“Lots of people do things for money,” he said, indifferent. “Horrible things. Reasonable things. You do what you have to do to survive.”
“A lot of people didn’t survive the day because of you, Antonio,” I said, drifting closer to the sound of his voice. “What if it had been the other way around?”
“Then I’d be dead and they’d be alive,” he said. There was not a trace of emotion in the way he said it, which produced a chill in me. “That’s the way of the world.”
I knew he was just waiting to set off another bomb. Trying to draw me in, trying to take me down. He’d tried to kill me with the last, though, and it hadn’t worked, which meant his reflexes weren’t as fast as his boss’s.
Not as fast as mine.
I saw the solution immediately and gave myself a five-count to prepare before I started to move. He said nothing in the meanwhile, which gave me hope that if I caught him, I wouldn’t have to endure an insufferable monologue on why he did it.
I threw up my hand and called Eve Kappler to the forefront of my mind. She showed up dutifully and with her help I shot eight nets of pure light into the darkness ahead. I only aimed three of them, pointing them in the direction I thought Antonio was. They flashed through the air, illuminating the tunnel brick as they passed, shining off the wet walls and striking ground, tracks and stone with a flash upon impact. The one that hit the electrified rail exploded in a shower of sparks. I can’t say I had planned it that way, but I didn’t complain when it happened, because it bathed the whole tunnel in a momentary flash of light that exposed Antonio lying prone against the side, sandwiched between the track and the wall.
I shot forward at top speed, going from zero to supersonic in the space of less than a second. I also came right back to a halt and spun, my blood rushing through me so fast I almost blacked out from the intensity. The sound of my body breaking the sound barrier reverberated through the tunnel with a force all its own and I heard three other explosions sound off in my wake.
I ended up a few hundred yards down the tunnel from where I’d begun and I charged back, flying through the air as I shot another spread of light nets toward where I’d seen Antonio only moments earlier. He was still there, getting to his feet clumsily, staggering like he’d been hit by something. Which he had. A sonic boom going off a few feet from your ears was bound to cause some disorientation.
I flew back to him, saw the blood running from his ears as he nearly put a foot on the electrified rail, and I caught him just in time, lifting him off the ground into the air and slamming him into the wall. He looked at me with wide eyes that were still dazed, head bobbing from side to side with his right cheek covered in blood from where he’d smeared it on his face when he’d touched his ear.
“What the hell was that?” I heard from my left and glanced over to see the SWAT team coming down the tunnel, about a hundred yards away and moving swiftly.
I looked back to Antonio and found him fumbling with something at his belt. I reached out and broke his arm, causing him to grunt in pain. For good measure I broke his other arm, because he started to go for his belt with that one, too. Then I ripped his belt off and tossed it down the tunnel, away from the SWAT team.
“We need to have a talk about your boss, Antonio,” I said, staring straight into his eyes as I held him firm against the wet tunnel wall.
“What are you going to do, American?” he spoke in an off-tone, teeth gritted in a scowl. By the sound of him I started to suspect I’d ruptured his eardrums. “Waterboard me?” His scowl melted into a smile. “London cops. They’ll come and take me away. You’ve got nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘nothing.’” I lifted one of my hands into his field of view, playing on a hunch about his burns. I lit my arm from fingertips to elbow, letting the power of Aleksandr Gavrikov’s flames wash over my skin. I felt the temperature in the tunnel rise by several degrees, and in the orange light of my flickering hand, I watched Antonio Ruelle’s grin dissolve into a look of absolute fear. “Waterboard you? I think not.” I flexed each of my fingers in turn, flaming joints articulating as the inferno raged over my skin, dancing and creating shadows on the wall. His face was pure terror, mouth open, any pretense of bravery abandoned. “Waterboarding is for pussies,” I said, and let my hand drift closer and closer to his face.
Chapter 58
They found the end of the spur tunnel and hurried along the tracks. Philip knew the area well enough from the maps, but actually being in them was quite a different story. There was enough space to walk, fortunately, between where the train ran and the wall met, and that proved fortunate indeed when a train bearing a lighted sign marked “Jubilee Line” came rushing past.
“The station is ahead,” Liliana said, causing Philip to look. Sure enough, she was correct. There was the unmistakable light of a station glowing in the distance, and it prompted him to quicken his pace.
They hurried forward, the tunnel widening before it tightened just ahead of the station. The walking path that they’d found spread wider and veered off the track into a closed, locked door. Probably a safety measure, narrowing things like this, to keep someone from running off down the tunnel.
Liliana broke the knob, ripping out the guts of the lock and tearing the thing off its hinges. They stepped inside, Janus still slung over her shoulder. They found themselves in a maintenance room with dimly lit bulbs and a few storage lockers, all of which began to shake as another train approached.
“How are we going to get him out of here?” Liliana asked, stonefaced.
“Let me look around the station,” Philip said. He felt the prickle of a frown as he reached out. In twenty minutes, regardless of any action they took, the station would be flooded with police. In ten minutes, Sienna Nealon would show up, he could feel that without doubt, one hundred percent probability on both events. Which meant that Antonio had already failed.
Philip dodged through the nearest maintenance door and found himself on a nearly empty platform. Dark tiles decorated the floor and ceiling from one side to the other, and Philip stared across the sparsely occupied space. There were only ten people here at most, and one of them—
Oh, wasn’t that perfect?
One of them was sitting in a wheelchair, ready for the next train. Philip reached out; it was less than a minute away. He looked up and realized that the sign above said much the same, but those things were slightly less reliable than his own sense of events.
The timing would have to be precise on this one; a second or two off in either direction would accelerate the arrival of the police and also lead to a bloody conflict with the other people on the platform.
But precise timing was exactly what Philip excelled at.
He sauntered over toward the man in the wheelchair, who sat with a magazine across his lap, waiting patiently. He paused a few feet away, taking careful stock of the situation. His opportunity was coming in five… four… three… two…
Philip stepped forward quickly but not absurdly so, bending to flick the left brake on the wheelchair, which had been locked into place to prevent sudden motion by someone other than the occupant. Using his rather substantial speed and his gift for glimpsing what the future held, Philip picked the exact moment that the man in the wheelchair was looking in the other direction to make his move, and by the time he had finished, he was back behind the man, the wheelchair occupant none the wiser to what he’d done.
The next bit would have to happen in three… two… one…
The train began to arrive and every head in the station turned in response. It was coming from the right side of the platform, the low rumble following the rush of air out of the darkness. Philip rested his hands on the handles to the wheelchair’s back, lightly, taking advantage of the momentary distraction. One more second now that he was positioned, and then he’d need to—
He pushed the chair forward, hurrying it with his metahuman speed into a ten-mile-per-hour dash. He stopped it just as abruptly, causing the man in
the chair to grunt in surprise. Philip followed the halt with a firm slap to the man’s back, just enough strength in it to cause him to surge forward—
The man sailed out of the wheelchair and hit the edge of the platform with not so much as a cry before he disappeared onto the tracks below. Philip was already moving, turning the chair about and walking it toward the maintenance door. His next actions were crucial to their escape, and if he made it to the door without interruption in the next six seconds they would be able to escape without incident.
As he dodged into the door five seconds later, he spared only a glimpse back to the edge of the platform, where a small crowd was now huddling around the edge of the track, already in hand-wringing mode. The station would be shut down for hours, but with a wheelchair they could be long gone, halfway to the next station by the time that the police put together even half of what had happened here.
Chapter 59
By the time I got Antonio out of the tunnel and trussed up in enough handcuffs and leg irons to prevent Houdini himself from escaping, I figured Ski Mask had already gotten away. A safe bet, as it turned out, because Webster met me with his police radio in hand and a severe look on his face.
“They did what?” I was in sheer disbelief when he told me the story.
“Dumped a man in a wheelchair in front of the train,” Webster said with intense disgust. This was getting personal to him, too, I could tell.
“If they’re willing to kill cops and blow up buildings, this shouldn’t come as a total surprise, I guess,” I said as I watched the SWAT team strip Antonio of all his clothes with the bomb squad’s help. He’d had some stuff on his person that had been deeply disconcerting. Bombs, I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter.
“No sign of them, though our people are reviewing the camera footage from the station,” Webster said. “I hate to give up too soon, but with the way it looks like they plan things out, I’m going to guess they’re clear of this by now.”
“Safe bet,” I said. “Ski Mask seems to know police responses well enough to know which direction to run in case of emergency.”
“That’s a bit frustrating, but I tend to agree,” Webster said. “By the way, don’t know if you’d heard, but they found the painting down the tunnel.”
I turned my head to watch Antonio’s reaction to that. His neck pivoted ever so slightly in response, and I knew he’d caught what Webster said. “Score one for the good guys, I guess. One bad guy in custody, two more in flight.” I folded my arms with a slight sense of satisfaction. “I think we can put that in the victory column.”
“Some poor disabled bloke under a train in the next station might find reason to disagree,” Webster said ominously, “but I’ll take what we can get.”
I watched Antonio as the police put him into the back of a prison van just for him. It had those metal grates over the windows, the kind of thing you’d expect from a maximum security prison, and he was being duct-taped across the arms and upper thighs for good measure, supplementing the multiple sets of hand and ankle cuffs. I started to tell them that he wasn’t that strong a meta, and then I realized they were better safe than sorry. He hadn’t spilled his special talent to me when asked.
Actually, he hadn’t said anything. In spite of his blatant and obvious fear of fire, I’d rendered him catatonic in my attempt to get him to talk. Maybe waterboarding would have been a better option, but unfortunately my ex was the one with the water powers.
I pushed my way through the SWAT team, who were all admiring their fine handiwork. “Step aside for a second,” I told them, and held out a finger. Summoning Eve to the forefront again, I spun a slow web across Antonio’s body where they’d placed the duct tape as their hedge. He had on eight pairs of handcuffs and twelve sets of leg irons. I counted.
I spun him around eight times, weaving that narrow thread of light around him from top to bottom. “It’s not exactly a lasso of truth, but it’ll hold for about twelve hours, give or take,” I said to the officer in charge. “Where are you taking him?”
“Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh,” the SWAT captain said, a hard look on his face. Honestly, when you were someone who’d seen as much shit as a SWAT captain had, was there any other sort of look to wear? “He’ll get a lovely stay in a new section they’ve built for…” The SWAT captain looked me up and down, struggling with the words, “… special prisoners.” I admired his attempt at diplomacy. “The CPS is going to make a special example of this one.”
I frowned. “What about the other two? Hard to make an example out of people who aren’t there.” The SWAT captain gave me a grudging nod. “Also, I know it’s not exactly in vogue, but can I recommend having his liver eaten by a vicious bird every day? Just a suggestion.”
“If only, ma’am,” the SWAT captain said with a tip of his helm to me. He said ma’am like “mum.” “If only.”
Antonio looked over his shoulder at me as they took him by each arm, and I waved at him, sending my hand to flame as I did so. He sucked in a breath of air abruptly, fearfully, as I did so, and I couldn’t help but smile at him as they put him in the prison van.
“I’m pretty knackered,” Webster said, appearing at my shoulder as I watched them haul Antonio off. “Mum left me a message saying supper is in the fridge. Are you ready to go home?”
“Yes, please,” I said, staring at the prison van. If I could have flown, I might have been in a better position to escort them to the prison, but… they’d be fine, right? It’d be nearly impossible to lay on an operation to free Antonio after we’d just cost them their headquarters, right?
A thousand possibilities filled my head, from the idea of a prison break to another attack like the gallery, and I realized that there was absolutely no predicting what the man in the black ski mask was likely to do next. With a sigh, I followed Webster to his car, and wondered idly if I’d get a full night’s sleep before hell started breaking loose again.
Chapter 60
“This is not like any investigation I’ve ever been on,” Webster said with a weary sort of chuckle as he drove us on. The window was cracked and the London night air was coming in just enough to disturb my hair in a good way.
“This is like every investigation I’ve ever been on,” I said, staring at the facades of the buildings as they passed by my window. “The volume is turned up a little on this one, but it’s not that different from every meta chase.”
“I find it hard to believe you do this daily,” Webster said.
“I haven’t done it like this in a couple years,” I said. “But metas always put up a harder fight than humans. Back when I first started chasing down metas, I had this one case where someone was attacking convenience store clerks and draining their memories of the event—”
“That’s possible?” Webster asked in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I said. “For a succubus like me, or an incubus—my male counterpart—your mind is like a notebook we can rifle through. Tear out a page here and there, borrow a memory or two that we like. Whatever.”
“You didn’t do that to Antonio,” Webster said, staring at me. “You could have gotten right to his memories about the man in the ski mask?”
I felt a little cold rush over my skin. “I don’t… do that anymore. Take memories, I mean. Not to mention that if your government found out, they’d probably be pissed off about it. And my government would—”
“You say you have no limits, but you follow rules as best you can,” Webster said, and I was hard pressed to figure out whether he was saying it with scorn or admiration.
“I’m a contradiction in terms, I know.”
“You are… truly something,” Webster said. “Truly something.”
I wanted to ask whether I was truly something bad or truly something good, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not,” I finally said.
“It’s a compliment,” Webster said with a smile. I liked his smile.
“You’re truly
something yourself, Detective Inspector.”
He eased the car to the curb and I was surprised to see that we’d reached his mother’s house without me even realizing it. I blinked, not sure I believed it was really there. “I guess this is my stop.”
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, and got out of the car. He didn’t quite get to my side in time to open my door for me, but he closed it after me once I got out. “So… about these powers of yours…”
I gave him a wary eye. “What about them?”
“Does anyone who touches you start to lose their… soul?” He said the last word like it was a bit of a joke.
“Only if they do it for too long.” It would sound cheesy to say I felt a thrill of hope at his question, but… well… I hoped it wasn’t just idle curiosity that brought it out.
“That’s interesting,” he said, studying me carefully. “How long is ‘too long’?”
“You’d feel it working after about twenty seconds,” I said, watching his face as we made our way up the walk.
“I see,” he said as we made it to the stoop. “That seems like enough time to be getting along with.”
He leaned in and kissed me, and it was like a rush of energy when his lips met mine. I let my hand come to rest in his hair, fingers running through it as he pressed to me. It was like the breath of life came back to me, and when he pulled away I had to resist the urge to pull him closer, keep him there.
We parted and he smiled, that same smile. “I don’t feel as if I’ve lost anything.” He adjusted his pant leg. “Maybe might have gained a bit of something—”
I laughed. “Good night, Detective Inspector.” He unlocked the door for me.
“One last question,” he said, keeping the door held for me as I stepped inside. “You said you had a boyfriend.”
Limitless Page 20