“She seems nice,” I said, standing awkwardly at the door.
J.J. seemed to know what I was thinking. “It’s gonna be okay, Sienna. You’re gonna beat these guys. This is what you do.”
I forced a smile. “I know. But I’ll feel a lot better once you’re all out of here, and safely under the protection of Veronika and company.”
“Because it lets you do what you need to do without worrying about the rest of us?” he asked, probing just a little farther than I was comfortable with. “Because it gives you … license to … do your thing?” The inference was unmistakable. ‘My thing’ was code for death.
“Let’s hope I don’t have to do ‘my thing,’” I said softly. It was a feeling of war within myself, a cold dread, as J.J. nodded and withdrew into the room off the hall. It was also very strange; I hadn’t hesitated to kill, not for a long time. The stakes were high until these people—these people I actually cared about—were out of the sniper’s scope.
Then, with only my own life on the line, maybe this itch would go away, and I could avoid becoming what Scott kept accusing me of.
The monster that I worried I truly was, deep inside.
16.
Augustus
“I’m gonna miss so much class,” I said, sighing as I crammed a half dozen shirts into a gym bag. Night was still in effect outside the windows of my downtown apartment, but you could see some of the taller Minneapolis buildings out the windows—the IDS Tower loomed large, but because I was on the corner, you could see the Wells Fargo Center and the Foshay, as well, but barely.
My pad was dope as hell. I just wished I got to spend more time here.
“Aren’t they pretty forgiving about that?” Kat asked. She poked her head into my bedroom, looking around, maybe admiring the view. “I mean, you’re kind of a superhero. You’d think they’d give you some leeway.”
“They give me some leeway,” I said, rolling up a pair of jeans and cramming them in the bag. I put another pair in for good measure. Fancy jeans. The new job at the agency paid really well. Enough that I wasn’t exactly living in a dorm room. “But I still need to understand the material, you know. And between all the work we’re doing, and the travel for the job, and all the classes I’ve been taking …” I mopped my forehead and found it sweaty, no surprise. I’d been running around since Sienna had called and told me to scoot. “It’s a lot, you know? A lot of pressure.”
“Oh, I understand,” Kat said, bopping her way into my room. I could tell she was just looking around innocently, but it gave my blood a second of chill thinking Kat Forrest—the Kat Forrest, metahuman sex symbol and reality TV star—was in my freaking bedroom, y’all. If Taneshia could have seen this, well …
Actually, it would have been really bad if Taneshia had seen it, innocent as it was.
Kat was just kind of lingering, looking at some of the textbooks I’d crammed into the shelves. She ran her finger down the spine of one of my Biology 101 texts. I shivered a little and hurriedly zipped my bag. Anything I didn’t remember to bring, I could just buy once we got to Cali. It wasn’t like they didn’t have stores, or I didn’t have a credit card with lots and lots of room to charge. “We should go.”
“Okay,” Kat said, shrugging like it didn’t matter one way or the other to her. “I had a hired car bring me over, but Sienna said you were going to drive to the airport in Eden Prairie?”
“Yeah, I got this.” And I ushered her out the door, locking it behind me.
When we got to the elevator, we waited in the slick hallway for only a few seconds before it dinged its arrival. Kat looked around solemnly, taking it all in, like there were really deep thoughts going on. It made me wonder what she was thinking about, and then she said, “I’m hungry. Do you think we can stop for pizza on the way to the airport?”
Maybe they weren’t that deep after all. But with a booty like homegirl had, who needed deep thoughts?
“There’s probably food on the plane,” I said as we got into the elevator. “We should wait to eat.” That sucker sped its way down to the garage below.
“I guess,” Kat said, again sounding pretty indifferent. “I was planning to go back to SoCal tomorrow—or later today, now, I guess.” She looked at the screen of her phone. “Yeah. I can’t believe it’s already tomorrow. I miss Pacific time. It feels like you have more time, you know? Because—”
The elevator door dinged open and I looked out on the well-lit but empty garage. “Mmhmm,” I said, and put a light hand on her back to guide her out of the elevator. My car was parked just ahead, a brand new BMW 500 Series. Kat didn’t say anything about it as she got in the passenger side; she was obviously used to much better. I tossed my bag in the back seat and started it up. It purred. I’d toyed with giving it a name, like Reed had done with his Challenger, but I was too self-conscious. Naming a car was kind of stupid. Plus, this was just a lease.
I sped out of the garage, hitting the button to open the door as I approached and zipping out into the night. I made a turn onto the road, and headed for I-35W. I made a couple turns, watching my rearview mirror the way Hampton had instructed us to, looking for tails. Kat had the sun visor down and was checking her makeup in the mirror when I spotted it.
“Aw, hell,” I muttered to myself.
“I know, it’s impossible to find a color that matches my skin tone,” Kat said. “I have to go to have this specialty stuff done at—”
“Not what I meant,” I said, making another turn, this time onto Hennepin, just to confirm. I managed to make it a block before the same damned pair of headlights turned right behind me. “We’ve got a tail.”
“Oh?” Kat put the visor back up and turned around in her seat. “I wonder if it’s paparazzi? They follow me a lot,” she sort of gushed. It would have been endearing if I didn’t seriously doubt that was the case this time.
“I don’t think this is paparazzi.”
“Trust me,” she said, eyes gleaming.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I said, “it’s more that we’re under threat right now, and I expect we’re being followed by people that mean us harm, not ones that want to snap a few pics of you doing the nasty in a car with a stranger.”
She stared straight ahead. “Ratings have been down, you know. Ever since I pissed off Taggert by kicking his ass off the production. Maybe getting caught doing something a little dirty could spark some controversy, move the dial back up.” She looked right at me, and put on a sweet, dangerously seductive smile. “Say … you wouldn’t want to—”
The image of my girlfriend shooting lightning from her fingertips flashed through my mind. “NO.”
I ran the next red light and the car behind me did the same. “Paparazzi do that all the time,” Kat said, completely unconcerned. She looked like she was about ready to start filing her nails.
I ditched my plan to get on 35W and sped up as I got on 94 heading west. The headlights followed, the motion of the car calm and controlled. Whoever was behind me was taking it real easy, not even having to put up a lot of effort.
“Who the hell would be following me?” I mumbled, my eyes more fixed on the rearview than the interstate in front of me as I merged onto 94 toward the Lowry tunnel. The interstate was pretty damned quiet this time of night, only a couple of tractor trailers and a small car in sight.
“They’re clearly following me,” Kat said, tossing her hair. It hypnotized me for a minute, not gonna lie.
“How’s a paparazzi supposed to know it’s you in this car?” I asked, still watching behind us as I switched lanes. The tunnel was just ahead, and I moved right, figuring I’d get on 394 West and just follow it to 494 South all the way to Eden Prairie and the airport rendezvous. “It’s dark as hell out here, and they were on us as we were leaving my building.” I shook my head. “Naw. This is something else. This is the trouble Sienna was warning us about.”
“Sienna sees enemies in her underwear drawer,” Kat scoffed. “Which makes total sense, because s
he wears granny panties, and they are the enemy of sexiness.”
I jerked up straight in my seat, appalled as hell. “Ugh! Why you need to be hitting me with that imagery right now?”
Kat gave me a knowing look. “Like you’ve never noticed when she bends over real far.”
Maybe I had, but having only seen the waistband of whatever she was wearing, I wouldn’t have been able to say for sure what she had going on below. Kat was probably not wrong, but still, I didn’t need to be thinking about Sienna’s undies right now any more than I needed Kat trying to get me in trouble with Taneshia. “Y’all people are more trouble for me than—” I hit the exit ramp to 394 and went hard on the curve, speeding up as soon as I was past the worst of it, my eyes anchored on the rearview again as I shot forward past the HOV exit.
The car behind us sped up, too, and seemed to floor it. I heard the roar of a muscle car’s engine, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for me to see I was up against something that Reed would have been drooling over.
It was a seventies-era Chrysler that looked like a boat on wheels. I floored my BMW but the Chrysler started closing the gap. I bumped onto 394 proper and was surprised to see the Chrysler ease off the ramp perfectly, which was impressive considering it was a damned old car, maybe even from before the days of electric steering, and they were doing over 90 miles per hour.
“Shit,” I said, realizing exactly who was behind me. “That’s Garrett Breedlowe.”
“Who?” Kat asked, sitting up in her seat.
Garrett Breedlowe had been a tatted-up gangsta-wannabe from Houston, Texas, who’d led a small gang of metas. There were three of them—Garrett, the ringleader, his sister Tasha Breedlowe Kern, who I had nicknamed “Crazyass,” and Tasha’s man, Peter Kern.
Peter Kern had been human while the Breedlowes were meta. When Reed and I had landed hard on them and whipped the Breedlowes, Peter hadn’t gotten the news flash. He’d pulled a gun and damned near capped Reed in the back of the head.
I’d shot him right through the brain before he could do it.
This had happened months and months ago, before we left the government’s employ, but I was guessing Tasha and Garrett hadn’t forgiven or forgotten. I didn’t recognize the Chrysler, but when I looked back I could see a front plate that identified it as a Minnesota-registered vehicle. “That’s grand theft auto, I bet.”
“You’re worried about that right now?” Kat asked, betraying the first hint of her own worry.
“No, but it gives us a reason to call the cops on them,” I said. “Dial 911 and give them our location, tell them some driver in a seventies Chrysler is weaving crazy all over the road.” That was a lie. The Breedlowes were what Sienna called “Reflex types.” Any action they saw performed, they could instantly absorb into their own muscle memory. Whichever of them was behind the wheel only needed to watch one NASCAR race and they’d be an expert driver instantly. Same thing with viewing a shooting competition; they’d be able to hit the target every time thereafter.
Kat pulled up her phone and dialed. I waited for her to start talking as the Chrysler closed the distance on me. I was pushing the BMW, pedal to floor along the straight stretch of 394, the soundproofing barriers on either side of the highway flying past. A building with Target’s bullseye on its side shot into and out of view as the Chrysler continued to draw nearer and nearer.
“Hey, it’s me,” Kat said, and it took my brain a second to register that she had not dialed 911 as I had asked. “We’ve got trouble on 394—” I stared at her, flabbergasted, my attention off the roadway. I was about to ask why in hell she’d completely disregarded what I’d asked when there was a thump on my trunk.
I looked back in the rearview and saw feet standing on the back of my car. They were small feet, too, which told me I had picked up a spare passenger named Tasha Kern. I couldn’t see her face because it was above the roofline, though not quite visible in the moonroof, but I knew she was back there, and Garrett was now brightlighting me from less than ten feet behind my trunk. If I stopped too suddenly, his big metal beast would plow right through the BMW, probably leaving nothing behind but a few pieces and a schmear of human gore where Kat and I had once been. “Dammit. That’s Tasha.”
“Ummm, this is bad,” Kat said in a moment of classic understatement as she tried to look up through my moonroof.
“No duh shit,” I said, and the roof started to squeal behind me. I didn’t bother to look back, instead swerving slightly. The Chrysler blocked me instantly, forcing me in the other direction lest I inadvertently cause him to hit me with what the cops call the PIT maneuver. It’s where they bump a car they’re pursuing just beside the rear bumper and cause them to fishtail out. In my case, we were going fast enough that it was possible we’d flip.
“Ermagerd!” Kat screamed as I yanked the wheel in the opposite direction. “Why is he doing that? Isn’t he worried about her falling?”
“They’re Reflex types,” I said, gripping the wheel so tight and tense I was afraid my shoulders were going to explode. “She could jump off at this speed and probably land in a roll so graceful she’d come out of it better than we would gliding to a stop in this car.” That presented a real problem, I realized as Tasha Breedlowe Kern continued to peel the roof off my car. Garrett would try and keep us on the straight and narrow until she had a chance to get in and … well, I wasn’t sure what she was going to do once she got into the car, but I wasn’t excited about fighting a reflex type in a vehicle doing over a hundred miles an hour on the freeway. I tried to slow down but Garrett was there, catching me under the back bumper and pushing with his muscle machine. I watched the speedometer climb even though my foot was off it.
“Maybe … turn us over?” Kat asked, staring at me wide-eyed.
“Voluntarily?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach. I looked back and saw that Tasha had ripped off about six inches of my roof at the rear. She kicked the glass a couple times and it burst, shattering into pebbled shards. “Or we could wait for the cavalry, right?” She stared at me blankly. “You did just call Sienna, didn’t you?”
“Oh!” Kat started, eyes going wide. “No. I called my publicist. I should totally call Sienna!” and she went back to her phone, dialing frantically and then holding it up to her ear as the rear of the roof ripped another few inches. “Hmm,” Kat said, “I got her voicemail … Hey, it’s Kat, we’re under attack on 394 outside—well, we’re passing the exit for highway 100 and—”
“OH SHIT!” I shouted as Tasha ripped the roof off a whole ’nother foot. We were not going to be able to wait for Sienna before solving this problem. My mind was racing; flipping the car was an unreasonable suggestion, but we were in an unreasonable position. The thing about that was after we flipped the car, Garrett would be fine, and would stop and probably kill us before we recovered from whatever damage we suffered from crashing in excess of a hundred miles an hour. And that was if Tasha didn’t survive and beat him to it. She was an imaginative little hussy, as my mom would say, and the things she’d done to torment some of her victims made me shiver more than the cold air flowing in through the soon-to-be-convertible roof.
“Yeah, this is bad,” Kat said mildly and looked around. “No trees between us and the freeway walls, either.” She shrugged. “I got nothing.”
“Yeah, and here I am in the middle of …” I almost slapped myself in the head. “… in the middle of a freeway of asphalt which is made of rock and stone and tar.” I threw a nasty glance back to see Tasha’s bare midriff, which was framed by low rise shorts and a high-rise blouse. Girl knew she was rocking that body.
I reached out ahead of us, way out of ahead of us so I’d have time to work before we passed the spot I was using my powers on. I broke a pothole-sized chunk out of the pavement and it rose out of the road in front of us. I shot it toward us, sending it at Tasha, hoping she might just be too focused on ripping the roof off my car to see it coming.
“You just made a huge pothole in the mid
dle of the interstate!” Kat shouted.
“It’s Minnesota, no one’s going to notice,” I said, still waiting to see if it hit home.
No such luck. With a shout of surprise, Tasha leapt off my car as the pavement chunk came shooting past like an asteroid. I didn’t get to see her leap—the roof was in the way—but I was pretty sure it would have been enough to score a gold medal in the Olympics. Then she came down and stuck the landing, and the judges would have been all 10.0.
“Dammit,” I muttered. I was going to have to get a little more creative than one chunk of pavement. I reached out ahead again, this time pulling from the lanes on either side of us. I’d done similar things before; I called it my pavement shotgun, because I’d rip the gravel components out of the tar and it’d blow wide like buckshot and fill my opponents with a lot of little pieces of rock. I was planning a big blast with this one, though, because I wanted to pepper the hell out of Tasha and also get Garrett off my ass at the same time.
I could touch the rock buried in the asphalt, reaching out with my mind. It was right there, a thousand little pieces on either side. I waited until we drew close, night air still whipping in the car around me, and then I pulled my hand down like I was pumping my fist. I didn’t need to do it, but it felt right.
A few stray pebbles burst the front windows around us and Kat screamed. I heard and felt Tasha leap again, grunting as she did so, the suspension bouncing as she left my car. The sound of shattering glass came from behind us, too, and I watched Garrett’s windshield and side windows shatter under the gravel buckshot burst. His head disappeared as he ducked down, and I suspected I’d missed the slippery little shit. The Chrysler kept right on our tail, pushing us forward, and Tasha landed on the trunk again, bouncing us slightly and reminding me that, once more, I’d failed to extract us from this crapstorm.
“Uhhh … what now?” Kat asked, a trickle of blood running out of her hairline. One of the stray pebbles must have gotten her, but she didn’t seem to care, and it looked pretty superficial.
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