“Why here?” June asked, looking out the windshield at the half-completed building. It would probably make someone a very lovely place to live when it was done. The view was surely glorious. She looked east, and wondered if the sun was glaring down on the ocean.
“I dunno,” he said, “I just picked Daytona Beach and it brought us here.”
“Why pull in here, then?” she asked, smiling slightly mischievously. She thought she knew the answer; it was because Ell was a guy who ran on a track, and didn’t adapt easily to breaking out of that. She thought of it as a rut, but either way, it made him somewhat predictable.
A couple days ago, that would have raised her ire. She might have argued, loudly, for how he ought to be more spontaneous.
Now? She just didn’t have it in her to quibble anymore. It was a source of faint amusement in the face of a fatalistic end that felt like it was drifting ever closer on the horizon, a dark cloud she could sense but not see.
“I just followed the GPS,” Ell said almost helplessly, as though he were utterly blind and saw no other way to have done things differently.
June understood that, too. Better than she would have before. “Come on,” she said, and brushed his hand as she sat up. “Let’s go make our way down to the beach.”
57.
Sienna
I flew with Scott in my arms again, toward the sunrise. It would have been a beautiful sight if I wasn’t dreading what would come with it.
Daytona Beach was ahead, and not far. Scott had the details supplied by Reed on his cell phone, guiding me to the spot the FBI had marked for June and Elliot’s arrival, while he sat silently cradled across me. I felt surprisingly resilient thanks to my rapid recovery; there was no healing like Wolfe and Kat healing.
Grrrrr, Wolfe purred.
Not like that, Wolfe, I thought. It would have been nice to have brought Kat along for this, too, but she’d fallen asleep just before Scott had made his fateful decision to accompany me, and we both knew she was far too tapped out to be useful to us in Daytona. If she’d had to use her healing power even a few more seconds, it was likely to result in some kind of memory loss or personality loss. And if she had to use her power again on me, it’d result in death and absorption.
A tragic fate, Harmon said, but slightly less sad and moody than he would have sounded about it a few hours earlier. He might have been coming around a little, I don’t know.
“What’s this tactical team that Phillips is deploying?” I asked. “Is it like the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team?”
Scott shook his head, looking up from the phone. “It’s one of Phillips’s initiatives. I don’t think he wanted me to know about it, but my co-workers don’t keep secrets any better than anywhere else. It’s three squads of six guys each, plus an additional sniper for support on each team. The idea was that the teams would deploy to engage criminal metas using the latest tactics and weapons. Precision snipers for the most extreme threats, close-in tactical work that would include suppressant countermeasures as well as bleeding-edge weapons systems to take down ones that required a closer approach. Hostage situations and whatnot.”
“They any good?”
“Should be the best,” Scott said warily. “It’s an elite team, ex-spec-ops guys who live and breathe this stuff, but trained to deal with the new reality: us.”
“Any chance he’ll be there?” I asked.
Scott pondered it a second, then realized what I meant. “Phillips? Probably. This is the kind of thing he’d want to spearhead, since it involves minimal peril and maximum positive exposure once they mow June and Elliot down like dogs.”
I narrowed my eyes, contemplating that little possibility. “Good.” Then I froze, suddenly aware of how that probably sound. “Not good about him mowing them down, I mean. That would be bad—”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” He studied his phone. “If they’re in this area, as predicted, it looks to me like there are condos on either side. Tall towers. Good vantage points for sniping. If they’re smart, they’ll have the locals close off the avenue of escape by car once they’re in by blockading this road—A1A, I guess it is. That’ll create a—”
“A kill box,” I said, looking at his phone. It was two large condo towers surrounding a third that looked like it was under construction, no more than a foundation whenever the satellite mapping shot had been taken. “Do you suppose this building is done now?”
“Impossible to say from here,” Scott said. “If so, it’s a nice little mini-city on the shore. Ideally placed for me, but also for snipers. Then the squads will roll up to wherever they are and spray them with weapons fire until the threat is null.” He said the last bit with a fair bit of sarcasm.
“They really are a threat, you know,” I said.
He looked at me in irritation. “Of course I know that. I carried your insensate body out of that bank in Gainesville, remember? I argued for—”
“I get it,” I said. “I just don’t want you to forget, since you’ve decided to come with me in my somewhat insane effort to give them a last chance—”
“Hard to forget the insanity part of this.”
“—that I’m not blinkered about this. They get one chance, and then it’s no more Miss Nice Sienna. If they come at me hard, I will put them down.” I adjusted my flight path a couple degrees to the left, trying to match the bearing on Scott’s screen by sight. “I don’t necessarily disagree with what these FBI guys are doing. It’s not an unreasonable response given what June and Elliot have done so far. A little heavy-handed for my taste, but the government really only has one tool in their toolbox when it comes to someone like June.”
“Remove them from the board, as quickly as possible,” Scott agreed. “Still, if dumbass Phillips had let me get involved in this earlier—”
“It might have escalated more quickly. Who knows, honestly?” I sighed, though it was lost to the wind as we flew, cool morning air chilling my cheeks. “I don’t want these FBI guys hurt. They’re just doing their jobs.”
“Agreed,” Scott said tightly. “I can help with that.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Deploy me here,” he said, pointing to the ocean. “Just drop me as you pass. Then you’ll need to—”
“Yeah, I know,” and I nodded. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“You sure? This is a little different than—”
“Trust me,” I said. “I led these teams, remember?” I smiled, anticipating the raw challenge of getting in a scrape with a whole bunch of anti-meta SWAT guys. It was a feeling that was heavily mixed anticipation and fear, especially since I’d so recently felt, most acutely, what having a bullet pass through your skull and brain felt like. “I know the priorities.”
“All right, then,” Scott said. The towers were ahead, a couple miles away or less. The center was, indeed, still under construction, drawn already to its full height but lacking a full, finished outer surface; it looked skeletal in a few places, steel beams peeking out from beneath partially covered segments of glittering, reflective windows and hard cement walls.
“This is where it ends,” he said upon seeing it. I nodded, thinking much the same, and the percussive sound of a gunshot splitting the morning quiet seemed to agree with us.
58.
June
They were walking across the dusty parking lot when the shot rang out, cracking in the sunny morning. They were passing by a concrete truck with its rolling rear cylinder making apocalyptic levels of noise, but the shot was audible even so.
Ell jerked, pushing June aside. She hit the parking lot pavement and rolled, her elbow screaming at her in pain, the worst funny bone hit she’d ever experienced, no humor in it at all.
She rolled, though, instinctively, underneath the frame of the beastly concrete mixer as another shot exploded from above. She reached out and grabbed Ell’s hand, jerking him toward her, pulling him
beneath the cover of the spinning concrete mixer.
Ell let out a low moan of pain. Blood ran down his jacket. She traced the origin of the wet stickiness as it spread over his t-shirt, and let out a gasp of her own. “Ell,” she breathed.
Another shot clanged off the truck above her and June hurriedly reeled Ell in close to her, dragging him as she moved on her back toward the other side of the vehicle. Beyond it lay an entrance to the building under construction, plastic covering the entry whipping lightly in the wind.
“Come on, Ell,” she said as she dragged him out from beneath the concrete truck. The shots were coming from the residential tower on the opposite side of the parking lot, high up somewhere beyond June’s field of vision. She kept the truck between her and the shooter, drawing Ell into her arms, cradled. “We have to go.” She turned and sprinted for the cover of the plastic as the sound of squealing tires came from behind her and two large, black vans with SWAT lettered on their sides pulled up, the backs opening and men in frightening black tactical gear spilling out.
June hurried, rushing into the building, pushing past the plastic to find a construction site with bare concrete floors, elements of drywall hung around it. Construction workers were fleeing out the other side, casting fearful looks at her as another rifle shot came in over the cement truck and hit the floor behind her, shards of concrete stinging all down the back of her legs. June cried out and dodged behind a heavy beam. Where could she go next? Ell was laid across her, and she looked up.
There—a hole in the floor led to the second story, and she jumped as the rustle of the plastic behind her suggested that the men in black were coming. Her legs bore the shock of the landing, the weight of both her and Ell combined, and she stopped, dropping to her knees, a small bit of cover afforded her by a massive steel beam that stretched from floor to ceiling. There was enough drywall up in this part of the building to obscure her view to the other side of the second floor, but the exterior glass windows were not in place, and June had no idea where to go next.
“How you doing, Ell?” she asked, worriedly. That wound on his chest looked bad, the blood spreading out in a steady circle.
“I don’t know,” he said, over the sound of booted footsteps moving below. She dragged him away from the hole she’d leapt through, making sure someone didn’t just shoot up at them.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said, caught somewhere being hopeful and just flat-out lying.
“I don’t think so,” Ell said, with a light moan of pain. His face was contorted, and he was crying a little, tears rolling down his cheeks as he whimpered. “I think this is it for us.”
“Yeah,” June said. “Maybe.” She settled back on her haunches. “I guess.”
“It was … inevitable,” Ell said, touching her tank top with his bloody fingers, soiling it worse than it already was.
“Mmhmm,” June said in sad agreement. “It did feel inevitable, didn’t it? As inevitable as if we took a lungful of my poison.”
Ell looked blank for a second. “That hasn’t ever killed anyone yet, June.”
She felt a little grey in the face when she answered. “I think it might have killed us, Ell.” She looked behind her, as though the steel barrier that watched her back might disappear at any moment. It sure wasn’t going to be a help much longer. “I think it just might have ended up killing us in the end.”
59.
Sienna
I dropped Scott in the ocean as I overflew the trio of high condos quickly. He disappeared without a splash, the water probably snatching him up quietly and without a whisper, and I honed in on where I needed to be.
Top floor of the condo building directly across the parking lot from the unfinished one. Corner balcony.
A long-barreled rifle was focused across the parking lot, sweeping for a target. I could hear the sniper talking quietly into his comms gear. “Subjects have entered the building.”
I landed on his ass so hard that he didn’t even have time to give off a surprised cry. I tried to be a little gentle, but tactical gear is tough, and I tried not to think about how I was going to have to render this poor bastard unconscious. Once it was done, I pulled his vest off and put it over myself; it didn’t fit as loosely as I might have hoped. I also bent his rifle barrel so that it was unusable, just in case I’d been too gentle in knocking him out, and then stole his comms gear, threading it into my ear so I could listen in on the squad’s movements.
“They’re on the second floor,” a strong, male voice said in my ear as I finished attaching the unit to my belt.
“Moving,” another said.
“Damn,” I said, taking care not to trip the button that would activate the mic. I had two more snipers to take out before I could come dropping down, anyway. With a sigh I shot into the sky, off to get the next one.
60.
June
“This is it, June,” Ell said, as a little trickle of blood spilled out the corner of his mouth.
“No, no, you’re—” she started to say, but the sound of boots thundering up down the way stopped her. “Hold on.”
She picked him up again, ignoring the strain of his weight, and sought out another hole in the ceiling above. There was one a little ways ahead, a gap that looked like an elevator shaft. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to navigate, but she needed to get off this floor, maybe hop up two levels at the same time.
If she ran for it, though, she’d have to leave behind the cover of the steel pillar she’d been hiding behind all this time, exposing her to fire from the same sniper who had already shot Ell.
If she didn’t … the SWAT team would be all over her in a few seconds.
The decision came quickly. She might have known all along they were walking into death, but for some reason there was a clarity that came to her now, a desperate instinct to keep trying, even if it would only buy them a few minutes.
There was another tower across the way, and running for that elevator shaft, empty and dark and inviting, would expose her. She’d need to be quick, to run so fast that any watching snipers wouldn’t have a chance to peg her one before she was back in the cover of the steel beams. That’d be tough, because the steel beams were spaced in such a way that she’d be exposed for a few seconds between them each time.
“June, I can’t—”
“Shhhh,” she said, readying him in her arms. He felt so light—surprisingly so, given how tired she was. “You just wait. I’ve got you.”
He made a gurgling noise, but she ignored it, sprinting out of the cover of the beam, lit by the long shadows between the steel pillars that held up the building. She waited for the sound of a shot, for the thundering approach of death, but it did not come.
She passed into the shadow of the next steel pillar, and the next, and still no sound of gunfire broke the quiet.
When she reached the edge of the elevator shaft, she counted her good fortune for only a second before looking up, her bloodstained shoes hanging toe-first over the edge. This was not a simple jump up, especially not with Ell in her arms. She was going to have to leap off the opposite wall …
She jumped and pressed a foot into the hard concrete, bouncing off of it and up like she was in a ninja movie. She landed lightly on the third floor, barely missing some sort of heavy equipment, then turned around and made the same leap twice more.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” June asked as she stopped on the fifth floor. The sound of boots pounding had softened, now lost several floors below.
Ell was pale as death, as it was surely upon him, and June gulped when he didn’t answer, sending baleful eyes toward her.
“Ell, no,” she said. “Come on, Ell. Stay with me!”
But he didn’t. His eyes rolled one last time, and were still, and the breath left his chest in a last rattle.
And June was left sitting there, on her haunches, on the cold concrete, holding him as he left her alone.
61.
Sienna
“Sweeping th
e third floor,” came the cold voice over my earpiece.
“Second floor all clear,” came another, “moving up.”
“None of this sounds good,” I muttered to the unconscious sniper at my feet. He was the last of them, stationed on the building opposite the one I’d started on, to the north of where the SWAT teams were sweeping for June and Elliot. I frowned as I looked down on them. Eighteen guys with guns versus Elliot and June. Given half a chance, they’d just plug our two fugitives full of lead and call it a day, high-fives and beers all the way around.
And before I’d met Grandma Randall and gone through my near-death experience … I might have done the same.
“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered under my breath. I spied a command center, a semi-trailer painted all in black set up down the road a couple blocks, with a few cop cars stationed all around it.
Trying to save someone no more virtuous than yourself? Harmon, that paragon of moral virtue, asked.
Trying to save yourself by saving someone else, Wolfe said, and I blinked.
“That surprisingly insightful, Wolfe,” I said, nostrils flaring so hard I could feel them swell.
Everybody needs a second chance sometimes, Gavrikov said.
But usually it’s better not to give them to people who shoot you, Bjorn said. Is bad for business, yes?
Tactically unsound, Bastian agreed.
I wouldn’t go making it a habit, Zack agreed, especially for some of the particularly angry and irredeemable souls you seem to cross paths with, but … give ’em a chance. Maybe you’ll save a couple lives here.
“Third floor clear. Moving to fifth floor.”
“I’m not going to save anybody sitting up here,” I said, lifting up into the air. “If I were a fugitive June and Elliot … where in that big building would I be?”
Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13) Page 22