Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Easier,” Scott said tightly, “but not more dignified.” Aww, poor baby. He didn’t like being carried in my arms like a sulking toddler. “Hopefully no one here has eagle eyes like Grandma Randall,” he said, tension in his voice ratcheting up. “Otherwise this is going to get … interesting.”

  I snorted to myself. We’d stopped off at my luggage and I was wearing my redhead wig, with bangs, that made the shape of my face looked very different, especially given that I was wearing big sunglasses and makeup. I was also way, way more tanned than I’d ever been in my life, so hopefully this wouldn’t be a problem. Who looked for a fugitive masquerading as an FBI agent?

  Cops, probably. Suspicious bastards. And I say that with love, having basically been one of them.

  “I’ll just take care to stay in the background,” I said. “You be the face of this team.” Also, I’d avoid a staredown with any cops, because that could not possibly end well.

  “Or next time,” Scott said as he hauled the bank door open for me to pass through, “I just don’t bring you to crime scenes?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” I asked, stepping into the infinitely cooler lobby and straight through the open secondary door into the bank itself.

  The place was decked out like you’d expect—wooden teller desk, one of those islands in the middle that had been upended, deposit slips scattered all across the floor. Beyond that were the canvas straps that marked the line to the counter, like a theme park ride with a much more prosaic ending. I shuffled along behind Scott, having changed my usual gait to a very slow stroll, one in which I was a lot more obvious about scanning the room for threats and features of interest.

  “Hello?” Scott called out, drawing a plainclothes cop in his direction. The guy looked mid-forties, was wearing an immaculately pressed suit, and greeted us with a smile and a cursory glance. Scott flipped open his badge, and I didn’t even bother with my fake one, pretending to look over the shoulder of an evidence technician instead. “Agent Byerly, FBI. This is my associate, Rochelle Nelson.”

  “Detective Claus, Brevard County Sheriff’s office,” the man said, extending a hand. He gave Scott a polite shake, gave me a gentle one, and I resisted the urge to crush his pansy grip in mine to show dominance. Because that might give me away.

  “We’re with the metahuman unit,” Scott said, looking around instead of focusing on Detective Claus. “Got anything for us?”

  Claus wasn’t too impressed by that. “Got two perps that ran. You can have them if you can catch them.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, unable to control the overwhelming desire to snark.

  Claus smiled. “They headed west out of here, up the road there.” He pointed out the door. “That’s 520. It leads to Orlando, eventually, but there are faster ways. You know who these perps are?”

  “Probably Elliot Lefavre and June Randall,” Scott said. “A couple metas who have been working their way down the coast. Looks like they’re starting a turn back north now.”

  “They’re the ones who hit that convenience store in Melbourne?” Claus asked. “And did the attack on the beach?”

  “Right.”

  “A little more warning might have been nice,” Claus said darkly. “If you knew they were operating in the area.”

  Scott sighed. “Not my call, but … yeah.”

  Claus surveyed him pitilessly for a second before loosening up and nodding. “I hear you. Higher ups, am I right?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Scott said, giving only a little ground. “If they were heading west … what do they find if they keep going?”

  “We don’t know for sure they’re headed west,” Claus said cautiously. “West is basically the only way to go to get out of here, at least easily. This is a barrier island, so heading east just runs you into the ocean, and if you try and head north, you hit the Kennedy Space Center. If they were looking to run in a hurry, they’ll head west, but twenty minutes from here they could pick up I-95 and head north or south, or get on 528 and shave some time off if they wanted to get to Orlando or even Tampa in a hurry.”

  “We think they might try for Disney,” Scott said. “How long would that take them?”

  Claus’s eyebrow went up fast. “About an hour at a reasonable speed. Maybe a little longer if they slackass it. You might want to warn the state and the locals that they could be coming. This is the sort of thing they’re going to want to have the big guns on standby for.”

  He meant SWAT, or whatever their local equivalent was, because metas posed a special kind of danger. Also, SWAT teams were starting to get trained on dealing with metas, now that effective tactics and best training practices were starting to spread. “Crap,” Scott said.

  “All the theme parks and the law enforcement that service them have plans in place for these kind of contingencies,” Claus said humorlessly. “But their reaction time will speed up if they have advance warning.”

  Scott’s whole body was screaming tension. “I’ll talk to my boss about it.”

  I could almost see Claus tense up. “There’s a lot of kids in those parks, man. Be persuasive.” I couldn’t blame him.

  Scott nodded and shuffled away, already digging for his cell phone. He pulled it out and started to dial, but I caught the hesitation. No way did he really want to talk to Phillips, especially so soon after dealing with him. He’d faked signal loss somewhere over northern Florida just to get the asshole off the line. I could sympathize with that, having once been the sole object of Phillips’s attention.

  “What’s the deal with this?” Claus asked the moment Scott stepped away. I tried not to freeze, staring at him coolly through my glasses, waiting expectantly for him to clarify. “These meta incidents … seems like there are lot more of them happening.”

  “How would you know?” I asked with a thin smile. “The only thing the media report on is that one giant pain in the ass that hogs the headlines.”

  Claus smirked. “Yeah. But you know how we locals like to gossip. There was the thing in Orlando a couple months ago. A buddy of mine in San Francisco told me about an incident there last month … I started my career in Nebraska, and one of my old supervisors was telling me …” He shook his head, then waved a hand. “I don’t have to tell you this. You either know and you’re not allowed to say, or you don’t know, in which case …” He gave me a knowing look, and we both read to the end of the page on that one: In which case, you’re an idiot and why am I wasting my time talking to you?

  “It’s not your imagination,” I said, trying to keep about as straitlaced as you’d expect from an FBI agent. I debated whether to tell him about the serum, the artificial means by which metahuman incidents seemed to be gaining in number. Why the hell not? I didn’t work for the FBI. “There’s something new out there,” I said. “A drug that unlocks meta powers in normal humans. Someone’s circulating it. No idea who.”

  Claus’s eyebrows shot up like they were the dinger on a strength-test hammer game after I took a swing at it, almost touching his hairline. “Holy hell.”

  “Yep,” I said. “All kinds of unholy hell. More and more of it, I’d say.”

  “Hm,” Claus said, falling into silence until his radio beeped at him and started talking.

  “We have reports of suspect vehicle on 528 Westbound toward the Orange County line,” a dispatcher said under the thin crackle of radio static. “Almost to the St. Johns River.”

  “They’re about to cross into Orlando’s county,” Claus said, coming to life again after pausing to listen. “About thirty minutes from here.”

  I swore quietly. Thirty minutes’ drive, and we didn’t even have a car here. Needless to say, blowing out of here in flight would not do a lot to keep things quiet and on the down low. “Are your guys on them?”

  Claus shook his head. “We back off metas, especially when we have an idea of how much damage they can do. We’re at ‘do not engage’ on these two, except with SWAT. Especially given the mayhem they could cause on a crowded
highway.”

  “Thanks for the info,” I said, and headed off to collect Scott. “We need to go,” I said in a low voice as he paused mid-argument with Phillips. “Gotta get your car.”

  “It’s in Orlando,” he said, covering the microphone. “At the airport.”

  He looked less than thrilled at the prospect. “Give me a minute.”

  “This could take all day,” I said, nodding at his phone.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, looking around the mess in the bank. Paper deposit slips were everywhere; Scott had one stuck to the bottom of his shoe like toilet paper, which he took note of and then peeled off, discarding it as an evidence tech scowled at him. He nodded to indicate Claus. “What was that about?”

  “The lovebirds are on their way to Orlando,” I said. “Confirmed sighting of their getaway vehicle on the freeway headed west.”

  Scott scowled, keeping his hand pressed over the phone’s mic. “And we can’t even chase them, really.”

  I shrugged. “We could. I could bomb their car from above, then swoop down—”

  “Real inconspicuous.”

  “It’d get the job done.”

  “It’d blow your cover and probably mine.” He shook his head. “No. We need to get my car and intercept them.”

  I nodded toward the door, wondering if Phillips had put him on hold. “We should get moving, then.”

  He took the phone from his ear, stared at it as though debating whether to throw it or not, and finally just hit the “End” button. I guess he had been put on hold. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Scott stopped at the door, throwing a look over his shoulder, and his face bore an expression I wasn’t familiar with. “What is it?” I asked.

  He kept staring at the damage, the mess, like he was taking stock of it, surveying. “What do you suppose binds these two together?”

  “All the common threads, I suppose. Like any of us at that age. Lust. Desire to see the world, spread their wings.”

  “Such a sweet love story,” Scott said with a bitter smile, “to go this way, robbery and assault.” He hesitated. “We were never like this, were we?”

  I froze. “Like what?” He gave me a patronizing look, one that cut through my desire to sling bullshit and hope the question disappeared into the night. Instead, I took a deep breath and answered as honestly as I could. “A hundred miles an hour into danger and destruction followed by sex and sweat and more danger? Kindasorta. But we kept it on the right side of the law, at least.”

  “Not quite what I meant,” Scott said, looking a little forlorn. And he walked out without making it clear, but I thought I knew.

  He wondered if we’d ever been that crazily in love. Because he couldn’t remember any of it.

  17.

  June

  June steered the car off the road a little ways after the county line, taking a random exit hoping that it wouldn’t lead her to a dead end. She’d been admiring a big power plant cooling tower they were passing when a glance back in the rearview caused her to have a moment of suspicion. Was that a cop car back there?

  She couldn’t be sure, because she was staring in a rearview and it was way, way back, so she’d gone ahead and hit the next exit, the one that said Exit 31, State Road 520. She took the ramp at high speed and then hung a right, picking the direction at random and flooring it again.

  Ell was sitting uselessly next to her, but he sat up at the sudden change in direction. “What is it?”

  “Thought I saw a cop car behind us,” she said, eyeing the rearview. If it was a cop, he was far up the exit ramp right now, and probably hadn’t even been able to see which way she’d turned, thanks to the thick trees pines and palms lining the road.

  “What’s the plan?” Ell asked, nerves shooting through his already cracking voice. He cleared his throat and sniffled a little.

  June just shot him a slow smile. “Why do we need a plan? We’ll get away from him, maybe stop for the night.” She couldn’t see the position of the sun, and their Pontiac was old, its clock display burned out.

  “You think they know our car?”

  “Probably.” She kept a hand on the wheel and massaged the back of his neck again, stroking it slowly. “They probably have for a while; the Parisienne is pretty distinct. But I don’t know what you want to do about it. We can’t steal another car without being willing to do some harm, because I don’t know how to strip an ignition and neither do you.” They’d talked about it, but every time they went through it, she kept coming to the same conclusion—if they were going to steal a car and actually get away with it, they’d have to do a carjacking since neither one could start one without keys. And that meant that the person driving the damned thing had to be unable to report it to the cops for a good long while, otherwise they’d be back in the same boat within a few minutes.

  Which would be because they either kidnapped the person or killed them. And even she wasn’t quite there on that one … yet, anyway. Robbing banks and counting on the cops to keep avoiding them was one thing. Killing people and stealing their cars, hiding the bodies or just flat out doing home invasions and leaving them trapped or dead in their houses … that was gross. Mean beyond what June wanted to do.

  She just wanted to have fun, and she needed money to do it. It was so simple. Why did people keep having to get in the way of her and Ell having fun?

  “What do we do next?” Ell asked nervously. He was sitting up, tense again, now that his brain was engaged in the work of trying to plan out a next move. “After we find a place for the night, I mean.”

  June didn’t entirely know on that one, but she’d had this thought in her head since they’d first started heading south to Florida, and it wasn’t because of damned Cuba. “There’s a reason I always wanted to visit Florida …”

  “What is it?”

  She hesitated. She wanted him to engage on it, and he was still tearful. He should know this anyway, they’d talked about it. “Oh, I dunno. Never mind.”

  He looked up at her, curiosity punctuating his features. “What?”

  She gave him a knowing look. “You know.”

  He stared back blankly, once again looking desperately out of place.

  Her irritation flowered within, and she sighed like she was admonishing a child. “I’ve told you this. Like, literally a million times.”

  Now he just looked trapped, as though she’d somehow become a massive predator who’d trapped him in a corner where he was about to be eaten alive. “I … I don’t know …”

  She let out another impatient sigh. “Bae, I want to go … to Disney World.”

  Ell sat up, crooking his neck around to look at her like she was crazy. “What?”

  She blushed, cheeks burning. What an ass he was being, acting like she was stupid or something. “I want to go to Disney. I always have.”

  “Now?” he asked, jaw hanging open slightly.

  “Maybe.” Now the anger was burning in earnest. “I’ve told you this, I dunno, more times than I can count. We’ve talked about it a lot.”

  He stared off into space. “I don’t remember you ever saying—”

  “Seriously?”

  “I—” he stumbled with the words. “Well … I guess we could … how far away is … ?” He pulled out his phone and started scrolling it as she stared suspiciously. She didn’t have one anymore, didn’t trust the police not to be tracking her on it. It’s why she’d opted for such an old car: no GPS.

  “You know what? Never mind,” she said, not really meaning it but hurt that he didn’t remember. How many times had she told him? “Just forget about it.” She clammed up, waiting to see how he’d react to that.

  “Are you sure?” He didn’t sound very sure.

  “Yeah,” she said brusquely. “It’s fine.” It damned sure was not, but she was determined not to let on like it.

  “Do you want to go?” He was hesitating madly, as though dangling bait in front of her. “We can go.”

  This wasn’t how she
wanted it. She wanted him to remember, to be excited about it. But that was the problem with Ell; he didn’t remember shit. And how could he be excited about it, given he didn’t remember them talking about it, her gushing about it … what a disappointment.

  Still … she wanted to go badly enough that she was willing to let this go. She’d probably freeze him out a little on a normal occasion, but this … this was special. She’d wanted to go for so long …

  “Yeah,” June said. “Let’s do it. Let’s go to Disney World.”

  18.

  Sienna

  “How do we head these crazies off at the pass?” I wondered aloud as we drove out of the Orlando International Airport in Scott’s purloined FBI car.

  “I don’t know,” Scott said, at the wheel but also plainly wanting to make a phone call, “but I’m guessing it’ll involve coordinating with the people who actually know what they’re doing in this regard—local law enforcement and the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge down here.”

  “You said Phillips gave you crap over the politics of the situation before,” I said, pressing my hand against the warm plastic lining just inside the window. He’d parked in the sun and the car was hot like the inside of my shirt when I went full Gavrikov. Yeouch.

  “He’s given me nothing but problems since the day I took this job,” Scott said. “And half the time, I was brainwashed and under Harmon’s control, so he was really just butting heads with his boss’s will.”

  “Hmph,” I snorted. “The sad thing is, Harmon didn’t even mind control him. He’s just naturally that much of an obstructive colon blockage.”

  “Obstructive—” Scott turned his head to look at me questioningly, and then nodded when he got it. “You can’t get shit done.”

  “Right you are.” I thought in silence as he steered us through a few twisty overpasses. “So … why don’t you ignore him?”

  “Because Phillips is pretty high up in the FBI,” Scott said. “If I push too hard, he’s going to remove me, and then Sienna Nealon is going to have to contend with a task force commander that’s actually working at catching her.”