door.

  “Almost,” I said, adjusting the mattress as she opened the door. I was shameless, because when you’re caught snooping, any excuse you use just sounds lame. “Unless you know where she keeps a secret diary.”

  Scott appeared behind Grandma Randall, eyes narrow with irritation, either at my being caught or at me sticking him with her for the last several minutes. “I don’t know how she heard you,” he said, by way of apology. “The clatter in the kitchen was crazy.”

  “I do,” I said, staring right at Grandma Randall. She stared right back. “You’re a meta, aren’t you?”

  “For a few centuries longer than you have been, dear,” Mrs. Randall said, flinty gaze not betraying a hint of give, “or should I say … Ms. Nealon.”

  12.

  June

  “It’s going to be okay,” June said, putting her hand on Ell’s thigh and squeezing the denim jeans that covered his leg. Sun streamed in through the car windows as they sat there, him trying to work up the resolve to go through with this, and her trying to coax him. It was no use badgering him hard, not now. She’d gotten too close to the edge with him earlier, and there was the faintest hint of guilt and remorse tugging at the back of her mind for how she’d slapped him.

  Push him again now, too hard, and he might break, or run, and she didn’t want either of those things. However mad he made her during his moments of alternating weakness and willfulness, in almost all the others he made her happy, and she wanted that immensely.

  Ell was breathing quickly, sounding like he wasn’t all that far from a panic attack, and said, “You promise, right? No one gets hurt? No one gets killed?”

  “Scout’s honor,” June said, holding up her right hand. “We’ll do this clean. We just need getaway money, and as long as no one interferes with us … we’re golden.”

  He stopped, his heaving chest slowing. “What’s going to happen if someone does … interfere?”

  “We’ll hurt them only as much as it takes to put them down, get them out of the way,” she said. This was what he wanted, this was what she would try to do. “But you’re just obsessing about this, and you know most of the time no one even sticks a head up during our robberies. They cower. Because people are cowards.” She patted his leg again, then let her hand linger, trying to give him a different kind of motivation. “You need to think about the cool parts of this. We’re bank robbers. It’s like—like Heat—”

  “That didn’t end well for the robbers …”

  “Okay, so … it’s like Pulp Fiction. Remember, bae?” She leaned in toward him. “We watched that on your iPad. You loved it.”

  He screwed up his
face in concentration. “That heist didn’t go so well, either.”

  June felt her patience start to wane. “Yeah, but it was cool the whole time. And that one didn’t go well because they robbed a place where two mob enforcers were eating. I doubt there are any mob enforcers making a deposit here in—” She glanced at the sign of the bank. “What is this town again?”

  “Uhm,” Ell closed his eyes to think. “Merritt Island, I think it’s called.”

  “Whatever,” June pronounced. “I don’t think any mob enforcers are going to be making bank deposits in Merritt Island, Florida this afternoon, coincidentally just as we’re robbing this place.” She rubbed his thigh. “Come on. We can do this. In and out in five minutes.” A joke occurred to her, but she withheld it because she wanted to pump him up, not deflate him.

  “Okay,” Ell said, nodding once. This was as ready as she’d get him.

  She got out of the car and he matched her motion on the other side. She straightened her tank top, looking around casually but not too casually. They were wearing sunglasses but no other disguises, because … why bother?

  They were metas. The world was their oyster. And the money in this place? It was theirs for the taking.

  June led the way, up to the squat, concrete building. It was so bland, so blank, and she threw open the door to the small alcove of a lobby where the ATM stood. She had an idea right there. They needed a pry bar, because they always passed these ATMs that were just filled with cash, but it wasn’t like they could claw in with just their hands. A good pry bar, though? They could probably pop it open on their way out, and it’d take thirty seconds with their meta strength and provide a nice little bonus haul to what they’d get out of the bank itself.

  As she breezed in the door, June looked around for a guard. None in sight; the bank was pretty open, a nice, wide field of vision from the teller counters to the cubicle desks where the bankers approved or disapproved loans as their hearts desired. She sneered at them, adjusting her sunglasses self-consciously. People played such funny little games with their lives. Sheep. Suckers. June didn’t want to be one of those, always on the mercy of other people. Her grandmother had always talked about fitting in, blending in with the normals.