Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38)

by Robert J. Crane

  He just stared at me, his mouth moving as he tried to compose a thought.

  Impatient to get started, I figured I'd push him the direction I wanted to go rather than wait for him to stutter something dumb and then get embarrassed. “What's your name?” I asked gently.

  “Andrew,” he said, flushed with pleasure. Of course, I knew this from the app, but hey, pleasantries observed and all that jazz. He was young, mid-twenties, with glasses and a t-shirt that had a technical diagram of the Millennium Falcon on it. Cute.

  “I need to get to a crime scene,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “It's after midnight. Help me, Andrew-wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.”

  His smile cracked wider across his smooth face. I'd appealed to his geek heart. “Those are the magic words,” he said, and popped the Honda into gear, slipping away from the curb.

  Thank God. I could probably find another ride at this time of night, but it'd take time. Which I didn't have.

  “So...” Andrew said, glancing at me in the rearview. I put down my phone. No chance I was going to get quiet time to collect my thoughts and chill on the way to this scene. Sure, I could have been rude, but frankly I'd accumulated enough bad ratings from drivers over the years that I kinda needed to be on my best behavior to not get kicked off the app.

  But at least I hadn't killed any of them. Yet.

  “Yes?” I asked, smiling politely. Curse my lack of an official FBI vehicle. Whatever. Parking sucked on my street anyway.

  “I saw you on the internet,” he said. I had a feeling he might replay this stretch of the conversation later and die of embarrassment, but for now, he kept talking. “With the video. For the Chinese kidnapping thing.”

  I blinked. That had been less than 24 hours ago, as hard as it was for me to believe. What a frigging day.

  “You got 'em, though,” he said. “I heard about the ship you seized. With all those Chinese people kidnapped on them.”

  “Ships,” I said. “Plural. We got a bunch more going out of other ports.”

  “Whoa,” he breathed. “That's crazy. And it was really China that did it?”

  “The Chinese government, yeah,” I said, eyeing the darkened screen of my phone. I held back the fact that they'd tried kidnapping me, personally, for purposes of harvesting my eggs to build a loyal, Chinese succubus army. The fact that the People's Republic had crafted a scheme to breed me like a dog was not lost on me. In fact, it was the sort of thing I was unlikely to forget. Ever. Especially since, in my darker contemplations, I had strong feelings about that plan, about all the things that would happen in the course of that plan – to me, personally – and afterward, as well.

  “That's amazing,” Andrew said. “I always thought China was one of the good guys.”

  “It's usually not that black and white,” I said, and he gave me a blank look in the mirror. “For governments, I mean. But in this case, China's government is definitely not a 'good guy.'”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding vaguely disappointed. “I just finished reading The Art of War. By Sun-Tzu, you know?”

  “Really?” I asked. “I thought that was Martha Stewart's autobiography.”

  His face scrunched up in confusion. “Huh?”

  “Kidding, Andrew. I'm kidding.”

  “Oh.” He laughed, then the confused look returned. “Who's Martha Stewart?”

  “Never mind.”

  We lapsed into a silence that I knew wouldn't last. It didn't.

  “Have you ever read The Art of War?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said. My mother made it required reading, up there with Von Clausewitz and Victor Davis Hanson. “Been a while, though.”

  “Very cool,” he beamed. The light ahead of us turned green just before we got to it, and he cruised the Honda through the intersection. “I liked what he said about knowing yourself and knowing the enemy. That was some powerful stuff. Really sent me on a journey of self-exploration.”

  “'Know the enemy as you know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.' That's a good one,” I said, nodding along, trying to put the minimum amount of effort into the conversation.

  “Yeah, that's it! Wow, you really do know Sun-Tzu,” he said. “You got a favorite quote?”

  I glanced at my phone, flaring the screen to life in the darkness of the Honda's back seat. We were three hundred feet from my destination, and the flashing of police lights was already visible, along with the big, orange-and-white barricades. The crowd was light, given the hour, only a few press on hand. He brought the car to a stop, apparently surprised that we'd run into a crime scene, even though I'd warned him that was where we were going at the outset.

  “'Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,'” I said, opening the Honda's door and stepping out, “'and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.'”

  He leaned back over the seat, staring at me, utterly perplexed. “What?”

  “My favorite Sun-Tzu quote,” I said, looking back at him, holding the door open.

  “That's the most Sienna Nealon thing I've ever heard,” he said in quiet awe. “Can I get a selfie with you?”

  “I gotta go, Andrew,” I said, and gently shut the door. I gave him a wave, though, as I dodged my way through the crowd. A sergeant from the DC Metro police lifted the police tape so I could duck under it, and I entered the tall glass-and-steel structure of the building, butterflies churning in my stomach at the knowledge of what I was about to find.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I stepped out on the floor of Russell Bilson's condo and found myself in a flawless, slick, nearly brand-new hallway. It wasn't hard to find his door. It was the one with cops just hanging around like flies on an old piece of fruit. DC Metro PD didn't stop me on my way in, nor did I have to flash a badge to enter. Everyone knew who I was, and everyone knew I'd been summoned.

  “Agent Nealon,” said a grimacing, big guy in a rumpled suit as I came in. His hands were on his hips, and his badge hung over his belt. He had the extra pounds that detectives and older men had a tendency to accumulate. He was both, so he'd gotten the two-fer. Didn't hold out his hand, but I didn't pick up an unfriendly vibe from him. He just looked like he was annoyed to be on nights, and to be fielding this particular case. “I'm Severson. Homicide.”

  “Hey Severson,” I said, giving the place a quick look. Bilson had lived in a swank building, and his condo matched the exterior. Everything reeked of modernity and taste, from the glass kitchen table to the white cabinets and sandy white wood flooring. “Want to play the highlight reel for me?”

  “Is this your case?” Severson asked. Now he was adding the customary suspicion a detective in his position tended to throw anytime something unfamiliar came up.

  “I don't know about 'mine,' but it's definitely going to the FBI,” I said. “The vic had just been nominated to be the president's National Security Advisor.”

  Severson looked like he was chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought. “Isn't that Secret Service's purview, then?”

  “Hell if I know,” I said, restraining a sigh. “But I knew the guy, so I got the call. You want to give me the heads up or what?”

  I could tell by the look on his face that he didn't, and not because he wanted it for himself. It seemed more like he'd be happy to shed this from his workload, but I suspected he feared it'd boomerang back on him after he wasted his time showing me around the scene. And given me time to screw up the scene, too. “This way,” he beckoned me to the balcony.

  Bilson's living room wall was an impressive series of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Washington. In terms of city views, it was in the top five I'd ever seen, easily, and I included my time in various New York penthouses of the rich and famous in that list. Double doors opened out onto a railed balcony, with the rails being extra thin so as not to obscure the fabulous view.

  DC sparkled beneath us. Bilson's building was one of the tallest buildings in the DC city limits. This was a short town compared to Manh
attan or even Brooklyn, lately, but Bilson's residence was one of the new crop of higher-rise-style glass-and-steel that seemed to be cropping up in between the rehabbed hipster fodder buildings that were ubiquitous in DC.

  “Rifle shot, near as we can tell,” Severson said simply as we walked outside. The body was covered by a sheet, red stain barely there in the middle of the chest. Not much leakage, which told me he'd been dead for a while, his blood settled, by the time they covered him up.

  “Who found him?” I asked, feeling more than the weather chill me as I stepped up to the body. Staring down at that white sheet, there was a lump in my throat.

  “Half the city heard the shot,” Severson said, then beckoned me past the corpse. I followed his pointed finger without moving; there was a trail of blood that led to the edge of the balcony and dripped over. “Neighbor below was enjoying a romantic evening with a date. Heard it, they came out to see what was going on and lingered after that. Guess he was trying to impress her. Drip hit her shortly after, killed the mood. He dialed 911.”

  “Rough luck for his love life,” I said, eyes following the blood trail back to the white-sheeted body. Then I lowered my voice. “Rougher luck for Bilson.”

  “You think this is a political assassination?” Severson asked, jarring me as I stared at the sheet.

  Part of me wanted to stoop down, lift the sheet...to look Bilson in the dead eyes. “I don't know,” I said. “Can't ever recall hearing about a National Security Advisor being assassinated.” I paused. “Or any government official, at least in recent memory.” Part of me wanted to look at Bilson, part of me didn't. “Where'd the shot come from?”

  Severson pointed straight out to a building in the distance, similar in height to this one. “Forensics will have to say for sure, but I assumed there, so I sent some uniforms to take a look at the roof.”

  “Don't keep me in suspense, Severson. What'd they find?”

  “Not much,” he said with a shrug. “Forensics is taking a look, but there wasn't anything definitive. No rifle, no shell casing. Residents did report hearing the shot, and one says that yeah, it sounded like it came from the roof. For whatever that's worth.” It wasn't worth much.

  “Anything else of note?” I asked, looking around.

  Severson did a little glancing of his own. “Not a lot, no. Looked like he was just admiring his view when it happened. Got him right through the heart, so he didn't suffer long.”

  “Shame it couldn't have been through the head.” Severson fired a questioning look at me. “Because of the suffering.”

  “Right.” That put him back at ease. Bleeding out, even from the heart, wasn't a fun way to die. Speaking from experience. I pointed at the building in the distance. “Assuming that was the sniper's perch...what's the distance on that?”

  Severson peered at it. “I don't know. Just a sec.” He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Lazlo? Hey, what was the travel distance to that building? Thanks.” He put his phone down. “Two miles.” Then his eyes wobbled and forehead wrinkled as he did the math, then he did a double take looking at the building. “Figured it's gotta be at least a mile, as the crow flies.”

  “Yep,” I said, staring at the point in the distance.

  “That's no low-grade loser with a rifle, if it did come from there,” Severson said.

  “No, it isn't,” I said, feeling the first stirrings of tightness in my chest.

  “I mean...shooting a man dead center in the chest at a mile plus?” Severson's eyes were wide as he contemplated the shot. “That's...”

  “It's a professional,” I said, jaw tightening as I followed his thought to its natural conclusion. As if there'd been any doubt when the newly appointed National Security Advisor had turned up dead hours after getting announced. “This was an assassination.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jaime Chapman

  Mountain View, California

  There was always that moment of gripping twilight when Jaime Chapman got woken up by his phone. Not quite ready to re-enter the real world, but aware he was being called, he only fought it for a moment before surrendering, stirring himself out of his bed, and grasping at his phone.

  It's time to play!

  He swore, tempted to toss the damned thing aside. But the Network had its nominal areas of importance, and they were in the midst of a crisis, so Jaime dutifully unlocked the phone and jumped right in.

  And a moment later, he was glad he took it seriously. This time.

  CHALKE: Bilson's dead.

  BYRD: lol whut

  KORY: ?

  JOHANNSEN: Seriously?

  CHALKE: Off the record. No deep background, nothing. Shake this loose from other sources, media people, it does NOT come from me. He was found dead by DC police an hour ago, shot through the heart.

  “Holy shit,” Chapman breathed.

  In a way, this was good news. Bilson had been on the outs with the Network, after all, going his own way on China. His death sort of cleared up a loose end for them.

  On the other hand...

  CHAPMAN: Who did it?

  That was the question. If it was one of them, acting independently, maybe they needed to be praised for taking initiative. Maybe they needed to be chastised. At the very least, they warranted watching.

  And if it was someone else...well, questions needed to be answered.

  No one said anything for a long moment. If they'd been sitting together in person, Chapman would have called it a guilty silence. But chatrooms didn't lend themselves well to that sort of speculation, given it was typing instead of talking. They could all be sitting in stunned silence, unsure what to say or how to position their response.

  CHALKE: Not sure. Nealon is there now, looking over the scene. I'm on my way in. Preliminaries indicate it's a planned hit unless he caught a random bullet flying through DC. Not impossible, but improbable.

  Chapman would go so far as to say impossible. DC may have had a crime problem, but the idea that it would randomly hit Bilson on today, of all days, when so much had happened to make him a person of interest and attention, was beyond improbable.

  CHAPMAN: This was no accident. Someone did this on purpose. We need to know why, and if it jeopardizes our position.

  Straight to the point. Chapman wasn't much interested in the human component of Bilson. He worried about exposure, pure and simple. Grieving could be left to the people who knew Bilson and loved him. If there were any of those.

  FLANAGAN: You're an endless font of compassion, Chapman. Lol.

  CHAPMAN: Sentiment can wait until later. One of our own has been taken down. If that came from within the group, we can talk about it. If it came from outside, we need to know if it's a threat.

  He finished typing out his thoughts as they came, and paused to wait for their responses. Chapman didn't much care if the others thought him cold. Someone needed to be cold about this. Someone needed to be during every crisis, and this certainly had the budding characteristics of one. Piled atop the China catastrophe, this had all the hallmarks of making things much worse for all of them.

  Or better, depending on how recalcitrant Bilson had proved in days to come. They'd never know now, of course. Worse, in Chapman's estimation, was that his expertise was going to be hard to replace in the group. Chalke may have been a Washington insider, but she wasn't half as well versed in the politics as Bilson. And Flanagan, while connected with many of the major players through his firm, wasn't as immersed in the day to day slime of that city, being up the Acela in New York.

  Chapman tapped his foot, waiting. Surely someone would take credit for this. If not...

  ...Well, they had a problem either way. It was just going to be correspondingly larger if no one claimed responsibility.

  CHALKE: I'm only a few minutes out. I'll let you know what I find when I get out of the scene.

  KORY: Has anyone actually heard of a political official in America being assassinated since...like...Abe Lincoln or whatever?

  Cha
pman sighed. Leave it to the millennial “journalist” to voice his ignorance.

  JOHANNSEN: Successfully assassinated? No. And never at such a comparatively low level, at least that I recall. And the last major political figure to be successfully assassinated in America was actually JFK...you toddler.

  KORY: We can't all be dinosaurs who saw the asteroid descend, Johannsen. Some of us were born after the second World War, you know.

  Chapman let out an irritable sigh.

  CHAPMAN: Now's not the time to give in to rancor. We need to know if we've been attacked, if we've got exposure. That's all that matters. Petty squabbles in our own ranks do us no good.

  FLANAGAN: Agreed. If this is an attack, we need to circle the wagons, not become a circular firing squad.

  Exactly what Chapman was thinking. He stared at the little text box, waiting, but no one said anything. All circulating in their own thoughts, waiting for whatever news came next, he expected. He certainly was.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sienna

  Heather Chalke entered the Bilson crime scene with all the subtlety of a tornado entering an old barn. She came at the head of an entire team of forensics personnel, clad in the Tyvek suits that were so ubiquitous at crime scenes, designed to keep their own hair and fibers from being added to those already within this confined space.

  “DC police, this is a federal crime scene,” Chalke shouted, top of her lungs, probably waking up the people in the basement apartment. “You are requested and required to turn over all evidence and leave immediately.”

  Severson gave me an acidic look. We were still out on the balcony, but Chalke had not bothered with quiet. “You know this was going to happen?”

  “Oh, chill out, Severson,” I said. “You've got other donuts in the oven.”

  Severson's eyes flashed as my crack hit home. “FBI pricks,” he muttered under his breath as he adjusted his belt and headed for the door, joining the shuffle of exiting locals. At least he hadn't put up more of a scene.