Cold

by Robert J. Crane

  “Control, usually,” I said. “If they manifested naturally, odds are this person has had these powers for quite some time. Probably survived the war either by sheer cunning or lying low. That makes it tougher on us than some fresh meta that got empowered last week and decided to take a shot at your governor. Being less experienced, they’d be more predisposed to making mistakes. Though, obviously, we’re not seeing many of those—yet.”

  “Lends credence to the idea that this is a natural-born,” Holloway said. “Someone who’s been working with their powers a while, maybe as a professional assassin. Who knows how to shoot.”

  “You thinking military experience?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Unlikely, at least in the US. We’re still pretty new to running women through the training programs. But…” He paused, frowning in thought. “She doesn’t have to be US. Other militaries have been training women snipers for longer. The IDF, for instance.”

  “The Soviets did,” I said. “Think I remember hearing a story about an NVA female sniper that made a pretty decent amount of trouble over there during the war.”

  “That was in Carlos Hathcock’s book, right?” Holloway was watching me with interest.

  “Yep,” I said, moving on. I heard Holloway make a sound of grudging respect under his breath. Probably hadn’t met many women who’d read that one.

  A young woman’s voice drew my attention. “Excuse me?” She was standing about fifty feet away, dressed in a serious suit, her tanned skin bright against the dark of the SUV she was next to. My first thought was that if you put a pencil down the back of her skirt when she was relaxed—if she was ever relaxed—it would immediately snap in half when she resumed her normal posture.

  Yeah. She was a tightass. I could see that from twenty yards.

  “My name is Jenna Corcoran,” she said. “I’m Governor Warrington’s chief of staff.”

  I nodded at her. Made sense; she’d gotten past the perimeter cops. “Your timing is good,” I said, exchanging a look with Holloway. My hostilities with him seemed to have been put on hold for the moment, because even through our black sunglasses we were both clearly thinking the same thing: this was convenient. “That’s just the man we need to talk to next.”

  She stepped all the way down out of the SUV and beckoned us with perfectly manicured nails. “The governor is nearby if you’d like to…” She gestured to the car.

  I looked past her to where Burkitt was parked, still sitting there like our driver rather than a fellow agent. “You want to ride with her?”

  “Probably need to ask her some questions,” Holloway said, under his breath. “But she might respond better to a female touch.”

  “You saying you want to ride with her?” I caught the flare of brief anger in his eyes before his lips tightened back to an even line. “I don’t want to cram us both in that car. Looks like a bodyguard in the front. We’d put the squeeze on her unless there’s a third-row seat to that thing.” I could see a bench in the second row from where she was standing, partially obscuring the view of the rear.

  “I’ll ride with Burkitt,” Holloway said. “Record with your phone in your pocket, and let me know if you get anything good.”

  “What’s the law on that in Louisiana?” I asked as Holloway moved toward Burkitt’s SUV.

  “It’s probably fine,” he said with a smirk. “Why don’t you find out after you give it a go?”

  “Jerkoff,” I said, heading for Jenna Corcoran’s ride. Why was it always black SUVs with these government types? Just once I’d like to see an official like a governor show up in a silver sedan. But no, they seemed to reserve those for people at my level.

  Jenna Corcoran held the door for me and I slipped past her, scooting over to the far side of the vehicle. She followed after, closing the door behind her. I was right; the driver and the dude in the passenger seat were both burly bodyguard types, probably Louisiana State Police, since they were charged with protecting the governor. She didn’t bother to introduce us.

  “This whole sequence of events has thrown our schedule planning into a tailspin,” Corcoran said, already looking at her phone once she was in. She even buckled her seatbelt, something I’d noticed most people riding in the back of official cars didn’t do for some reason, as though the car being official somehow made them immune to accidents.

  “Oh?” I asked, and fiddled with my own phone. “I hope you don’t mind, I have to record my conversations during an official investigation.” I put an apologetic tone on it and matched my smile to the sentiment.

  “What?” She stared blankly for a second, then said, “Oh. Of course.”

  “Before I meet with the governor, can you tell me if there’s any pending legislation, any recent executive actions that would be a good reason someone might want him dead?” I asked, then shut the hell up and waited for the answer.

  It was a long time coming.

  “Not that I can think of,” Corcoran said, her deep green eyes moving low and slow as she seemed to try to recall. “Most of what we’ve been working on since he took office two years ago have been things like reopening this—the Algiers Ferry—for free, like it used to be. Algiers is the fifteenth ward, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the entire US. It’s across the Mississippi, and the bridges are a little ways off. People who work downtown but live in Algiers—well, this gives them a convenient way to cross to the Canal Street business district. Governor Warrington has committed to—”

  “You can spare me the campaign speechifying,” I said, holding in a yawn. “I’m not in his constituency, so you don’t have to worry about me voting for him. Did that move—making the ferry free—piss anyone off?”

  Corcoran half-shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. It seems a stupid thing to kill someone over, but—”

  “Politics in general is a stupid thing to get worked up over, but hey, here we are,” I said with a shrug of my own. “Any other, more divisive issues?”

  “Maybe?” She seemed to think about it. “He’s done quite a bit given it’s his first term. There was a school bill he signed, with money earmarked for infrastructure spending. We’re trying to bring underperforming schools in poor urban and rural areas up to a higher level than they’re currently at—”

  “Okay, yeah, I get it, he’s a virtuous hero of the downtrodden,” I said, already exhausted by talking to her about his accomplishments. “Anything else?”

  Corcoran blinked her surprise away. “Do…do you not care about the poor and—”

  “Oh, screw you,” I said. “Yes, I care about the poor and downtrodden. But I’m not here to discover the local hero that is Ivan Warrington, surely a god among men, and the most caring of us all.” I stared her down and tried to keep most of the chill out of it. “I’m trying to figure out who’s trying to kill him, and stop them. That’s all. The less fluff and bullshit you feed me while puffing up your candidate, the less time I have to spend sifting through the chaff trying to find the wheat on why someone wants him dead.”

  “I never knew you were this uncaring,” Corcoran huffed, turning toward the SUV window.

  “Wow,” one of the state troopers said into the quiet that followed. “You really are the Slay Queen. In every respect.”

  “I’m not here to make friends,” I said. “Take me to the governor—and maybe we can get on about the real job—saving his life.” We fell into silence as the SUV rolled through the crowded streets of New Orleans.

  16.

  Olivia

  I took a deep, long breath as I sat on the hard mattress in the quiet motel room. The air had a smell, like long-ago stubbed out cigarettes, like stale air that hadn’t been recirculated in a long time.

  The motel was a hole in the wall.

  But it was quiet, and peaceful, and there was no Veronika, and that—that was the best thing of all.

  Outside the thick, navy curtain, a line of light shone at the edges, where the brightness outside the window tried—and succeeded—to break into th
e room at the margins. Motes of dust floated in those bars of light, disappearing where they reached the shadows the light did not touch.

  “This morning I was in Minneapolis,” I breathed, quietly, to myself. “This afternoon I’m in Las Vegas.”

  Sometimes, in these quiet moments, I had to repeat these things to myself because they still didn’t seem real. Not for the girl who was raised in a prison commune run by a totalitarian control freak. I shuddered as I pictured the ramshackle houses buried in the thick brush of a Florida swamp.

  I shuddered again when I remembered the man who ran it all with an iron hand—indeed, a hand that could control iron.

  And Tracy, his son.

  Bleh. I got my breathing back under control the way Dr. Zollers had taught me. I’d had an appointment with him scheduled for this afternoon but had to cancel when this came up. That was unfortunate, but we’d meet when I got back. Sometimes these things happened. I liked Zollers. He felt like more than a therapist—he made me feel like he was actually my friend.

  I put my head back on the threadbare bed spread, felt the rough cloth against the nape of my neck like I was lying on sandpaper. It didn’t bother me. Later I’d take a long, hot shower with the door closed, letting the water boil my skin, fog the mirror to the point where I wouldn’t be able to see even my shadow in it. The quiet, the sound of the falling water, the heat coming into my lungs—

  Those were my peaceful places, and ones I could create just about anywhere.

  Somewhere in those thoughts I drifted off, and woke to a buzzing. My phone was rattling on the nightstand, casting light toward the ceiling in the otherwise dark. The beams that shone at the edges of the windows were gone, and I blinked awake, grabbing it and answering, sleepily, without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Get dressed and meet me at Freemont Street,” Veronika’s voice came, taut and lacking its usual humor. “We just had another incident.”

  17.

  Sienna

  “This is not what I would have expected for a place a governor would hole up after almost being assassinated,” I said, eyeing the place we pulled up to after a very short drive, which mostly seemed to circle us around the block. I would have shot a look at the two purported bodyguards in the front seat, but even if I were blind, I could have seen the palpable sense of guilt hanging on them, the feeling that they were committing career malpractice.

  The blazing sign said, “Willie’s Chicken Shack,” in neon.

  “The governor feels most comfortable around his constituents,” Jenna Corcoran said stiffly. I couldn’t help but think of her in relation to both of her names. She was stiff enough that she commanded that level of formality.

  “Oooookay,” I said, shaking my head. Popping out the door, I could see a crowd gathered inside the restaurant, which was buried inside a strip of shops along a commercial street, maybe Canal, though I couldn’t see a street sign. I could see a tall, bald white dude in a suit holding court among a crowd of predominantly white folks through the glass front window. “I feel for you, guys, really I do,” I said, addressing the bodyguards in the front seat.

  They didn’t need to say anything. I saw the subtle, almost invisible nods. They were dying on the inside, having their principal out in public after an assassination attempt.

  I headed for the entry, Jenna Corcoran a few steps behind me as I crossed the sidewalk. “Why the hell would he come here?”

  There was a serious bristling in Jenna Corcoran’s voice as she responded. “Most people don’t know this, but the capital of Louisiana is—”

  “Baton Rouge,” I said, and caught a funny look from her when I glanced back. “What? My mother used to quiz me on state capitals, probably in an effort to kill time and keep me entertained.”

  “Anyway, there’s no governor’s mansion or capital building or anything for him to fall back to here in New Orleans,” she finished. “And we didn’t want to risk the road trip or a flight with the assassin still at large.”

  “But you have police stations in New Orleans, yes?” I held open the door and let her pass first. Age before beauty, after all. “Other secure locations where you could bunker him? You know, other than a chicken joint mere blocks away from where someone tried to kill him?”

  The smell of fried chicken hit my nostrils the moment I walked in and I felt a subtle drool reaction begin as I smacked my lips together. I glanced over at Warrington; an excessively tall man, his lack of hair felt somewhat unique among politicians. He had a broad grin on his perfectly tanned face, and he was glad-handing his way through the crowd, talking to someone who seemed a little cranky or maybe had just overdone it on the red beans and rice and was feeling the digestive effects.

  “Don’t you want to talk to him?” Jenna Corcoran asked as I paused, torn between going to Warrington and ordering some fried chicken.

  “Ehhh, he seems fine,” I said, and went for the chicken. In my defense, I hadn’t eaten since before my appointment with Dr. Kashani this morning.

  “His life is in danger,” she said, following me toward the line.

  “If he felt that strongly about it, you’d think he would have gone somewhere safe.”

  She wandered off as I approached the counter, trying to make my decision. As it turned out, they had daiquiris, too, but I had to pass on those for reasons of sobriety. Also, my employer would probably frown on drinking on the job. But mostly because of sobriety, since to hell with what my employer thought.

  I ordered a three-piece meal and was waiting for it when Holloway made it through the door. He looked pissed when he saw me standing there with my receipt, waiting for my order, but I just shrugged. He made his way over, steaming, past the now-forming line, and when he got to me, he looked at Warrington, then at the receipt in my hand, and asked, “Well…did you get me anything?”

  “Order 231,” the clerk called, sliding my three-piece meal over to me.

  I picked it up and looked into the bag before offering it to him. I probably didn’t need this many calories, anyway. “You can have the chicken breast if you want, but if you touch the drumstick, I will rip your soul from your body without any warning or remorse.”

  Holloway looked at me evenly through his sunglasses for a long moment, then nodded. “That’s fair.”

  We ate our chicken in silence as we watched Warrington work the crowd. He’d definitely noticed us, but didn’t seem to be in much hurry to make his way over. “He acting like someone who was just nearly assassinated in your opinion?” Holloway said between bites.

  The chicken was freaking great; I wasn’t inclined to waste my mouth’s valuable time answering him, but it was a good question. “No,” I said, and went right back to eating.

  Holloway eyed the menu behind as he gnawed the bone. “Shame we can’t hit up the daiquiris.”

  I didn’t react visibly, but I knew I’d pegged him on the hard-drinking thing. We can smell our own kind, you know. At ten thousand paces. I would have bet Holloway was a scotch guy.

  Once we’d finished licking our fingers and killing time, we eventually had made our way to the bottom of the chicken, me more than him. He was eyeing my Cajun fries enviously, and finally asked, “You going to eat all those?”

  I thought about it a second, and slid the rest across the table to him. “It took me a while to take off those extra pounds I was carrying. Better these go on your hips than mine.”

  Holloway didn’t seem to care about his hips based on how hard he took down the Cajun fries. I kept the biscuit for myself, though, and nibbled it while he annihilated the potatoes. Once that was done, we were out of excuses for approaching Warrington. Neither of us moved, though.

  “We should probably go talk to him, shouldn’t we?” I finally asked.

  “You ever talk to a politician?” Holloway asked, leaned back in the booth, seemingly unimpressed.

  I thought about Harmon, the last President, who’d spent a year in my head. “Once or twice,” I said.

  “So,
you know why I’m not rushing over there.”

  I nodded. “I got the speechifying from Jenna Corcoran on the way over. I could just about go the rest of my life without hearing her extolling the virtues of…well, him.”

  Holloway chuckled under his breath. “I hear that.” Then he got serious again, all traces of amusement wiped from his face. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

  We stood, making our way over to Warrington, who seemed to take no notice of us, but started to subtly detach from the crowd as if he sensed our approach. That sent a couple warning bells to ringing in my head, but I was hard-pressed to know if he was simply crowd-aware and human, as some people were, or possessed some sort of metahuman, preternatural sense like Harmon had. Having known Harmon so well felt like it might color my assessment, though, so I filed away those suspicions, at least for now.

  “Thank you—thank you so much.” Warrington pumped his last hand as he detached from the crowd and turned to face us with a smile that seemed warm and genuine. “Hey, how y’all doing?”

  “I left behind 45 degrees and cloudy for 75 and sunny, so I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said, trying not to sound at all impressed. Though I was, minimally. Warrington oozed charisma, and with his eyes on me, I felt strangely like someone had shone a warm light on me.

  Warrington smiled even more brightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Nealon.” He turned his spotlight-gaze on Holloway. “You must be Agent Holloway.” He stuck out his hand and they shook, firmly. I realized he hadn’t offered me the same, and mentally chalked another point in Warrington’s column; I hated physical contact with strangers, and I had a feeling he knew that, either from sensing it or doing a little research on me.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Governor,” Holloway said, with a lot more enthusiasm than he’d mustered in our conversation about politicians a minute ago.

  “Well, weather aside, I’m sorry y’all had to get called in on this,” Warrington said, a perfect picture of Southern genteel manners, and it seemed sincere—as though he were actually embarrassed that someone had the temerity to ruin our day by trying to assassinate him. “I’m sure you have plenty enough to be getting along with back home.”