Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  I could see looks of surprise as heads started to turn. I was sideways, flying through the air, a little blood trailing from where the glass had cut me up and I hadn’t healed yet. Wolfe, I said, but he was already on it.

  I fired, aiming at the closest target first. I saw a splatter as I pegged him in the upper chest three times, my HK chattering away with a shot for every pull of the trigger. I missed automatic weapons, but unfortunately that was another thing I’d had to leave behind when I’d passed out of government service. Now I had to do it the old-fashioned way, pulling the trigger once for each shot.

  I switched targets, ripping three quick shots at the next guy, then the next guy, dropping each of them before I slid too far behind the wall that partitioned the dining room from the main entry hall. I altered my trajectory in midair, thanks to my pal Gavrikov, and came up just behind the wall, in cover. I debated my next move for about two seconds, which was as long as it took for Augustus to make his entry through the window on the opposite side of the room.

  “Ow!” I heard him scream as glass probably tore into him. I heard the pop of his weapon going off a few times, and I surged around the corner. I ignored the three guys I’d already downed, taking advantage of the momentary distraction to catch two more with double taps behind the ear while their heads were turned to watch Augustus’s ungainly entry into the fray. “Ow, shit, oh, gawd, my—damn!” He rolled behind the wall on the opposite side of the entry hall, into a living room of some sort, leaving me in the entry with three more guys with guns.

  “Hi,” I said, as two of them turned back. I drilled them each with perfect shots to the forehead, but the last was using his own guys as cover and they just weren’t falling fast enough. I saw him dodge away, and caught a flash of motion as he whipped his gun around to cover me. I heard the sound of return fire spattering against the wall beside my head, and something stung my face like a flick to the cheek as I retreated back into the dining room.

  “Kat is down just outside the back door!” Reed shouted into the mic. “We have tangos everywhere in the back of the house!”

  I put aside the bit about Kat for now, deciding my best course might be to start moving toward the back of the house to aid Reed, since there was only one guy left between Augustus and me, and he seemed to be keenly aware of us. “Augustus, SITREP,” I hissed.

  “I’m sitting, all right,” Augustus muttered. “Got glass all up in my business. It just—ow!”

  I rolled my eyes as I listened for movement in the front hallway. I heard it, but it was closer to the living room where Augustus was huddled, and the guy didn’t seem to be coming my way. “Next time maybe use your fancy earth powers to bust the window first? What the hell is the point of controlling glass if you can’t move it out of your way, you know?”

  “Oh.” Augustus said, and then he faded, clearly in embarrassment. “That … that makes a lot of sense.”

  I lunged around the other entry into the dining room and found myself looking into a kitchen with battered cabinets and hideous old white linoleum streaked with brown, like it was trying to imitate tile and failing horribly. There was an island jutting out, and I saw movement behind it, a flash of black, and I trained my weapon on it.

  I could see a broken rear door just past the island, across the open space to my left that led into a family room, and that was about as far as my survey got me before someone opened up on me from that side and I had to dodge back around the wall.

  “Did they just open fire on you?” Reed asked. “I’m behind the island in the kitchen.”

  “Yep,” I said, listening to the chatter of weapons. I heard a lot of fire smacking the hell out of the wall I’d just leaned out from. “That was me.”

  “Ungh,” Augustus said. “I’m—I’m kinda on my feet again. And—”

  I heard the hard pop of a shot behind me, from the living room, and felt a burst of panic. “Augustus?” I said tentatively through the mic. I waited a fraction of a second then spoke again, more strongly this time. “Augustus?”

  There was no answer.

  3.

  Jamie Barton

  “You suck,” Kyra Barton told her mother, face dark and serious, as she left, blond hair whipping behind her as she slammed the door, leaving Jamie standing in the kitchen of their Staten Island home, her daughter’s parting words echoing in her ears.

  Jamie felt the words bounce around inside her, scoring pinball-like hits off the bumpers of her emotions. This was how it was lately: argument after argument, Kyra leaving in a slam of the door, or the sound of her locking herself in her room. It didn’t take much to get them going, either, just a little push, an offhand comment by either one of them and they were off to the fighting races, like they just picked up where they’d left off the last argument.

  As though Jamie didn’t have enough on her mind already.

  She ran fingers through her long, blond hair, then opened her eyes to see the clock. She was late again, the exchange with Kyra costing her time she didn’t have. She needed to be at her company right now, to meet with the banker to arrange an extension on a loan her business couldn’t pay just yet along with additional credit. She hadn’t counted on this fresh volley with Kyra. She should have, of course, but then, she hadn’t been the one in control of setting the appointment. It was the banker who had the power in that scenario, because it wasn’t like he was the one who needed more money to keep the doors of his company open.

  Jamie surveyed the kitchen in a quick glance. Her wholegrain Eggos were burnt black in the old toaster oven, the appliance a remnant of their days in an apartment before they got the house. She picked up her coffee from where she’d left it on the counter before she and Kyra had started really going at it. She’d put it down because she didn’t trust herself not to accidentally break it in her grip. Now it shook in her hands as she tried to calm herself with soothing breaths, drips slopping down the sides of the wide mug that said “I Heart New York.”

  “Why today, of all mornings?” Jamie muttered to herself, taking a long drink of the cold, pungent liquid. It was cheap coffee, the best she could afford. She leaned against the composite countertop and took a breath, trying to get her mind right so she could finish getting ready and get out the door for her meeting with the banker.

  She turned her head when she saw motion out of her peripheral vision; Kyra had left the TV on, with the volume off. Jamie hadn’t even noticed because she’d been too busy rushing around, making sure Kyra had all her stuff for school, trying to chase down an invoice she was pretty sure she’d need for the meeting this morning. She had a pile on the dining room table that was now utterly out of order. That was okay. They always ate in the kitchen anyway.

  Jamie started to turn off the TV, but the headline on the chyron at the bottom caught her attention: QUEEN OF WALL STREET HELD HOSTAGE.

  Jamie froze, frowning as she nudged the tiny circular nub of the volume up button.

  “—here live, on Wall Street, where a gunman has taken Nadine Griffin hostage. The NYPD has identified the suspect as Joseph Tannen, age 34, from the Bronx,” the lady reporter said, police milling around behind her, holding back the press and other onlookers. “Tannen apparently has a gun to Ms. Griffin’s head and is holding position behind her to keep snipers from firing at him.” The reporter shuffled around and thrust a microphone at a man with a comb-over who looked vaguely familiar to Jamie. “Lieutenant Welch! Lieutenant, what can you tell us about—”

  Lieutenant Welch blanched into the camera, turning his head as he was caught with a blinding light in his eyes. “We have the scene cordoned off as best we can,” Welch said, his pupils obviously shrinking under the assault of the lights. “Mr. Tannen is making demands, and, uh—” Welch shrugged, “we’re talking with him.”

  “What sort of demands is Mr. Tannen making?” another reporter called from somewhere in the scrum. Jamie watched, riveted. This was all happening real time, the LIVE label emblazoned across the bottom of the screen.


  Welch looked pained, though this time it didn’t appear to be from being blinded by the light. “He’s making demands, but we are in conversation with him to try and resolve this situation peacefully.” The NYPD spokesman forced a smile that did not look good on screen—or probably live, Jamie suspected.

  “Lieutenant!” someone else yelled. “Given the seriousness of Ms. Griffin’s crimes and the public opinion surrounding her, are you going to pay this man?”

  Welch looked deeply uncomfortable to Jamie, as though someone had just turned the screws on him. “Mr. Tannen has asked for … a rather large sum. And he seems fixated on that amount. As you probably know, we don’t negotiate these sorts of things because we don’t believe paying bounties for our citizens sends the right message or incentivizes any kind of behavior we’d want. That said, we’re doing our best to res—”

  “Lieutenant, if you don’t meet his demands is he going to—”

  “Are you prepared to storm the building and—”

  “Is it likely Ms. Griffin will survive this—?”

  “Lieutenant, have you thought about seeking help from either of the metahuman heroes here in New York—”

  Jamie watched, her eyes wide, and she knew the answers before the reporters even finished answering the question. All thoughts of her meeting with the banker, her argument with Kyra, and her ordinary life were thrown out the window in a hot second, and Jamie Barton sprinted out the door, not even bothering to slam it shut behind her as she unbuttoned her blouse and kicked off her pants with metahuman speed, pulled her mask over her face as she vaulted into the air above Staten Island and launched herself toward lower Manhattan.

  4.

  Sienna Nealon

  “Augustus?” I called again, hoping to hear his familiar voice crackle through the radio line. In its place I heard nothing but gunfire from the kitchen as the bad guys opened up on both Reed and the corner where I’d just popped my head out.

  Kat was down.

  Augustus was out.

  Reed was pinned.

  My little op had gone so far south that it was about to cross the Drake Passage.

  This shit was just unacceptable.

  “Keep your head down, Reed!” I shouted, not caring who heard as I pushed Wolfe and Gavrikov to the forefront of my mind. I launched myself into flight into the main hallway, my gun raised and ready. My opponent was ready, too, facing me from the living room arch where he’d gunned down Augustus, his weapon pointing almost right at me—

  I shot at him and he shot at me. I did a sideways barrel roll in midair, some serious John Woo-type shit, unconcerned with gravity or a landing because I didn’t have to be. I watched his shots go streaking past, ready to paint my face if I’d been just a little slower.

  I hit the wall sideways and upside down, using the bounce as an opportunity to go lower as I worked my way back across the archway toward cover again, spinning and firing like—like—

  You know, honestly, I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen in any action movie where someone did what I did. It was like rolling on the ground to put out a fire on myself, except without the fire, or the ground, and with shots flying all around me as I stayed head on with my opponent and gave him the smallest possible target to shoot at—basically just my face and shoulders.

  I returned fire, the wild thumping of my heart and the insane movement making my aim beyond crappy. I blasted the wall to his right, destroying the patterned wallpaper with my shots. Some streamed past him into the living room behind, leaving their own marks on the far wall. My foe was dodging hard, lunging to my left with pretty damned good speed, and I couldn’t decide whether he was a human with incredible training or whether he was a meta of some sort—it was pretty close to the line and damned impressive either way because he was keeping his head about him like few I’d ever faced.

  I heard his shots lance into the wall as I dodged back into the dining room, escaping a shot to the face by a matter of inches. This guy was good.

  No, wait. His team was good.

  This guy was great.

  I didn’t have much time to feel a grudging respect since I was busy not getting shot in the head, but it was there, burgeoning in the back of my mind as I ejected my near-empty mag from my HK MP5 and slapped a new one in. I checked to make sure it was snug and then readied myself for my next move.

  I needed to get to Reed, because he and I were the only ones left in this fight, and me trying to take on this enemy alone meant leaving my brother to get shot all to hell by superior numbers. That was bad, and I didn’t need any more guilt in my life, so I bolted for the door to my right that led to the kitchen, and flung myself sideways again, spinning through the air.

  I counted eight men with guns in the other room, and they opened up as soon as they saw me launch into motion. I didn’t want to hold out too long, because dodging shots was guaranteed to end in … well, in my end, before too much longer. I hosed them down with my fresh mag as I entered the room, firing, and had the satisfaction of seeing four of them go down under my fire and a fifth get doused by Reed with a double tap to the face as I landed behind the kitchen island next to my brother.

  “Oh, what a lovely day,” Reed said tightly as I glided down next to him. The rattle of gunfire against the other side of the island was gnawing at my consciousness, a grim awareness settling in that bullets could rip right through the wood partition between us and danger at any time.

  “You’ve been watching too much Mad Max,” I said, listening to the fire die down a little. Some of them had to be reloading, and I dodged out and fired quickly, pegging one of them in the gut and disappearing behind the island again as a dozen rounds flew past in the space I’d just occupied. I kept an eye on the door I had just come through, figuring it was even odds whether my opponent from the living room decided to flank us or join his mates. “Two more behind us and one in the living room that could come either way.”

  “That the one that got Augustus?” Reed said with nervous tension.

  I didn’t look at him as I answered. “Yep,” I said tonelessly.

  “We still haven’t cleared the upstairs,” he said, like I’d forgotten.

  “I’ll just nuke the house, we’ll call it good,” I said.

  “And if there are hostages?” Reed looked at me in disbelief. “Civilians?”

  “Then it’ll be a PR nightmare, of course, but at least I won’t be in charge of cleanup.”

  Reed gave me one of his patented big brother looks, unamused at my little joke. “That’s just what we need right now. Like the Federal Government isn’t looking at us suspiciously as it is.”

  That was a fair point, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to my brother. Feeding him in that way was dangerous, because he already thought he was right all the time as it was. No one likes a know-it-all. “Let’s save the debate for another time,” I said, since we had at least three guys with guns in the vicinity with hostile intent and two of our team were already down. There’d be plenty of time later to dwell on the fact that the government had filled my old job about two seconds after I left with some mysterious new head of a task force that had been absorbed into the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

  And trust me, I was spending some time dwelling on that. Had been for weeks. Stewing, even.

  The sharp rat-a-tat of fire behind me jerked me out of that rabbit hole before I could go too deep down it, and I raised my gun. I had at least fifteen rounds left, which was enough to deal with these three chuckleheads if I could get a clear line of fire. “Go on three,” I said to Reed, and he nodded. “One—”

  And we went, because the whole three thing was just a distraction. The guys shooting at us were just a few feet away, after all; they could hear us. I flew out in a spin again, and I saw the nearest bad guy’s eyes widen as I planted a round between them—pop pop!—and he was out. I turned my weapon toward the other in time to see him train fire on Reed. I heard Reed grunt and heard the wet slap of rounds hit
ting my brother, then fired as I stabilized in my arc of flight long enough to draw a bead. Splat, I nailed the guy in the side of the head and liquid splattered everywhere.

  “Now for the—” I spun, my legs twisting as I came back to the ground in time to see the last enemy—my worthy foe from the living room—come around the corner. He was firing at me and I was forced to pirouette, his shots racing by me as I did my best impersonation of a paper cutout turned sideways while I raised my gun. I fired the HK one-handed and blasted him across the chest, halting him before he could nail me with a shot.

  I grinned at him, watched his face go slack in disbelief. He had a strong chin, and wide eyes, and he forced a smile as he looked down. My eyes followed him, and I saw the grenade clutched in his hand, pin pulled.

  I didn’t even have time to summon Gavrikov to the fore of my mind before it went off in his hand, the explosion blotting out my vision.

  5.

  Nadine Griffin

  The Queen of Wall Street was feeling the loss of her crown more acutely now that she’d had a loaded gun to her head for the last two hours. She was watching the television in the corner of her office with one eye and the pistol that was squeezed against her temple with the other, her hands shaking and not from the coffee or the whiskey.

  “We are dealing with this situation like we would deal with any others,” Lieutenant Welch of the NYPD said on the screen, smug and tight, glorying in her fall. “Ms. Griffin’s legal status has no bearing on our handling of this matter. Our goal is to resolve this peacefully—”

  Yeah, right, Nadine thought, the metal barrel of the gun being squeezed tight against her temple giving her a headache. It wasn’t the whiskey, no, nor the coffee; it was definitely the gun. Not her fault but his, this intruder, this vulture after another piece of her flesh. As though there weren’t enough of those already. You’re definitely handling this like you would if it was a sweet, innocent twelve-year-old with a gun to his head. Oh, no, wait. You would have already paid this maniac if that were the case.