“That’s original,” I said.
“Not really,” Reed said, kind of blasé about the whole thing. “Those are all the rage nowadays in movies and videogames—”
“I’m getting activity on his cell phone,” Rocha broke in. “It’s data, not a phone call, but I’ve got his mike active.”
“Can you patch us in to listen?” I asked, waving Reed toward the hole that was now empty, since Simmons was now on the roof of the neighboring building.
A heavy crackle pulsed in my ear as Rocha presumably followed my command. He may have been kind of a toxic ass, but he was a pretty efficient one. I felt the dry dirt and dust, the cool air of the tunnel as I hurried through. I reconsidered my approach about ten feet in.
“Gavrikov?” I whispered.
I am at your command, Aleksandr Gavrikov said in my mind, and I felt the power of flight surge through me. My feet lifted off the ground and I hovered in the air in the center of the tunnel and started to fly forward.
“Not fair,” Reed grumbled as a click, a buzzing hum and a panicked voice broke into our earpieces.
“Cassidy!” Eric Simmons’s voice cried out. Dude was seconds away from soiling-himself levels of panic. “We got a problem!”
That damned buzz-hum answered him, and I felt a swell of annoyance. This was how we’d been receiving this end of Simmons’s calls to his mastermind for days. It’s really aggravating when the NSA tells you that they have no idea how someone is foiling your attempt to crack their transmissions. It also means your opposition is pretty good.
“I’m on the roof,” Simmons’s voice came through again once the buzz-hum subsided. “I’m about to jump.” There was a clicking noise that signaled end of transmission.
“Rocha,” I said, letting my irritation bleed through, “how in the hell is this person spoofing your ability to listen in? It’s coming through your damned Dominator!”
“I have no idea.” Rocha made a noise in his throat that told me he was as sick of being thwarted as I was. “Some sort of homemade app on Simmons’s phone that’s decrypting the sender’s transmission in real time? I don’t know. But at least we’re getting the microphone feed from his end.”
“If only you possessed the ability to reach into his phone and do stuff,” I mumbled under my breath as I flew out of the tunnel into the basement lair of the thieves. Highly technical phrase there, “do stuff.” It’s a professional term in the NSA, I’m sure.
Their basement office was pretty much filled with nothing at this point except for about five carts. They’d known they were coming through today, and if they’d had anything else here but the stuff they were going to use to execute their heist, they must have cleaned it out long ago.
“I’m not an app developer,” Rocha said with some heat, sounding a little like Bones McCoy to me. “I don’t know what every single thing on his phone does. Take him into custody and give me the phone and I’ll have our people dissect it to figure out the problem, but this is not my area of expertise.”
I waited inside the lair for a moment, just listening. A wash of air and dust blew out of the hole a moment later, followed by Reed, who came tumbling awkwardly out and landed on his face. He looked up at me, smudges of dirt on his face, and frowned. “That flying thing is cheating. I declare shenanigans.”
“Yeah, you try doing that shenanigans thing with our perp and his wingsuit and see where it gets you,” I said, heading out the door of the basement suite in search of the stairs. I found it right outside and launched up through the center of the staircase all the way to the top floor, shenanigans be damned.
“He’s leaping off the roof,” Harper’s terse assessment came to me as I stared at the roof door, which was ajar, cold seeping in. I pushed through as my feet touched the ground, and I got there just in time to see a black-suited guy go off the far end to my right. He dipped out of sight for a second before reappearing, wings stretched between his arms and each leg, like some sort of creepy, black-clad angel. “You might want to get after him,” Harper said after a moment’s pause.
I strode to the edge of the roof and watched him float up William Street like a leaf on an autumn breeze. “I feel like I should give him a head start to make it sporting,” I said.
“How about making it sporting on the rest of us?” Reed gasped, bursting out onto the rooftop, clearly out of breath. My brother’s gotten better at doing a little flying himself, but he’s not exactly what you’d call good at it yet.
“It’s not supposed to be sporting between the two of us,” I said as I watched Simmons gradually losing altitude on his way down the man-made canyon, drifting between the two sides perfectly. “Sibling rivalry means I’m supposed to beat your ass in everything I do, without mercy.”
“Ugh,” Reed said, slumping a little as he tried to catch his breath, “you are ruthless.”
“It’s probably the most attractive thing about me,” I agreed and leapt off the building without so much as a running start before he had a chance to smart off in disagreement. I flew up higher, keeping my eyes on Eric Simmons the whole time, the hawk never taking eyes off her prey.
“Where are you going in such a damned hurry?” Reed asked with a little attitude. I looked back to see him sputtering along on a boosted gust of air, following a slow flight path that looked more like he was gradually drifting along after Simmons. It wasn’t pretty, but it’d get him there, albeit slowly.
“I’m going after the Scarecrow, of course,” I said, and turned my attention back to the man in the wingsuit, who was about six blocks ahead and ten floors beneath me. “Come to me, my pretty,” I said. “And your little dog, too.”
“I am never taking you to a Broadway show again,” Reed muttered under his breath as he floated along behind me, both of us in pursuit of this earth-shaking jackhole.
5.
Simmons floated along, annoying the hell out of me. I could fly about five thousand times as fast as him, and he just sort of drifted, making me feel like I was performing aerial surveillance on a turtle.
“Harper,” I said, “are you still getting this?”
“Yes,” she said over the earpiece, voice strong, confident, and betraying not a hint of the boredom I was sure she was feeling. “Looks like you’ve got a better view than I do, though.”
“Reed, how far back are you?” I asked.
“Why don’t you just turn your head and look?”
“Because then I might lose sight of the target,” I teased.
“Detecting an altitude shift,” Harper said, and I noticed she was right. William Street was coming to an end, and I watched Simmons go drifting between a hospital on one side and a towering building on the other. He was definitely coming down, though. I watched him drift lower, and thanks to the perspective of me looking down, I thought he was about to go splat on the side of Pace University. He pulled up in time, though, and cleared the building.
I watched him go lower, heading over a freeway as he made his final descent. I squinted at a building ahead, looking to see if he was going to make it down. “Harper, what the hell is that building he’s landing next to?”
“Umm,” Harper’s voice came back slightly surprised, “I think maybe that’s City Hall?”
“Cheeky of him,” Reed said. “What with him being on the lam and all.”
He came to a landing in some trees just to the north of the hall, and I lost sight of him as I maintained altitude, feeling a sudden, surprising updraft from below. “Harper, have you got eyes on him?”
“Aye-yup,” she said, “he’s on thermal still. Looks like he’s shedding his suit and trying to disappear.”
“There had to be like a thousand spectators that saw him come down,” I said. “What is that, like a park or something?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But whatever it was, I’ve got him. He’s solid, he’s tagged, and he’s on the move, heading north-east.” I went a little higher, hoping my eagle eyes would allow me to maintain my distance while still keeping
watch on him. “Sienna,” Harper called to me, “you might want to move closer to a building, give yourself some cover. As it is, you’re hovering over the road where he’d just need to look up to see you.”
“Who’d look up in New York City?” Reed asked. “That’s why they have all those construction scaffolds around town, you know.”
I saw Simmons come darting out, moving quick as he crossed the road from city hall. He looked back frantically, and I dodged into the shadow of a municipal building as he started to scan my way. “Reed, he’s looking for tails.”
“Relax,” Reed said, huffing a little. “I’m already on the ground.”
“Where?” I asked.
“In the trees, just below you.” I saw him moving, with a purpose, looking like a city-dweller on his way to whatever city-dwellers get on their way to. A restaurant, his job, a theater, whatever. Probably not the theater at this time of morning. “I’m on him.”
I peeked around the edge of the building, hanging there like … uh … well, like a person hanging on the side of a building, sneaking a peak around. It wasn’t subtle, but since he was around the corner and a few hundred feet away, what was the likelihood he was going to see me? Simmons was moving away fast too, not looking back any more. “He’s heading for the subway station up there,” I said, and the consequences of that clicked home. “Aw, hell.”
“It’s okay,” Reed said, “I don’t have a famous face like you; I can follow him on the train and he won’t recognize me.”
That was a persistent problem nowadays, my fame. You save the world one measly time and do one controversial, hostile interview filled with sarcasm afterward and boom, suddenly the world is Cheers and everybody knows your name. Most of the people who came up and spoke to me on the rare occasions I dealt with the public were fairly nice. They acted about like I figured they’d act for a celebrity. Selfies with me were a popular request. I heard Madame Tussauds out in Vegas had even commissioned a wax statue of me, which I found decidedly creepy.
“I will not have eyes on you underground,” Harper said. She had a tendency to state the obvious.
“Welch got me a backdoor into the city computer, so I can get surveillance footage from the subway,” Rocha broke in. “Should be real-time.”
“Do that,” I said as I watched Simmons disappear down the stairs into the subway station. “Reed, follow him. Keep your distance, and remember that if he makes a move against a civilian, you are authorized to take him down.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Reed said with a snort of sarcasm. “Like I didn’t know the rules of engagement.”
“Just trying to remind you that you’ve got a gun on your hip for reason,” I said, pressing a little. I could not remember a time Reed had used his gun to stop a perp. He hesitated, even though we’d drilled for the last few months until he was brutally efficient with it. I mean, he wasn’t as good a marksman as me, but he could put Simmons down from a subway compartment away. In theory.
I say in theory because I had yet to ride a subway, so I didn’t really know how big those trains were. Again, people, claustrophobia, blah blah. I rode a train in London; that was enough for me. Now I can fly, so why would I need to take a train?
“Going quiet,” Reed said, and I watched him slip down the stairs.
He started to whistle a little tune, and after about thirty seconds I was ready to bite my own hand off to make him stop. “I thought you were going quiet!” I protested about fifteen seconds—and three hundred million years—later.
The whistling cut off, thankfully. For a short duration there, I was finding myself empathizing with Cain. I bet Abel was a whistler.
“I’ve got eyes on both of them,” Rocha said as I floated next to the building waiting for some direction. “Simmons jumped the gate without paying.”
“Add that to the list of charges,” I muttered. “They take that seriously in New York, I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a real stiff penalty next to the sentence for grand theft bullion,” Harper snarked.
“Every time I hear someone call it bullion,” I said, musing aloud, “I wonder whether they’re talking about gold or compacted chicken broth.” Silence greeted my idle pronouncement. “We ate a lot of ramen in my house growing up, okay?” I said after a few moments of silence. “I know I’m not the only one that was thinking it.”
“Train’s arriving,” Rocha said. “Simmons is getting on the front car. He’s got his head down. Reed is a few cars back.”
“This is nerve wracking,” I said, feeling the nerves part of it. “Is this what it’s like listening to play-by-play on a football game that you care about? Because this sucks.”
“I’m on the train,” Reed said, “two cars away from Simmons, and I’ve got him in sight.”
“Stop touching your ear,” Rocha snapped.
“I can’t hear you otherwise,” Reed replied.
“Nothing to hear except a lot of talk about bouillon cubes and football play-by-play,” Harper muttered on the open channel.
“Where are you, Rocha?” I asked.
“In motion,” he said, “a couple blocks south of you and moving up fast. The driver is set to follow the path of the six train, which is the one that Reed and Simmons are on.”
I felt a shudder as a harsh wind blew past me. It wasn’t Minnesota cold, but it was cold. “Mind if I bum a ride?”
“Yeah, sure, float right down off the building and hop in,” Rocha said, “I’m sure that won’t attract any attention.”
“Your sarcastic a-hole comment is noted,” I said. “I guess I’ll just sort of hang around, then.”
“They’re moving north,” Rocha said. “The six train will take him up to the Bronx.”
“Marvelous,” Reed said, “maybe we can catch a mid-afternoon Yankees game.”
“I think you’d need the B train for that,” Harper said.
“Simmons is looking around pretty furtively,” Rocha said, and he didn’t sound too pleased. “But he’s not looking carefully, so keep your head down.”
I drifted down off the building and hovered for a moment as Reed spoke. “Next stop is Canal Street.”
I thought about waiting where I was, but a guy was lingering below, with a cello set up in front of him along with a donations cup. He drew the bow across the strings four or five times, drawing cringe-worthy sounds from the instrument. “Clearly not classically trained,” I muttered under my breath.
He did it again, then again, and again, and I realized either he had no freaking idea how to play the instrument or he’d determined that people were more generous when they took pity on him than when he played well. “I’m heading to Canal Street to wait,” I said, and shot north, trying to remember the layout of the city, leaving that horrible sound behind.
“Ooh,” Reed said, “can you get me a coffee?” He paused, maybe thinking that over, because his next words were more hesitant. “You know, if you have time.”
As sour as I felt, I tried to remember that he was my brother, and he was currently riding in a subway car trailing our thieving a-hole of a subject so I didn’t have to. “Sure,” I said, a little resigned. I caught sight of a coffee shop as I reached Canal, “what do you want?”
6.
I placed my order and sat waiting for the barista to finish it. I neatly avoided the call of the carbs in the bakery display and stood there anticipating my non-fat, non-whip latte. Reed’s was not quite so healthy, so I planned to rib him relentlessly later about it, peppermint sprinkles and all. The smell of coffee hung glorious and thick in the air, and there was a modest crowd.
I was still waiting to hear my name when some guy next to me started snapping his fingers. At first I thought he was listening to an iPod, but his ears were clear and he was staring at me, his index finger pointed at me between snaps. He had the look. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that you just want to slap off someone’s face when you see it.
“You look so familiar,”
he said, and I could not keep from rolling my eyes at the great granddaddy of all pick-up lines. I’m pretty sure Zeus used it regularly in ancient Greece. This guy had a half-smile, and he snapped his finger again. I felt a sudden compulsion to snap his finger for him. “Have I seen you on Tinder?”
I just stared at him, my mouth slightly agape. “No. No, you have not seen me on Tinder, that I guarantee.”
“Oh, you’re not local,” he said and snapped his finger again. I felt my eyebrow twitch, and I once more restrained the urge to splinter his digits. Barely. “Where’s that accent from?”
“Minnesota,” I said, not really sure why I was indulging him. My excuse was that I was so busy controlling the desire to beat him unconscious that I couldn’t keep from answering honestly or generating a sarcastic response. Upon reflection, I decided that was probably accurate.
“So you’re not on Tinder?” the guy asked. “Because I would totally swipe right on you.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Reed’s voice broke into my ear. “I told you to pick up coffee, not fresh jackass.”
“He sounds like a real prizewinner,” Harper opined. “World’s Dumbest—”
“Hush,” I said, not taking my eyes off the guy.
He broke into a grin, something he probably thought was dashing or handsome, but which I found obnoxious and wanted to knock all the teeth out of. “It sounds so sexy when you say it like that.”
Something came over me, and I suddenly saw a violent shade of red, as though an artery in my brain had ruptured from the act of trying to avoid doing violence to this ass. “Dude, I eat souls when I touch people. So unless you want to spend the rest of your eternal existence formless, trapped as a prisoner in my mind, you should probably get the hell away from me.”
The guy blinked at me, face totally blank. “What?”
“Get out of here, moron,” I said, and the barista called my name just in time.
“You know, with an attitude like that, I’m not surprised you’re single,” he said as I walked away.
Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3) Page 4