Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Clarice,” Jamie said, back to peppy, positive and affirmed. “We have work to do.”

  Clarice looked like she was torn between serving up another piece of her mind and the need to get on about the—surely numerous—things on her schedule. Her mouth was slightly open, a mutinous look in those dark eyes, but a professional smile won out over the look that would have told Jamie that her best friend was about to tear a strip out of her backside. “We’ll talk about this later,” Clarice said. Jamie knew that they would, in great detail, but for now Clarice left, shutting the door behind her, and Jamie nodded once, sure of her direction, and dove into the pile of invoices sitting at the corner of her desk.

  13.

  Sienna

  I don’t like traffic, as a rule. It has a lot to do with my distaste for crowds and waiting. Some people—mostly reporters—have taken this to mean I don’t like people. It’s actually the opposite. I like people, at least in the abstract. Or on an individual basis. Or as a general, whole idea.

  But when you put them in crowds and unleash them around me, I get antsy. There are a few reasons for this, none of which really bear discussing right now, save for the one where being surrounded by people feels a little like bugs crawling over my skin. It’s nothing they do; it’s the fact that I can … feel them around me. Walking. Talking. Existing. Ignoring me (hopefully). They’re a presence that presses on my consciousness, and while it’s easy to tolerate a few—like molecules of water—when too many surround me, I can’t breathe.

  I can’t think.

  They’re just … everywhere.

  I’d never tested to see what would happen if I surrounded myself in a crowd in New York City for more than a half hour or so at a time, but I had a feeling it would be bad. I’d walked Times Square before on a Sunday once, when the crowds were in full force. I’d had people brush against me, push against, bump into me, talking as they walked, cell phones to their ear, arguing with their loved ones, laughing with their kids. It was a crush, a glut of humanity, and it felt so close to my consciousness it was like they were poured raw into my mind. They were there, laid bare before me, all humanity and feelings and emotions, and I felt overwhelmed.

  I’d needed to retreat to my hotel room after only a few minutes, closing myself off in the closet, no light, fingers in my ears, letting the noise and feeling and talking and living recede into the distance.

  “So …” Allyn Welch said, breaking the silence between us as we honked our way across the RFK Bridge between Randalls and Wards Islands and Manhattan, the whole of Manhattan laid out before us. Fortunately he’d rolled the windows up after we’d left LaGuardia, because I had a feeling, based on the number of cars in front of me belching smoke out their tailpipes, that the air quality around us had taken a precipitous drop. Talk about not being able to breathe.

  “You sent for me and I am here,” I said, steeling myself for entry to the city of New York. I hoped I wouldn’t feel buried in the crowds during this assignment, but I was a big girl and occasionally I had to confront my fears and the psychological damage from being raised in isolation. Because that’s what grown-ups do in the real world. “What’s the what?”

  “The … what?” Welch gave me a frown so deep his crow’s feet looked like they were opening box canyons at the ends.

  “Never mind,” I said, looking out at the city through the window. “Why did you break the glass if you didn’t see an emergency?”

  He got that one, and went all introspective on me, nodding and looking out at the sea of traffic ahead of us. “You ever get that feeling in your gut? The one that tells you something’s wrong?”

  “Usually after I’ve had White Castle in the middle of the night, but yeah,” I said, flashing him a smile. He looked at me blankly, and I suppressed a sigh. “Cop instinct, sure,” I said, letting my brilliant joke go to waste.

  “I got that feeling here,” Welch said. “And if I’m wrong when it comes up on a normal case … maybe somebody dies. Bad news, right? But the NYPD can handle the perp afterward. I get that feeling on a meta case …” He looked at me with purpose. “I break the damned glass.”

  “Nicely brought around.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I get this wrong … worse happens than a little murder. Here we’ve got people with powers and all possible sorts of trouble.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I didn’t see what Captain Frost said—”

  “It wasn’t anything major,” Welch said. “I’ll show you the video at the precinct, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to trip many triggers.”

  “But it tripped yours?”

  “Maybe I’m just an old cop in a new world,” Welch said, which I thought was a pretty brave admission, though obviously the comb-over was a good tipoff. “Not gonna lie, I’m still pretty uneasy that the Mayor’s office lets these ‘heroes’ go running through the city unchecked.”

  I held my tongue, mostly because I didn’t have a well-formed opinion about this new phenomenon. Metahumans had mostly been held in check—publicly, at least, kept in secret, for thousands of years—until President Gerry Harmon decided to out us on national television. It probably wasn’t a bad call, since I was in dragon form, battling a supreme evil over Minneapolis at the moment he chose to make his announcement. That might have been hard to explain if he hadn’t come clean.

  But this idea of heroes, powered people straight out of comic books, defending their cities and waging war against evil? That was new. Other than me, I meant. I’d set loose the first hero on Atlanta about a year ago, Taneshia French, and she’d done a pretty good job of improving her neighborhood and the city in general. I knew her, and I trusted her.

  These other heroes, though? I knew what I’d seen of Gravity Gal, and she seemed like a low-profile, keep-her-mouth-shut-and-do-her-job type. I liked her.

  Captain Frost, though? He was like Kat unchecked, and that bothered me, because I was constantly checking Kat to keep her from being a giant idiot.

  “It doesn’t bother you that I’m playing Luke Cage nowadays?” I asked, and realized a second later that I’d thrown another reference at Welch that was bound to soar over his head. “I mean—”

  “Hero for Hire, I got it,” Welch said, and a smile poked out as he looked over at me. “I used to read the comics as a kid.” He let the levity pass and went serious again. “I guess, maybe because of the way you started—working for the government and all that—it doesn’t bother me as much.” He gave me a slightly sour look. “But if you could keep from trashing any subway trains this time—”

  “You never let that one go, jeez. I saved all the gold in the Federal Reserve, but no one remembers that.”

  “Anyway,” Welch said, and I saw the end of the bridge in sight, but the FDR looked like it was packed with cars. Welch saw it, too, and another pronounced frown wrinkled him all the way to the eyes. “I just want you to hang around for a bit, like a soothing balm, in case noses get out of joint.”

  I passed by the mixed metaphor and went straight to his intent. “Have you met me? Of the many things I’ve been called, soothing? … Not so much one of them.”

  “Well, add it to your repertoire,” Welch said and honked his horn pointlessly before giving a massive sigh.

  “Might as well try something new,” I said. “How long am I gonna be here?” He looked over at me again, and I clarified. “In New York, not on this bridge. I know, based on the traffic, that we’re going to die of old age here. You much sooner than me, obvs.”

  That got me a scowl followed by a smile. “Why do you ask, so long as the money keeps flowing into your company’s account?”

  “Well, the State Fair is coming up, you know,” I said, looking over at the Bronx. When he didn’t say anything, I turned back to see him looking perplexed. “It’s like a religious holiday in Minnesota. The Great Minnesota Get-Together, they call it. It’s a big deal,” I finished lamely.

  “Hopefully not too long,” Welch said, turning his attenti
on back to the immovable line of traffic in front of us. I thought about getting out, lifting the car and flying us back to the precinct, but figured that might be too much for even the city of New York to fight the FAA over, so I settled myself against the window. We inched forward a little at a time, in silence, as the sun tilted ever closer to the western horizon before us, and onward toward nightfall.

  14.

  Nadine

  She’d had to take a cab back to Long Island after the Uber she’d summoned drove right past her when they’d realized who she was. She didn’t even bother to review them badly, because what was the point? She took a cab and ignored the rearview mirror attentions of the driver, who seemed to be trying to figure out why her face was so familiar.

  She got out in front of her Long Island mansion just before dark. She’d spent most of the day in the company of the NYPD, answering questions about that lousy sonofabitch Joseph Tannen, and her utter lack of connection to him, over and over, with a few gentle inquiries about the charges she already had pending. References to her lawyer had turned those back fairly quickly, and fortunately she’d been out of there after wasting only the entire day.

  This was the shit she had to deal with now, she thought as she walked toward the front door in her bare feet, Manolos over her shoulder, one with a broken heel, the sound of the cab squealing away behind her. She was living under a cloud of suspicion until this all went away, and it was suffocating her, dulling her mind and turning her attention away from what she ought to be doing—making money.

  Then there was the other thing. That stupid Gravity cow and her insufferable snideness. Nadine was still burning from that, and it had been hours. She’d seen the replays while waiting to leave the precinct. The news was having a field day with the superheroine telling off the fallen Queen of Wall Street, lecturing her on virtue, like some sort of mother scolding her child in the middle of a supermarket. Nadine recognized the stunned look on her face in the playbacks; she was sitting there silently, horrified, like her FBI interrogations had been made public.

  They hadn’t, fortunately, but it was probably just a matter of time before she’d have to deal with that humiliation, too.

  She fumbled with the keys while unlocking the front door, checking the bushes to make sure nobody was ready to leap out at her. That had happened recently, and the dumbass had gotten a key right to the face before he ran off into the night. She opened the tall, heavy front door and slipped through, shutting it and locking the deadbolt behind her.

  She drew a few quiet breaths in the darkness, just listening. She wouldn’t put it past some lunatic parasite to break into her mansion and wait, after all. This was what the crazies did, followed people like her, trying to attach themselves to the nearest luminous object like moths.

  She waited a minute in the dark, then two. She heard nothing, smelled nothing out of the ordinary, and finally turned on the light to find the room exactly as she’d left it—tastefully appointed with fine wood furnishings, a grand piano in the corner (she didn’t even play), and not a soul to greet her. The cook and the gardener had been fired when her assets had been seized. She didn’t really miss their presence, but she did miss ready access to warm meals and a plush, perfectly manicured lawn.

  Nadine dragged herself into the kitchen, looking carefully around as she walked. Someone could still be hiding here, after all, though it was a lot more likely that the FBI was listening to her as she made her way through her home. She hadn’t seen a van on the street, but then, she hadn’t cared to look either, and the street was separated from her estate by a ten-foot-high wall. Her estate backed onto Long Island Sound, though there was a decent amount of real estate between her and the water. Enough that she couldn’t hear the water clearly at night, but she still had the view.

  She browsed the fridge with disinterest, mentally counting the minutes. She was almost positive the FBI didn’t have video surveillance on her in her house, but it still gave her pause. They’d searched the place relentlessly when they’d first arrested her, and while her lawyers had seen the warrant, they’d told her it was entirely possible that the FBI had another that allowed for wiretapping and video surveillance, so she was extra wary when she knew she was stepping outside the law.

  She tossed her heels and walked across the tile floors toward the master suite. She ignored the messy bed, though it drove her a little crazy, avoided kicking the clothes and shoes she’d left on the floor—Manuela, who used to pick up after her once she’d left for the day, was gone now—and walked into her bathroom, leaving the light off.

  She stood in front of the mirror in the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. If they had an infrared camera in here, she was done for no matter what. But if they did, they hadn’t tipped their hand to it yet, so Nadine slipped off her clothes and stepped into the enormous tile shower, her feet cold now that she couldn’t pay for the cost of the floor heat to run anymore.

  She turned on one of the eight different jets and looked up and around in the cavelike darkness of her shower. Her mansion was old, the latest renovation a decade past. She’d thought about doing another, it had been on her list, but she’d been hesitant for one reason—she didn’t want to expose the house’s last great secret, the one that the previous owner had made sure didn’t show up during the last renovation. When he’d sold the place, he’d told her about it only after they’d signed on the dotted line. He’d died alone a few months later, luckily for her, which meant—hopefully—she was the only one who knew that the shower held a panic room.

  She pushed at the loose tile to her left and it opened just enough to reveal a keypad. It was outdated by any modern standard, but it made a satisfying clicking noise as she punched the code. Squares of tile yielded to her touch after that, the door swinging open as she stepped out of the darkness of the shower and into a deeper darkness inside the panic room.

  She shut the door behind her, finally daring to breathe. Her skin was wet from the shower, her hair dripping, but she didn’t care. She kept a towel just inside the door, and retrieved it and the robe she left on the hook, drying off and putting her wet hair over her shoulder.

  She slipped into the seat in front of her. An old computer console sat there, with emergency phone line access, its green, phosphor-lit screen the height of seventies technology. In the top corner of the room, there was a blinking light where the previous owner had installed a cell phone repeater with an antenna drilled through the steel so he could get reception. It, too, shone in the darkness. She ignored it, instead reaching into an old shoebox to the left and retrieving a burner phone, one of a dozen secreted away in here, and dialed a number on it.

  It hadn’t been built as a panic room. Solid metal all the way around, it was a fallout shelter, designed to withstand the predicted nuclear holocaust that everyone had feared in the days of the Cold War. Nadine smirked at that thought, at the casual idiocy of those who’d come before. It was lucky they’d planned for this, though, because now she had her own little secret lair, cut off from the rest of the house, where the FBI couldn’t get to her. Hell, if she’d known they were coming, she would have hidden out in here, waiting until they’d left, and then chartered a private plane and ditched the country. She could have come back later, after her name was cleared, instead of having to wade through this hell up to her neck.

  “Abner,” she said when he answered on the other side. “It’s me.”

  There was a pause and Abner spoke in his cool tones, inflected with just a suggestion of worry. “I saw what happened on the news. I was putting together a response when—”

  “It’s good you didn’t have to act,” Nadine said, a sense of relief filling her. “I’m sure the NYPD would have wondered—”

  “Pre-paid bodyguarding services,” Abner said, precise, as he always was. “A standard preparation in the world of finance. I have a team standing by in case this happens again.”

  “Hopefully it won’t,” Nadine said, sagging against the chair, letting it spi
n lazily as she regarded the steel ceiling by the dim fluorescent light. “How goes the progress?”

  “I am making inroads,” Abner said. “The evidence they have against you at the SEC is … strong. The FBI’s case is less so, and easier to sabotage.” She could imagine him, sitting at his desk, his wire-frame glasses catching the overhead light, his long fingers running over a list that he’d written in an innocuous code only he could understand. She’d watched him read it once, and to her it had looked like a simple to-do list: get groceries, pick up the kids from school, buy a hammer to address the nail pop in the bedroom.

  But Abner wasn’t the sort to deal with minor things, and he certainly wasn’t the kind to wield a hammer on a simple nail.

  “How long do you think it will be?” Nadine stared at her fingernails; they looked atrocious from her steady efforts to bite them down. Usually a manicurist would fix them, but that was another allowance cut.

  “Soon,” Abner said. “You know it’s best if I don’t talk timetable. And it would be better if you didn’t call me, even from a burner phone until—”

  “I know,” she cooed, intending to give him a thrill and nothing more. “I have to look like I’m innocent, like I’m standing here helplessly while the FBI and the SEC tear me apart every way they can.” Her face hardened, and the amusing idea of making Abner twitch with lust across the river evaporated in her anger. Another idea occurred to her. “If you saw what happened, does that mean you saw what Gravity Slut said to me?”

  Abner’s hesitation was obvious, though she wasn’t sure whether it was because he was still pondering her offhand come-on (which she meant nothing by except to tease him) or because he had some inkling of where she might go with this thought. “I saw,” was all he said.

  “I don’t like how she spoke to me,” Nadine said, bringing her thumbnail up to her lips and working it between her teeth, weakening it. She hated thumbnails, they were the worst, the hardest to sever. She usually worked on them for days before finally popping them loose between her teeth. “Like she was better than me.”