“Yeah,” Reed said. “I suspect. After all …” he chuckled, “… it’s not likely he’s just going to drop into our laps.”
54.
Sienna
“I just want to say,” I said as I stepped back into the office after relieving myself to find Greg and Morgan, his wife, apparently (I’d caught her name as I headed for the bathroom), “this is maybe the most awkward situation I’ve ever seen.”
Greg just gave me an evil look, and Morgan didn’t seem to know how to react.
“Mommy? Is that Daddy?” A little blond boy came wandering in, parking it next to me and looking up. His face was wide and open, and he was staring right at me. “Who are you?”
“This is a friend of Daddy’s, apparently,” Morgan said, voice tight with strain.
“More of an ally of convenience,” Greg said, almost apologetically. I had no idea whether he was apologizing to me or to Morgan. “Morgan … please, can we talk?”
“Hey, uh … little blond child,” I said to the kid, who was looking up at me like an idiot for not psychically guessing his name, “maybe we should give your mom and dad some room to talk.”
His name is Eddie, Harmon said in exasperation. You could ask, you know.
I don’t kiss babies and shake hands like you, I snarked, for obvious reasons. “Uhh, Eddie, I mean.”
“How did you know his name?” Morgan looked like she was about ready to rush to his side.
“She has a telepath in her head,” Greg answered for me, all slick like he was trying his hardest to smooth things over after what I imagined must have been a hell of a fight. However much trouble Greg had apologizing to me, he looked like he was ready to throw a thousand of them at her feet like rose petals. He turned to his kid. “Please … why don’t the two of you go off and play while your mother and I talk, Eddie?”
I thought I was having a bad, Forest Whitaker eye reaction to the implication of me watching a kid, but Morgan went absolutely bonkers. “You’re going to send our son off with her as the babysitter?” Half an octave higher and all the windows would have broken.
“Good point,” Greg said after a moment’s consideration. “There are things to take into account, precautions …” He looked at little Eddie and said, very seriously. “Son, Sienna is a succubus. Make sure you don’t touch her while she watches you.”
I gave him a sour look. “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence in my competence.”
Morgan’s eyes just about popped out of her head. “I didn’t mean about her being a succubus! I meant she’s …” Here her voice fell, like Eddie couldn’t hear her if she whispered, “… she’s killed people!”
Greg actually let out a soft laugh. “Well, really, Morgan … who among us hasn’t?”
“Your son, I damned well hope,” I said, “because I don’t babysit killers for free. Unless they’re stuck in my head.”
Low blow, Wolfe said.
“Language!” Greg and Morgan both hissed at me at the same time.
“What, I’m speaking English,” I snarked quietly. Damned great English, I kept to myself to the assorted laughing of the souls in my head. “Uh, Eddie,” I said, when I caught sight of their lack of amusement, “come on, let’s go … play, I guess.” I patted him on the back to guide him out of the room and he went along with me. I meta whispered to Morgan, “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but you have to know I don’t hurt kids.”
That didn’t seem to reassure her, at least not based on the panicked look on her face as I left and followed Eddie out of the office toward a staircase near the bathroom.
“So …” I asked as we started up, his little feet thumping on the wooden stairs, “… what do you want to do?” I had no idea what kids did, other than bottle flips these days. I mean, I couldn’t even remember being Eddie’s age. Even knowing as little as I did of how adult relationships worked, I was anticipating some fierce meta whispering from Morgan and Greg the second they thought we were out of earshot.
“My mom said you killed people,” Eddie said, looking over his shoulder at me as we walked up the stairs.
I searched for the diplomatic reply to that for a fricking kid, and came up with, “Uhm … yeah, she did say that.”
“So you really killed somebody?” Eddie asked as we rounded the banister at the top of the stairs and entered a long white hallway with doors on either side. His tone was alarmingly overawed and lacking the basic preservation instinct most people I’d known possessed.
Was it hot in here? It felt hot, and I tugged at the collar of my poorly-fitted shirt as I searched for an answer, finally saying, with all the requisite guilt of lying to a child, “Maybe once or twice.”
Eddie took that in as he ducked into a bedroom to our left, a taupe room with white baseboards and beige carpeting that was almost completely clear of any obstruction, save for a Lego set that was being carefully built in corner of the room. All the pieces that weren’t on the creation were separated into piles by color, and while I couldn’t quite tell what the hell it was supposed to be, because either it was still in its infancy or I was just oblivious, it seemed to be lovingly put together.
Other than that, the room was clean, the white dresser to my left and the double bed with frilly metal to my right, all made up and in perfect order. Either Morgan and Greg ran this kid with a whip, enforcing strict discipline and cleanliness, or he was one buttoned-up little dude.
“So what was that like?” Eddie asked, rounding on me once we were in the room.
I plopped down in front of the closet and found the carpet pad a lot more comfortable than I would have guessed. “Um, well, they, uh … they died very quietly and … ahhh, painlessly …”
You are such a liar, Eve laughed. And to a child, no less! Pathetic.
“No, I mean how did you kill them?” Eddie asked, sitting down next to his Legos and messing with one of the piles that had slightly toppled when he’d sat down. He scooped it all back together, answering for me the question of who exactly was running this kid and his spotless room.
I blinked. “Uhm … how would you guess I killed them?”
His eyes lit up. “I bet you ripped their guts out with a knife! And that there was blood everywhere—”
“Oh, gah—no,” I said, shaking my head furiously. “No, there was no—no blood.”
You are getting really good at lying to this child, Wolfe said. Perhaps you should stop. Acquaint him with the real world, and all its faults and flaws …
Sure, let me describe for him how I killed—oh, I dunno, Nadine Griffin, I thought back at Wolfe. Drowning is such a pleasant way to go.
“Well, then how did you do it?” Eddie asked. “Did you cut off their heads?” He seemed thrilled at that idea.
I tried to recoil in horror at the tiny psychopath sitting in front of me. Leaving it up to his imagination was way, way worse than most of the kills I’d actually made. “No! Uhm, well, there was this one time in Atlanta when these guys who were soldiers of fortune—uh, mercenaries—were hired to kill me. And they jumped out of a van—”
“What kind of van?” Eddie asked. “Like, white? Black?”
“I don’t remember,” I said, losing a little patience, “but they came jumping out with guns and started shooting at me, so I uhm … shot back with fire of my own.”
“Like, how?” he asked, staring at me with intense interest.
“Like this.” I lit up my hand for a split second, let it burn, then snuffed it.
“Whoaaaa!” Eddie was on his feet in a second. “That is so cool! That is way cooler than anything, even a bottle flip or an EX Pokemon card!”
“Uhhhh … thanks, I guess,” I said, hoping that those were, indeed, cool things. I mean, I’d seen bottle flips and they looked pretty stupid to me, but he must have thought they were cool.
“You want to watch me build my Legos?” Eddie asked, turning back to his little construction project.
“Sure,” I said, settling back on my haunches. Man
, Greg and Morgan had invested in a nice carpet pad here. It was really comfy, like, better than most of the beds I’d slept in the last few months. At least since my time at the resort in St. Thomas.
In the last two days I’d been shot at, a lot. I’d been nearly nuked. One of my safe houses had been straight-up wrecked. I had the government after me harder than maybe ever before, and it didn’t look like they were going to play anymore games with bringing me in.
And now I was taking shelter in the house of the guy who was responsible for a lot of the shit I’d suffered through the last two days, a man who’d seemed like he was going to kill me until, oh, three hours ago or so.
Now I was watching his child build Legos. “What kind of set is that?” I asked.
“Marvel Superheroes,” Eddie said, not looking up from his labors. I guess the allure of hearing me talk about murdering people had already worn off. “It’s from Age of Ultron. It was on discount because it’s old.”
“Old? It came out like two, three years ago,” I said, laying sideways across the floor, using my own arm as a pillow. “Though, I suppose, given that you’re five, that was like the Mesozoic to you.” I paused. “The Mesozoic was—”
“I know,” he said breezily. “It has to do with dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs.”
“Cool,” I said. “Dinosaurs are … very cool.” I yawned.
“Yep,” he said, fitting a couple pieces together. “You know what I like best about dinosaurs?”
“No …” I said, slurring my words. Man, this carpet was comfortable.
“It’s that they …”
I didn’t catch his answer, at least not that I remember. I passed clean out, right there, drifting off to sleep on the floor.
55.
Greg
“What the hell is this?” Morgan hissed once the sound of Sienna and Eddie walking up the stairs had receded. “Why is she here?”
“Because I saved her life,” Greg said, trying to figure exactly how—and how bad—this was going to be for him. Obviously they had not parted on the greatest of terms last time, but Morgan’s fury was such that he had never encountered from her before.
“You—what?”
“I told you I clashed with her,” Greg said, trying to keep the strain out of his voice, stay matter-of-fact, stay cool, keep this from naturally escalating the way Morgan seemed to want it to. She had reasons to be upset, of course.
“You tried to bomb her to death,” Morgan said.
“Yes, and the press and government seem to be blaming her for that.”
Morgan’s eyes swelled, threatening to pop out of her head. “Because she’s a murderer!”
“So am I, so are you,” Greg said calmly. “It looks to me like she’s seldom killed anyone who didn’t deserve it at least an iota.”
“I’m trying to extract us—our family—at least me and Eddie—from this lifestyle that you’re digging deeper into,” Morgan said, gathering a head of steam.
“I’m not,” Greg said. “I’m trying to get out, too. Truly.”
“Then what the hell is she doing here?” Morgan’s voice hit another high note.
“That’s part of me digging out,” Greg said. “I have, evidently, caused her … problems …”
“To say the least.”
“… and her … friend? Compatriot? Colleague—I don’t know what they are to each other. But he was the target McGarry assigned me.”
“You didn’t bring him here, too?” Morgan asked. She did not sound pleased. “Everything you told me about him suggested that Bruce or whatever his name is was dangerous, a carnival sideshow at the best of times.”
“He’s in her pocket,” Greg said, gesturing in the direction that Sienna and Eddie had gone. “So he’s hardly a threat at that size. But—listen—”
Morgan’s face crumpled, close to tears. “Why? Why can’t this just be—why can’t it just be over?”
“Because when you threw me out earlier—and said what you said,” Greg spoke, the words fumbling from his lips, “it gave me great pause, Morgan. You were right, of course. In that moment, I saw myself the way that you have been seeing me, the way that Eddie has—and I hated what I saw.” He deflated a little, slowing down his words. “I saw that I have become something … that I never set out to be. Something that I never wanted to be.”
“What did you see?” Morgan asked. “Of yourself?”
“I saw myself as a monster,” Greg said. “The person who … who steals the oxygen out of the room when he’s in it. I don’t want to be that person to this family. When I’m not around, you and Eddie—it’s bright, like sunlit day. And then I step into the picture and the clouds roll in and everything turns dark. I see that now.” He lowered his head. “I’m becoming like a more angry, perhaps more patient version of Sam—minus the charm.”
Morgan greeted this with a nod. “You do lack the charm.” When he gave her a wounded look, she shrugged almost apologetically. “Well, you do. But on the plus side, you don’t fake it like he does. And I don’t think you have more patience—at least, not here. Not with people. With things, with process, maybe, but … not with Eddie.”
“I concede that’s true,” Greg said. “But … what I see … is not what I want.” He looked around the house. “What we’ve built here … this … foundation of our lives … I have come to agree with you. The price is too high. Too much for the toll it’s taking on our family.” He swallowed heavily. “On me. I wasn’t always like this.”
“No, you weren’t,” she said.
“I want to change,” he said quietly. It was silent save for the thumping of his own heart. “Do you think … do you think it’s possible … that I could? Or is this … fully ingrained in who I am now?”
Morgan sagged against the wall, a mixture of relief and weariness writ on her face, bags seeming to form under her eyes. “Greg … you’re one of the most capable men I’ve ever met, if not maybe the most emotionally unaware. Can you change? Yes, I think you could. If you really wanted to.”
“I truly do. More than anything,” he said. “I don’t want to be who I am now.” He looked up at her. “I don’t want to do this anymore. And if it means we have to leave this place, move somewhere smaller, live on less … then I am with you, the trade-off is fair. Worth it. I could become an engineer, perhaps. Maybe a cell biologist.” He smiled faintly. “There are some things I could contribute to that field, I think, that no one else could. I don’t promise it will be an easy road, though—”
“I don’t really care,” she said, leaning her head back and laughing from exhaustion. “This hasn’t been easy. Keeping things together here, knowing what you’re out there doing … none of this has been easy. Trying to inject light into our lives while your work brings neverending darkness …” She lowered her head. “I don’t care what you do or what you make as long as you stop crushing your soul in the process. We can live with less money.” She sighed. “We can’t live as a family with you like that anymore.”
He eased over to her, slowly, to give her a chance to retreat. She stood her ground, looking up at him with that same tired relief in her eyes. He took her hand, gently. “Then you won’t have to. That’s … part of the reason I went after Sienna and … Bruce or whatever he calls himself these days. Friday, I suppose.”
“Why Friday?” Morgan asked.
“I … have no idea,” Greg said, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. “I don’t know why he called himself Bruce Springersteen before, or Percy Sledger … it’s all … he’s a ridiculous man.”
“Why did McGarry want him dead?” Morgan asked, leaning forward, putting her head on his chest. She breathed into his neck, and he felt … alive. Relieved. Reprieved, even, like he’d slipped the noose he’d been in, at least for now.
“I don’t know,” Greg said, “but Sam is after them now. McGarry hired him.”
Morgan stiffened against him. “He won’t stop until they’re dead.”
“No,” Greg said, putting an
arm around her back. Morgan slipped his grasp, looking up at him with undisguised alarm. “No, he won’t.”
“Can he find them here?” Morgan asked. “Can he find us?”
“I don’t think so,” Greg said, “but we should probably leave tomorrow just to be safe.”
Morgan pulled away from him shyly. “I already packed up most of the house. Shrank it for easy transport.”
Greg just stared at her. “You were going to leave me.”
She stared back, then broke away from his gaze first. “Yes.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
She wrapped her arms around him again. Their almost total lack of height differential didn’t bother him this time, not when it let her kiss him on the lips so easily, so gently. When they broke, she said, softly, “We left Eddie in the keeping of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitive.”
“He’s probably fine,” Greg said, a little uneasily. “But all the same—”
They both beat a hasty path up the stairs. When they reached Eddie’s door they found it open wide. Eddie was lying down in front of his Legos, head down, asleep on the carpet. Sienna was across the room, laid similarly, as though one of them had mimicked the other.
“We can’t just leave him like this,” Morgan said.
Greg crossed to his son, and carefully, gingerly, picked him up and carried him to the bed. He laid him in it, and then covered him with a quilt. Eddie barely stirred, opening his eyes sleepily for only a moment before closing them again after locking eyes with his father. He did not show fear, and snuggled against Greg’s arm as he moved him.
“Maybe there is some hope after all,” Greg murmured as he withdrew his arm, careful to transfer Eddie’s head to the pillow.
“I’ll sleep in here tonight,” Morgan said, creeping up to his side and slipping into the bed next to Eddie. “Just in case.”
“I’ll need to keep watch until morning anyway,” Greg said, making his way quietly over to Sienna, shrinking as he did so. With great care, he removed the cylinder containing Friday from her pocket, reducing its size to slip it from her without disturbing her. “Just in case Sam develops a brain and manages to find us.” He returned the cylinder to its previous size.
Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14) Page 29