“I … I won’t,” I said, shaking my head fervently. “And—I—I won’t tell anyone about you. Ever.”
“That would be exceedingly wise,” the man said, and with a wave of his hand the door closed in front of me, clicking shut as though it had never opened in the first place, not a hint of light spilling out from the cracks.
When I caught my breath, I turned and ran blindly up and down staircases and passages until I burst out onto the roof. I ran in a circle until I was sure I’d found the place where we came in. I sat down right there, hugging my knees to my chest, trying to keep from sobbing … and the team found me there a few minutes later, when they came back up.
I didn’t speak for two weeks.
78.
Sienna
I was stroking my forehead as Guy Friday finished his story, my head spinning because at least two of the little factoids that he’d dropped on me during that story were burning up my brain from the inside.
One … he was my damned half-uncle.
Two … I was pretty sure the guy he was describing was the metahuman equivalent of the boogeyman, taking credit for the name of ‘Vlad,’ probably meaning Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula. Which was an awfully dramatic thing to put on your resume, but …
After all the shit I’d caught from the nation of Revelen these last few years … a big, spooky boogeyman who thought of himself as Dracula …
Well, it started to make an awful lot of sense.
“None of the others saw this guy?” I kept my voice quiet. Greg was still messing around up in the cockpit. Maybe he was giving us our privacy, I dunno.
Friday shook his head. “No. None of them had a clue why I was catatonic for two weeks after the mission. They all thought I was just cracking up or something. But I physically couldn’t speak. It was like my mouth wouldn’t open. I woke up screaming at night, had tremors, night sweats …” He looked down at his feet. “I couldn’t tell anyone what I saw, and none of them suffered what I did … no, they didn’t see him. I know that. If they had … I wouldn’t have had to say a thing.” He looked at me, a cold dread in his eyes that I hadn’t seen even when he’d shown up wet and bedraggled on my doorstep in Portland, terrified of Greg killing him.
“Well?” Greg asked from the cockpit door, standing like a pillar right in the middle of it. “Have we made any decisions about where to go yet?”
“Friday’s staying here in Minneapolis,” I said quietly, half-buried in my reactions, a tumult of emotions and thoughts.
Greg took that in stride. “Very well. I can bring us down to just above the ground and step out with you, if you’d like.”
“That’d be good,” Friday said, standing up. I got the feeling as he did so that he was trying to shed the dark sensation of fear, and everything that revisiting the memory of the man he’d met in Revelen had dredged up in him.
“Are you ready to go?” Greg asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Friday said, voice cracking a little as he pulled himself together. “I got some chicks in town I want to catch up with, if you know what I mean.” He nodded ferociously. “And I think you do.”
Whatever negative effect telling me his story had had on him, it looked like it had passed. I got to my weary feet and said, “Good luck. And, uh … so long … Uncle Friday.”
Friday was hard to read with that mask on, but he kinda drooped for a second and then got really still. “So, uh … I’m not really familiar with the protocol on having a, uh, niece …” He put his hand behind his head and scratched the back of his mask. “Do we … like, shake hands, or …?”
“Come here, you big goon,” I said, and dragged him down in a hug. I did see a hint of surprise in his eyes as I pulled him to me for it.
And it felt surprisingly good, since it was the first one I’d had in months.
79.
“So you’re on the straight and narrow now?” I asked Greg as we jetted along toward Chicago. He’d offered to take me to the Atlantic Coast, but I’d passed on that. He wanted to get back to his family, and I was so tired I was going to bed down in a safe house I had just outside Chicago. Tomorrow I’d make a speed run up to Canada and then head east, crossing the Atlantic faster than the US Government could send jets and drones and missiles to intercept me.
I hoped.
“Prudence would seem to demand it,” Greg said, adjusting the Concorde’s course. “Having seen what holding to the assassin’s way has done to my family …” He shook his head. “It’d take a more stubborn man than I to not see that now … now is the time to let go.”
“Good call,” I said. “You know, a lot of people, they tend to hold to that stubborn pride way past the point when they ought to tap out.” Internally, I squirmed slightly as I said it, mainly because the words seemed to apply almost as much to me as they did to Greg.
“People confuse me,” Greg said, a surprising amount of feeling in his voice. “Assassinations were simple, for the most part. Dead human beings? Easy to understand. Their agency is gone, they don’t move … or confuse you … or have unexpected outbursts of emotion …”
“We talking about your family when it comes to those unexpected outbursts of emotion? Or you?”
He seemed to catch his breath. “I always prided myself on preparation and perhaps, my coolness to any concern. Because of the preparation, you see. When ready for nearly anything, almost nothing discomfits you.”
“Tell me something,” I said, leaning closer, “did you prepare for parenthood?”
Greg just froze. “No. I mean … I read some books, but … once I got past the first year … I sort of assumed I knew what I was doing. The same goes for marriage.”
“Well, I’ve never been married—or a parent, though I have just found out I’m a niece again, for whatever that’s worth—but I don’t think you can learn most of that stuff from a book, Greg.” I leaned back in my seat. “At the risk of mouthing off when I don’t exactly know what I’m talking about … just go live your life, man.”
He stared at me. “You think it’s really that simple?”
“I get that you want to be prepared for everything,” I said, “but somehow I get the feeling … that’s not been working out so well in family life. Am I right?”
“Yes,” he said stiffly.
“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe change tack. See what Morgan thinks? She seems like a reasonable lady, other than that really harsh prohibition on swearing you guys have going on. I think you’ll learn more from listening to her and what she wants, what she thinks is best for Eddie than you would reading a hundred books.”
He blinked a few times at his control. “You know what? I think you just might be right.”
“Yeah,” I said, settling back in my seat as the lights of Chicago’s skyline appeared on the horizon. “I just wish it did me more good in my own life.”
80.
I settled down to sleep that night in my safe house, the bed hard and lumpy beneath me. I didn’t love it, and sleep didn’t come easy, restlessness threatening to make me toss and turn all night …
But eventually I did fall asleep, and I managed to keep my mind on one person as I did so.
“Well, well,” Reed said as he appeared in the black-edged world of the dreamwalk. “And here I thought I was about to have some nice, peaceful, dreamless sleep.”
“Yeah,” I said, unable to stop myself as soon as I saw what he was wearing, “clearly you did not dress for company.”
He looked down, and his face found every single shade of blush it could apply and then some. He was wearing a heavy cotton bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and I couldn’t control my laughter.
“Laugh it up,” he said as I chortled at his attire, “any night but this one, I might have been prepared for you. But tonight … yeah, I wore the fuzzy slippers. You know why? Because they’re comfortable, and I was out two seconds after I got into bed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, still trying to keep from laughing my ass off at him. “I, uh �
� it’s always kind of a dicey thing barging in on people in their dreams, y’know.”
“Yeah,” he said tautly, wrapping his muscular arms over his chest. “So … what brings you into my mind this evening?”
“Well,” I said, “… I had a talk with Augustus earlier.”
Reed stiffened, no mean feat considering he was already pretty well at full ATTEN-HUT! “Is that so?”
“Yeah … and Augustus is not the most subtle guy in the world, but the gist I got is … he thought we—that you and I—should talk. And I figured he would have told you about seeing me, so …”
“So here you are.”
“So here I am. To talk. Because … he seemed to think we need to.”
Reed just stared at me before lowering his eyes, not to look at his fuzzy slippered feet, but at the general darkness that was the floor. “Augustus thinks I’m mad at you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Are you … mad at me?”
Reed drew in a deep breath and let it all out before speaking. “No. I’m not mad at you, Sienna, but … it’s been six months.” The last part came out in hard accusation. “Six months since Harmon screwed you over. And you’ve talked to Jamal, Scott, Kat, hell, even Friday … but not me?” He kept those arms snugly folded in front of him. “So … no. I’m not mad at you. But I do wonder … they can find you, but I can’t? They get to talk you, but … not me?”
“It’s never been an intentional thing,” I said. “I didn’t help any of them find me, by the way. I was hiding from everyone.”
“I guess I suck at detecting, then,” he said, “because I’ve been looking … and the only place I’ve seen you is in the agency paperwork.”
It was my turn to stiffen. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Jonsdottir? It took me two days of rolling that one around before I said it out loud. John’s daughter. Lamest pun ever.”
Now I was blushing. “Okay. That was perhaps an indulgence I shouldn’t have taken—”
“I’m more interested in where you got the money,” he said. “Because setting up this place—twice—couldn’t have been cheap.”
“I kinda … drained Omega’s accounts a couple years ago,” I said. “Figured it was mine since technically I was their last Primus.”
“And what did Janus think of that?” he asked.
“Dunno. Didn’t ask. Haven’t seen him since, though, what with him being in London, so …” I didn’t feel a need to mention that I might see him soon, though. Very soon.
“You’re a real pile of …” he started.
“Shit?”
“… Secrets, Sienna. Secrets. You’re my sister, not my enemy.”
“Sorry.”
“No,” he said, putting a hand up to his brow. “Look … I know … last time we saw each other … South Dakota … that can’t have been easy on you, either. With me hunting you because of Harmon …” His voice trailed off. “Look, Isabella keeps telling me that it’s not my fault … what happened to me when Harmon was in control. That it’s not my fault I betrayed you.”
I felt really small, like Friday in front of Vlad small. If Greg had shrunk him first. “I know.”
He looked up, and there was this deep well of anguish in his eyes. “But I still did it. There’s a little part of me, too, that wondered … if maybe you did believe it was … it was my fault.”
“No one knows better than me at this point how badly Gerry Harmon can mess up your mind, your life,” I said, shaking my head. “It wasn’t your fault. I never blamed you, once I knew what was going on. Because we’re, y’know …”
He took a step toward me, almost experimentally. “Family?”
“Yeah, that,” I said, not looking up.
“So … why haven’t we talked until now?” Reed asked, maintaining that foot or so of distance still between us.
“Because I usually don’t know what I would say to you,” I said, letting it all kind of spurt out. “There are times when I’m … just bored. Netflixing, reading, idle. And I watch stuff that I know you like and I think, ‘Oh, man, I have to talk to Reed about this’ … except I can’t, really … because I’m a fugitive and you being seen with me would rip your life apart. End the agency. End the good it can do with you at the helm, so …”
“But you’re talking to me now,” he said. “And no one’s watching. We could have talked about … I dunno, what have you been watching?”
“Uhm, well,” I said, trying to remember, “I caught up on the Gilmore Girls revival.”
He stared at me with smoky eyes, but I caught a glimmer of pride. “Excellent choice.” He relaxed a little. “But … why haven’t you dreamwalked to me until now?”
“I have this kinda problem,” I said, “and I’ve talked to Zollers about it—”
I saw the flash of disappointment from my brother. “Zollers, too, huh?”
“You’re not making this any easier.”
“Sorry,” he said, with real contrition. “Go on.”
“I don’t find it easy to ask others for help,” I said. “Like, if anyone asks me, friend or almost a weird rando from the ’net—”
“Like Friday.”
“Like Friday, yes … I’m there. I’ll help them, especially if it involves metahuman shenanigans. But when I get in deep … I turtle up. And especially now, where there are real, honest-to-God consequences if any of you get seen helping me … yeah. I’m in my shell, and reaching out? Feels impossible sometimes. The longer I waited … the harder it got to … pick up the dreamwalk phone and mosey on over.” I bowed my head. “I’m sorry, Reed. I just … I’m a loner. For all my years fighting with the team, I’m still the girl who retreats into the box when trouble comes, because the instinct is to think there’s no one here with me when it rolls around.”
He reached out for me and dragged me close in my second hug of the day. And even though it wasn’t real … it still felt good. “We’re family,” he said. “We’re supposed to watch out for each other. Trouble comes your way, I want to be there for you.”
“How does an aiding and abetting felony strike you?”
“Like a long jail sentence in the Cube,” he said, still holding me tight. “But if you really needed me … damn, I would hope you’d call. Because I’d be there. For you. Really, I would, Cube be damned.” And he held me tight, his warmth against me, sweet comfort that allowed some of the troubles I was looking into, some of the worries of what was coming tomorrow … the big thing that was coming tomorrow … slip away, if only for a moment.
And the moment ended before the hug, because I remembered something. “So …” I said, “… in the vein of that that whole, ‘we’re family and watch out for each other’ thing … but without having to worry about jail time … there is one thing you can do for me … well … for family …”
81.
Greg
Finishing packing the house hadn’t taken too terribly long. Morgan had done most of the work before he’d arrived home with Sienna and the others the day before, and the small incidentals he picked up during the night were already almost loaded by the time he had arrived. Moving when you were an Atlas was the simplest of things, after all; no truck needed, just a small box you could put everything in.
“Are you sure you want me to bring all this?” Greg asked, his entire workshop shrunken into the palm of his hand. Removing it from the wall had been easy, but he’d had to take great care to bind everything down first, which had been last night’s efforts. “I could just leave it behind.”
Morgan looked at him from the co-pilot seat of the Concorde as they cruised on autopilot above the yard. It looked like twenty thousand feet of height from here, but they were really only about ten feet up. “Just in case,” she said. “Who knows where the road will take us?”
“All right,” Greg said, and then looked at their sole passenger, who was sitting in the seat with Morgan. “Where would you like to go, Eddie? To start our … new life together?”
The literal part of Greg’s brain burned, but he kept a tight lid on it. Morgan smiled, reassuringly, and Greg said, “I don’t think I can get us there with this plane, son. Where else would you like to go?”
Eddie lowered his head, giving that some deep thought. “Legoland?” he asked experimentally.
Greg blinked. It wasn’t an unreasonable request. “I think we can oblige that. It’s in Florida, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Morgan said, stroking Eddie’s arms and making him shiver and giggle. “Near Tampa, I think?”
“Tampa!” Eddie said. “I want to go to Tampa.”
“Then Tampa it will be,” Greg said, taking the plane out of autopilot and angling it up. He smiled, just slightly, as he looked over at Morgan and Eddie. “And maybe, someday … well, I’ll work on that moon thing.”
82.
Augustus
“So …” Reed said as we all stood around in the bullpen the next morning, not really addressing the elephant in the room, “… I noticed that, uh … no one really got all their paperwork done yesterday.”
“Yeah, having the head honcho of the criminal organization we were busting get tossed through our plate glass window yesterday kind of broke up the buzzing paperwork party,” Veronika said. “I guess it’s hard to get your focus back after it starts raining bad men.”
“Tell me about it,” Angel said. “Casey called in sick today. Says she’s thinking about not coming back. Didn’t know it’d be like this.”
“Did no one tell her the last office got blown up?” I asked. “I mean, this ain’t that big a town. Feels like something she should have known coming in. What’s that thing the Romans say about the buyer being aware?”
Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14) Page 36