Prisoners (Out of the Box Book 10)

by Crane,Robert J.

  “The traffic, am I right?” Augustus asked. “It’s hellacious.”

  “It is rush hour,” Hampton said, taking a seat at the far end of the table. “If you don’t like this, I suggest you never live in Chicago.” He gave me a momentary glance, cool and neutral, which was how he always acted toward me in these meetings. “What did I miss?”

  “The Clary family used their first day of freedom from the Cube to try and kill Sienna,” Reed said, gaze still anchored on me.

  Hampton’s eyebrow moved upward almost imperceptibly and I caught the hint of worry. “And are they—”

  “They’re in custody, with bodily harm aplenty to keep them occupied and warned off,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Hampton said stiffly. I knew him well enough to recognize the seeds of concern starting to sprout in his head. “That they’re out of play.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a pretty big list that’s not out of play,” Reed said, leaning back again, chair clacking since he’d broken the spring. “I figured we were just going to do a threat assessment—”

  “Before we get into that,” Hampton said, “I caught a look at a couple of unsavory characters malingering outside. I figured them for fanboys, but maybe we should—”

  I was out of my seat before anyone else and out the door a second later. Our office door opened right to the outside of the old brick and glass office building, which was situated on a pretty major road in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. It was convenient for the mall and lots of restaurants, which was the main reason we’d gone for it.

  Also, there was an ice cream parlor next door, which might have had a little something to do with my approval of this office location.

  I cast a look down the covered-over sidewalk that stretched between our office door and the ice cream parlor down the way. Picnic tables were set out under the overhang, a perfect place to sit and eat ice cream on hot summer days. The summer days were pretty well past by now, though, which was why I was surprised to see three guys sitting outside, two of them letting off a peal of laughter at something the other one said. Not one of them had a cone in hand.

  And I knew all three of them from the Cube.

  10.

  Normally, when I’m attacking an enemy with superior numbers, I wouldn’t tend to announce myself, I’d just sweep in and wipe out my enemies. In this case, though, I couldn’t help it.

  “Thunder Hayes,” I said, and one of the guys craned his neck around to look at me. He had dark, dark eyes. “Bronson McCartney.” Another turned to look at me, this one with broad shoulders and a long yet still pug nose that made him look like a bear. “And Louis Terry.” The last guy was sitting facing me, opposite the other two. He had bright blond hair that I might have assumed was bleached, except I knew for a fact he’d been sitting his ass in jail for the last few years and never had access to bleach. I thundered up to the three of them, stopping about ten paces away, my hackles all up.

  “You best back off, girl,” Hayes rumbled. “We’re honest citizens now, and we ain’t done nothing to you.”

  “Yeah,” Bronson rumbled, looking a little like the bear I knew he could turn into with his meta powers. He was a skinchanger, with the ability to take animal form. “We’re just sitting here all peaceable, having some ice cream.”

  “I don’t see any ice cream,” I said. Now I had another reason for regretting getting an office right next to an ice cream parlor, and it wasn’t just because of my ass anymore.

  “We haven’t gotten it yet,” Terry chimed in. He was an oily son of a bitch, hair all slicked back. He reminded me of a meth-head version of Draco Malfoy, but lacking any of the charm Tom Felton gave the character. “We’re just sitting here enjoying our evening before we get our ice cream.” He stuck his nose forward and grinned, displaying uneven teeth. They’d been a lot straighter before I met him. “You gonna start something with us, Warden?”

  “She ain’t a warden of anything, anymore,” Hayes said, watching me with those furtive eyes. Even if I’d been blind, I could have smelled the trouble he brought with him. “Now she’s a regular citizen, just making her way in the world.”

  “Your regular citizen has a gun at the small of her back,” McCartney said with a snort. Normally when people pick out that I’m armed, they at least have the decency to worry about what that might mean for the continued integrity of their brain tissue, since 9mm hollowpoints plus my deadshot accuracy play all kinds of hell with one’s ability to maintain an intact skull. That McCartney seemed to have little care for the fact I was carrying …

  Well, it sent a chill up my back that had nothing to do with the autumn weather.

  “We know enough to stay on the right side of the law this time,” Hayes said, taunting me. “Which is why we’re just minding our business here instead of doing anything hostile.” He smirked. “We’re just customers of a neighborhood business. You’re not gonna shoot us for that … are you?” The smirk widened, and it irked the shit out of me that he knew I wouldn’t do it.

  I was on legally shaky ground if I provoked any of these three, and for all I knew, they were ready for it and would make it very difficult for me to look like anything but a bully. I could practically smell a trap, like they were here just to raise my ire and see what happened. As far as plans went, this was not among the very brightest—pissing off Sienna Nealon was probably a category of risk on insurance underwriter forms by now—but they weren’t among the very brightest of criminals, either.

  They were, however, not criminals in the sight of the law at the moment, and if I got all up in their faces … I would be.

  “So you’re like a neighborhood watch,” I said tightly. I knew Reed, Augustus and Hampton were a few steps behind me. I could pick out their breathing, but they were also giving me a lot of space, maybe because they suspected a trap.

  “Exactly,” Hayes said, nodding. “We’re just sitting here and watching the neighborhood.”

  “It’s a very quiet neighborhood most of the time,” I said. “When new parolees aren’t hanging around.”

  “Are you impugning our reputations?” Terry’s hand flew to his chest, and he wore a Well-I-never look of faux offense that was as transparent as the coincidence of him showing up right here, right now.

  “You don’t need to worry about us,” McCartney said, turning his back on me. “We’re not going to start anything with you, Nealon.”

  “Oh no?” I asked.

  “Not us,” Hayes agreed. “Like we said … we’re just watching.” His dark eyes gleamed. “But I would bet someone else … some less responsible citizen, for instance—”

  “Less upright,” Terry tossed in.

  “Someone less morally straight,” McCartney rumbled.

  “—they might be along in the next few days,” Hayes said, silkily smooth. “And we’d hate to miss anything … you know, in our capacity as Neighborhood Watch.” He gave me a toothy grin. “And I promise we will watch it all happen.”

  “You get your jollies watching your former fellow inmates getting their clocks cleaned?” I kept my hands by my side. “Because that’s what’s going to happen. Like your pals the Clarys, for instance—”

  “Never heard of ’em,” Hayes said.

  “Who?” Terry asked.

  “Bunch of idiots,” McCartney said, breaking the chorus effect and drawing ireful looks from both Terry and Hayes. “What? They were. You both said the same thing—the Clarys don’t have a chance, it’s Shafer and Borosky that we’re—”

  Hayes thumped McCartney on the arm, his eyes wide and furious. “You. Idiot.”

  “Sonofa,” I muttered under my breath and promptly turned my back on the table of morons behind me. Reed and the others were waiting, and I shot past them as I made for the door to the office.

  “You’re not gonna see ’em coming, Nealon!” Hayes shouted after me. “Even with us warning you. Shafer and Borosky are like ghosts! They kill people for a living, and they’ve gotten real wealthy doin—”

>   His voice was lost to the heavy glass and walls between us as I entered the conference room where I’d been having my little meeting only minutes before. It was quiet, save for Kat, who was sitting there on her cell phone, chattering away.

  “No, I’ll probably be back tomorrow—I’ll take the first flight to LA and—” She saw the storm in my eyes. “Err … maybe not. Lemme call you back.”

  “Who’re Borosky and Shafer?” Augustus asked as he slid back into his seat. I heard rather than saw him, because my face was pointed at the wall behind my chair, trying to hide the emotions on my face from the meeting at large.

  “I don’t know,” Ariadne said, and I could hear the frown in her voice, “but they sound familiar, don’t they?”

  “They should,” I said, and I turned. They were standing there, waiting, all in various states of anticipation.

  Except Reed. Reed looked like he’d had his blood drained, he was so white in the face. He remembered, of course.

  “So who are they?” Augustus said. “Convenience store robbers? Attempted terrorists? I mean, they can’t be that badass if no one remembers their names—”

  “They’re assassins,” I said, way more coolly than I felt. “They’re the ones who bombed Reed’s car … the ones who nearly killed him.”

  11.

  I panted lightly in the darkness in a hotel room on the St. Paul side of the Twin Cities. Jeremy Hampton rolled over, grunting lightly as his weight left me. I was still mostly dressed and so was he, which was how you had to do these things, these nighttime things, when you were a succubus who could steal souls with the touch of your skin.

  Staying over in St. Paul had been Jeremy’s idea, not mine. It felt like running to me. I lay there in the darkness, sweaty from our exertions, and caught my breath within a few seconds. I was still breathing a little hard, though, because I wasn’t happy with any part of what had happened in the last day.

  “You got a little rough there,” Jeremy said as he got out of bed. He had a pretty soft voice with me, which was a contrast to the drill-sergeant style he used when he was training our civilian SWAT team.

  I stared at the ceiling as a car’s headlights somehow pushed around the edges of the curtains in order to sweep the room. It illuminated the little bumps of the ceiling, a thousand little molehills, or anthills—something small, almost insignificant, and yet here I was, wasting my time staring at them. “Is that your roundabout way of asking me if this stuff is getting to me?”

  “I wouldn’t ask that,” he said, stripping off his t-shirt. I figured he was about to hit the showers, because that’s usually what he did afterward.

  “Too personal?” My voice sounded strangely lifeless in my own ears; I couldn’t imagine how it sounded to his.

  He let out a dry chuckle. “Hardly. No, it’s more because when I’ve gone through post-mission … shit, honestly … I always hated it when they sent in the psych eval brigade to ask stupid questions about how I felt.”

  “Was that in the FBI?” I asked.

  “SpecOps. FBI HRT was a little less hairy than the SOCOM stuff—most of the time.”

  “You didn’t let many bad guys get away in the Hostage Rescue Team, did you?” I asked.

  “Not get away, no,” he said and stopped. I could see the outside light shining in across his muscled chest. He’d dropped trow, shedding his boxers and peeling off his socks. “But they didn’t all end in violence and blood, either. Sometimes we could talk ’em down with a good negotiator.”

  “I have a feeling this isn’t going to end with anyone talking down the assassins that are coming after me—or my brother.” My voice got even tighter. “Or … someone else.” I pushed against the springs of the hotel bed and they squealed in protest. Damned ice cream. “You shouldn’t be here with me right now.”

  There was dry amusement in his answer. “We’re pretty hidden right now, I doubt anyone’s gonna find us all the way over here.”

  “It’s St. Paul, not the other side of the world,” I said, still staring at the ceiling. There was a name on my mind, and it was that name that worried me a lot more than Borosky or Shafer. “If they’re marginally competent, they can find me.” I only hoped Reed had taken my advice and gotten Dr. Perugini out of the damned state. He was supposed to take her anywhere, anywhere at all, for at least the weekend and possibly longer. He’d been a little reluctant to abandon me until I’d made the point that Perugini was a lot more vulnerable than I was. Then he’d paled and gone off to do my bidding.

  A stray thought pried loose a smile. “What?” Hampton asked. Now he was fully nude, all silhouette and shadow. I was throwing a few glances here and there as he started toward the bathroom.

  “I was just thinking how much easier life would be if everyone would just … do what I told them to.” I chuckled at myself.

  “Yeah, that’s some real totalitarian stuff there,” Hampton said.

  “It does have a little bit of an Anakin Skywalker in the prequels vibe, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean by that reference,” Hampton said, caught in shadow. “But, uh … yeah. I’m glad you laughed, because the serious side of that? Yikes.”

  “I don’t actually want to control anyone else,” I said, picking up his pillow and cramming it against my side. It felt like a soft person leaned there, a substitute for him while I waited for him to finish showering and rejoin me. “I barely want to control myself—which is at least half my problem.”

  “Well, that’s the difference between you and other people with power, then,” Hampton said, sounding like he was about to wax philosophical on me. “You could be a great totalitarian, but you don’t really want to do it.”

  “There are some who would disagree with you.”

  “I’m not saying you’re not a heavy hammer of authority,” he said. “Some authority is not a bad thing. It’s what holds society together, the lawful use of power along pre-agreed means in the form of laws.”

  “Ugh, another lecture,” I said, a little teasing.

  “Stop me if you’ve heard this one—”

  “I’ve heard it, or some variant on it, from my brother, I’m sure. He has a whole series on politics—”

  “Fine,” Hampton said lightly, taking my ribbing without getting mad about it. “I’ll just say this, then—you may occasionally cross the line into being an authoritarian—which is to say you land the hammer on people who step out of your perceived lines pretty hard sometimes. But you don’t show the interest in total control of them that a totalitarian would.”

  My eyes buzzed side to side in the darkness. “Uhh … that doesn’t seem like much of a distinction.”

  “It’s a really important one, actually.” He sat down on the bed next to me, rocking the flimsy, too-thin mattress as he rested his bare buttock on it. When he got up, I planned to give him a slap. “Authoritarians want you to follow the rules. Strict rules, in the case of a real authoritarian, too strict, ones that make society … tyrannical. Maybe unlivable. But a totalitarian … they want you to be a puppet. A slave. No action taken without their leave, nothing done without their grace.”

  I didn’t really see it. “Yes, okay, well, I guess I’m just mildly controlling instead of totally controlling, then. I’m sure people will really appreciate that difference, especially these lugs that seem to have it out for me—”

  “Did you mean what you said a minute ago?” There was a subtle but distinct change in the tone of his voice.

  “About what?”

  “You really want me to leave?” he asked. He sounded pretty even about it, not offended, just quiet.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I’m eyes wide open on this, okay?” He moved in the dark, the light shifting across his flawless skin. “I know what metas are, and I know what they can do.”

  “There’s a difference,” I said with a sigh, “between knowing one and facing one. Having a meta use their speed to zip into your retention zone and rip your pistol r
ight out of your hands, taking a finger with it? Drives the point right home.”

  There was a long moment of silence in the darkness. “… Has that ever happened to you?”

  I sat up, pulling my shirt down over my bra. “No. I’ve done it to others.”

  “Ah,” he said. “That explains it.”

  “It really doesn’t,” I said. “Look … I’ve lost a human boyfriend to metahumans before. I’m growing fond of you and I don’t …” I brushed sweaty hair off my forehead. “I know you’re a tough guy. A real badass—”

  “I don’t think I’d hold much appeal for you if I wasn’t.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But either way … a small army of people who have a grudge against me and a shit-ton more physical strength and a multiplicity of nasty powers just got out of jail today. And I don’t know what they’re all up to.”

  “I can see why you’d worry,” he said. “So … again … do you want me to go? Because I could be of use here, but—”

  “I want you to go,” I said, swallowing hard. “In a gig where we get hired to take out the bad guys, we have the advantage of coming at them. In this … they’re coming at us, and I wouldn’t put it past any of them to go low—right where they figure it’ll hurt me most.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be your Achilles heel,” he said, getting to his feet. I tried to keep my gaze up, up at his shadowy face, but failed. “I’ll take a little vacay for a bit. Maybe … see Wisconsin Dells. But if you need me—”

  “I know your number,” I said, and caught a hint of a smile in the darkness before he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door. I knew he wouldn’t outstay his welcome; Jeremy was the most reasonable guy I’d ever dated—

  Hey, Zack said.

  “Let’s not candy-coat this, Zack,” I said, “you and I had arguments.” I spoke to the voice in my head, aloud in the darkened hotel room. “Lots of arguments.”