Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  57.

  Sienna

  I wanted to mash Scott’s stupid face, the one I used to find so boyishly charming. I wanted to smash it to pieces so that I didn’t have to look at it anymore behind those ridiculous black glasses. I’d never really known the searing fire of that old quote about “love to hatred turn’d” before, but I was feeling it now, and it felt like Gavrikov had lit a fire beneath my skin that was threatening to seep out, hot enough to sear the air around us.

  “When I took this job,” Scott said evenly, sounding like a man with a leash on his own emotions, like maybe I’d sucked them all out of him with his memories, “President Harmon asked me if I was ready to go toe to toe with you. He warned me it was inevitable.”

  “I hope you told him that you’d never be ready,” I said, my fist clenched so tight that my nails were dug several centimeters into my palm.

  “I told him I was looking forward to it,” he said, and a ring of triumph came out with the admission that turned the air around me a deep scarlet as my rage threatened to overflow at the challenge.

  “Well, doesn’t that just make you stupid,” I said.

  “Or maybe it means I know you well enough to realize what you really are,” he said, “and to know that someone needs to stop you.”

  “Please,” Nadine Griffin said, reminding us all she was there, right in the middle of what was about to become the very last battlefield in my long-fought war with Scott—though the first literal one. “Please don’t do this. Not here,” she said, bringing it back to her. “This is my home.”

  I looked sideways at her. I hadn’t trusted a word that had come out of her smug, lying mouth the whole time we’d been talking. Even if she had the world’s most impressive poker face, I knew I was looking at the person who’d given the order that had set the attacks in motion. She was a liar who staged her emotions the way a professional realtor stages houses—for maximum effect. I’d been about to drain the pertinent details out of her head before Scott had thrown a monkey wrench into that plan, and my seething rage had transferred from her to him without skipping a beat.

  She’d pushed me. I’d known she was doing it, and it hadn’t made a bit of difference. I was mad enough that the killing rage was right there, white hot, so close to the surface I could just about touch it.

  But Dr. Zollers had been coaching me for months now on that rage, and how to handle it when it came up.

  I took a breath, and remorse rushed over me. Was this really worth it? I stared at Scott. The remorse turned to regret, and the burning anger in me was doused in an instant, though the smoke lingered. I unclenched my fist. “I don’t want to fight you, Scott.”

  “We’re heading toward you not having much of a choice,” he said, and I could tell he was itching for it. He really did want to fight me, knock me low.

  I had a flash in my head, an old memory of him saying, I can’t just stop loving you, even if I wish I could. I shook my head. “I’m leaving.” And I started for the door.

  He held out a hand to stop me. “You said you wanted to see me try and make you leave.”

  “Well, now I don’t anymore,” I said, and slipped away from him before he could touch me. I didn’t want to give him grounds to try and charge me for assaulting a federal officer or something like that. I made it out the door and closed it behind me, vaulting into the sky without looking back, afraid that if I lingered he’d come out and find a way—not that it would take much to get me to fight …

  … and then it really would be all over.

  58.

  Nadine

  “God, that was tense,” Nadine said, feeling her legs wobble beneath her. That had come so much closer to the brink than she’d expected, that nasty little contest of exes that had saved her from getting her brain plunged by the psycho meta. She’d watched the reason leak slowly back into Sienna Nealon’s eyes and exulted silently as she stood on the sidelines, wishing she could fade right into the wall and disappear until much, much later.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Scott Byerly said, stoic and stone-faced, pulling away his glasses and putting them in his front pocket. He looked at her, drawing slow breaths, his eyes warm. The tension that had wired his frame during the confrontation with Sienna was gradually dissipating.

  “I’m just glad you came,” Nadine said, holding her hand in front of her neck. “She … she forced her way into my house, made all sorts of accusations …” She feigned surprise. “How did you know she was here?”

  “There’s an FBI agent watching your house,” Scott said, still stiffly. “They gave me a call when they saw her come down, so I rushed right over.” By his manner, she could see he hadn’t forgotten who she was, what she was accused of, and was still treating her accordingly.

  She’d have to change that. Because now she’d had an idea, and it required that he forget it, that she put as much distance between his current perception of her, the one that had come from his preconceptions, and what she would show him going forward. She couldn’t be a criminal to him, no, not at all, not the badass that had unrepentantly screwed Wall Street as hard as she could and showed everyone who ran that world.

  She swallowed hard, trying to dredge up an old skill she hadn’t used since she was a child. She felt a little lurch of disgust, but she put it aside, as she tried to summon up tears. She pressed her chewed nails into her palm, hard, then harder, then hard enough to draw blood. It wouldn’t take but one or two; she had the measure of Scott Byerly, and he was soft of head and soft of heart, a sucker if she’d ever seen one. He was standing there looking at her, probably thinking he was the gallant knight charging in to save the day.

  Well, if that was how he wanted to look at it, she wouldn’t disagree.

  She felt a salty tear trickle down her cheek and blotted it immediately. Subtle was better for these things. Let him work to get there. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning away, like she was embarrassed that she had emotions at all, let alone that a man was seeing them. So scandalous. She put a finger in her eye and pressed while her back was turned to him, letting a little more liquid seep out of the duct, entirely for effect. “I …” She sniffed and kept her back to him. “I … thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and she could tell he was a degree less hard in his response than he’d been a moment before. Her little ploy had moved the dial on him, and more than a little. When it came to getting a man to eat out of her hand like an animal, the first steps were always the worst. She knew if she could get him far enough, get him to open up just so, there were other things she could do to push him the rest of the way.

  “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up,” she said, not daring to look back at him. She just listened for his tone of voice. It would tell her everything. “She had her hand up like she was going to … touch me. Drain me, I guess?”

  “She probably would have tried to take your memories,” he said, and she could tell he was angry at Sienna, thankfully, and not her. “Break into your mind, rip out what she wanted.” She could hear him clench and unclench his jaw. “She does that.”

  “Oh, God,” Nadine said, and now she turned around, using the full weight of what she had felt in those moments of terror to her advantage. “She can do that?” She could see the pain in his eyes, and somehow she knew that Scott Byerly had been touched in some way by this ability of Nealon’s. How best to exploit it? “That’s … she could strip the layers away from a person … peel them like an onion, taking a little humanity, a little personhood away from them at a time until …” She swallowed heavily. “I mean … what would even be left, once she took … whatever she wanted?” She gave her voice a haunted quality, like she’d let her imagination wander down the road not taken and found it led into a foul grove, filled with rotting trees shaped like monsters and beasts.

  Her little shot hit its mark. Scott flushed, his nostrils flaring wide, and then all the fight went out of him. He sighed, loudly, and she would have b
et he didn’t even know he was doing it. “I don’t know,” he said, as though he’d asked himself the same question a hundred, a thousand times, and never found an answer that satisfied. He rolled on the balls of his feet, and started to turn. “I should—”

  “Please stay,” Nadine said, putting a pleading note into her voice. Sure it was pathetic but it usually worked beautifully, and honestly, she didn’t care what people thought of her most of the time, especially insignificant shits who didn’t matter in her grand scheme of things.

  She cared that she got what she wanted.

  “If you leave, she’ll come back,” Nadine said, swallowing heavily. “I—I don’t have anywhere else to go, and there’s no one—no one will help me. The things she said to me, accused me of—she thinks I’m rich and evil, but—I mean, the FBI seized all my assets. I don’t even have enough to get a hotel room at this point, my electric bill is thirty days past due, and I ca—” She halted, midword, and pushed out that last tear, let it roll like a punch. “I’m sorry. None of this is your problem.”

  That was the bait, the trap set. All she had to do was wait, and she’d know in seconds if he’d stumbled over his gallantry and fallen right into it.

  “She does have a tendency to fixate on people she considers suspects,” Scott said, staring off into the distance, past her shoulder. “If she really thinks you’re guilty … you’re right, she’ll be back.” He seemed to dwell hard on this, and then he pulled out his cell phone and dialed. After a moment, he said, “Hey, it’s me. What’s the word from—” He paused, listening. “And forensics is—” He stopped again, listening to the voice at the other end of the line. “Okay. Tell Phillips I’m playing a hunch for a while, since we don’t have anything to go on at the moment.” He nodded, the idiot, as though the person on the other end of the line could see him. “Call me if anything comes up.” And then he looked up at her. “I can stay.” That caution flared up again, as he remembered who she was. “For a while.”

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely. Based on what she’d seen of him so far … a while was all she’d need.

  And the best part was … he didn’t look half bad, if a little too innocent for her usual taste. He was a strapping guy, big and strong, broad-chested, fit.

  Hell, even absent the obvious effect it would have on Sienna Nealon … Nadine might just enjoy this.

  59.

  Jamie

  Without anything else to do, Jamie came to her conclusion pretty fast. She needed to get to Curtis High School to pick up Kyra, but she didn’t have a car, so her only method of transportation to reach the school in a reasonable time was—

  Jamie soared over the rooftops of apartment buildings across from the school, looking for the cover of the trees between them and Richmond Terrace. She could see the Staten Island Ferry parking lot as she tried to lose herself in the small, forested grove, hoping that her height would shield her from prying eyes until she was under the cover of the heavy, green boughs.

  She came down with a rustle, bouncing between the branches as she lowered herself to the slope of the hill behind the apartments. Getting from here to the school wasn’t going to be the easiest thing, but at least the trees offered some cover.

  Once she was down, Jamie unrolled the clothes she’d been carrying under her arm, stuffing herself into her pants, hiding the Spandex leotard under them. Then she hurriedly buttoned her blouse to the top so that her costume wasn’t visible, and finally, with one last sweep of the area to make sure she was alone, pulled off her mask and stuffed it into her pocket.

  She came strolling out through the courtyard between the apartments, trying to act casual, as though she hadn’t just been forced to make a superhero landing and clothing change almost in public. She felt her cheeks burning, probably from the sheer embarrassment of what had happened this afternoon. The fact she’d had her car repossessed was mind-boggling, but the fact that she’d lost the loan that she’d been counting on to save her company was so much worse, because it virtually guaranteed that the next time a creditor repossessed something, it would be for genuine non-payment and not because of an error.

  Jamie threaded her way between the two towering apartment buildings, the trees providing a lush green canopy that she couldn’t find it in herself to appreciate at the moment. Her world seemed to be crashing in around her, but she knew enough about hard times to know that as stunned and defeated as she felt—and she felt both deeply—she needed to keep walking on. Not just to get Kyra, but through this whole mess.

  Her head was spinning in the warm afternoon air. She looked up at the sun, which was low in the sky as she crossed St. Marks Place between cars. Someone honked, but she ignored them, making her way up to the high school.

  Curtis High School had a look like an old castle crossed with a colonial architect’s dream of a manor house. It seemed peaceful and sedate, a contrast to what she suspected Kyra’s reaction would be. She sighed as she walked up the sidewalk to the entry. She could see Kyra up there, talking to some of her friends, and she hesitated.

  It was a subtle thing holding her back, the dread from the idea of having to cop to her car being repo’d. It was embarrassing, even if it was no fault of her own. She certainly wasn’t going to say anything about the business loan, because Kyra was sixteen. She didn’t need to know about these things.

  “Kyra,” Jamie said, too quietly the first time. She didn’t even look up from her conversation. Kyra was smiling and laughing, listening to one of her classmates. “Kyra,” she said, louder this time, and caught a fleeting look from her daughter.

  “Ugh, I have to go,” Kyra said, under her breath, where she probably thought only her friends could hear her. Jamie could hear every word of it, though, with her meta hearing. “My mom’s here.”

  “Text me later,” one of her friends said, and that brightened Kyra up for a second as she gathered her things and started down the walk. Only for a second, though; the moment she settled her eyes on Jamie again, she immediately turned sullen, as though they’d already had a fight.

  “Where’s the car?” Kyra asked as she reached Jamie, that same sour look on her face.

  “I—I don’t have it right now,” Jamie said, caught a little off guard. She’d had the entire flight over here to prepare, and she’d been so caught up in her own worries that she hadn’t even figured out how she’d explain this to Kyra. “It’s—it’s a long story. We’re walking home.”

  “That’s like—miles!” Kyra said, and lifted a foot. “Do you see what I’m wearing? These shoes were not meant for a hike.”

  Jamie stared down at her daughter’s shoes, which did have a little bit of a heel. The toe also looked a little narrow. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “I have blisters already,” Kyra said, staring at her in stunned disbelief. “Where’s the car?”

  “I don’t have it,” Jamie said again.

  “This sucks so hard.” Kyra turned her back on her mother, and threw her head back like she was going to howl at the heavens. “I can’t even. I just. Can’t even.”

  Jamie stared at her. “Can’t even … what?”

  “I can’t even!” Kyra shouted. “I’m gonna see if I can get a ride with Melanie.” And she turned her back on Jamie and strode right back up to the school.

  Jamie just stood there, staring after her. She could have run her down, could have had another argument right there, had it out … but they’d done that lately more times than she could count. She’d hit Kyra over the head with her parental authority so many times lately she’d lost count and it felt like it was losing all effect. “All right,” she said instead, though she knew Kyra couldn’t hear her. Instead Jamie turned, once again feeling spurned by her only remaining family, and started the long walk home by herself.

  60.

  Sienna

  I checked in with Welch via phone and got hurried off the line. The man sounded busy, too busy to hear from me that I was right but had no evidence to back it up, so I hung up and j
ust flew right back to my hotel. I figured shutting myself away from humanity was about the best thing I could do with the rest of my day, so I did it.

  I took another long shower, trying to get rid of the stink of my swim, but after an hour I could still smell it, so I wrote that one off as a bad job, as the Brits say, and came out to a few missed calls waiting on my cell phone. None of them were J.J. or Veronika, unfortunately.

  All but one of them was Dr. Quinton Zollers.

  I ignored him and called back the other one.

  My phone claimed it was an Arkansas number, but I didn’t know anyone in Arkansas, so I just listened in suspense as it rang, until I heard a quiet voice on the other end say, “Yo, Sienna.”

  “Jamal?” I asked. I barely recognized his voice. Jamal always sounded mellow, but now it had me questioning whether maybe he was actually in Colorado or Washington instead of Arkansas.

  “It’s me,” he said quietly. “Got your boy’s message. I heard you had some trouble in New York.”

  “Have, present tense,” I corrected. “Yeah. I got something.”

  “J.J. said you were worried about evidence being destroyed in these attacks,” Jamal said, cool as a cucumber. To say he sounded chill was like saying Minnesota was a little cool in the middle of winter. “I got some bad news for you. It’s gone. And the backups are gone, too. Like, across the board, and not just limited to the FBI and US Attorney.”

  The ever-deepening crease in my forehead got a bit deeper. “Wait, how do you know?”

  “I decided to take a look around in some systems across Manhattan while I was looking for security cam footage—”

  “That’s probably a felony, and I didn’t need to know—”