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

by Robert J. Crane

  “Okay,” she said, both bleary and unimpressed. “So dude gets murdered and I'm back on the case. Why not Holloway?”

  I froze, about to push the picture button on my phone screen again. “Did...did you not hear?”

  “Hear what?” Hilton stared at me, looking about half a sec from yawning wide again.

  “Holloway was murdered,” I said. “By mercs the Chinese hired.” Nothing was registering in her eyes; she stared at me blankly. “Yesterday. Right outside the office.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Wait. Are you f'real?”

  My eyes almost popped out of my head. “Uh, yeah. Seriously, you didn't hear?”

  Hilton sort of shrugged. “I don't know. I don't watch the news. Maybe I got an alert on my phone about someone getting killed but I didn't think – geez.” She shook her head, but didn't seem too upset. “Holloway. Ouch. Bummer.”

  I tried not to boggle at her, but it was so hard. “Wow. I can tell you really feel it.”

  “Oh, whatever,” she said, sauntering a little closer, sounding like a pouty teen. “You didn't like him, either. He was just a creepy old man. Remember how he grabbed your ass or whatever on that assignment in New Orleans?”

  “He was forty-five, tops,” I said, feeling outrage growing in my gut. Yeah, Holloway had been a mishmash of a human being, some serious negative characteristics held together by too much Scotch and misplaced anger. “And he died saving me.” Which was probably the wellspring of my irritation toward Hilton.

  “You should have reported his ass for that shit,” Hilton said, shrugging again. “I would have, if he'd done it to me.”

  I shook my head and focused on taking the next picture. Carefully flipping the diary page, I lined up the one after that.

  Hilton eased in closer to me, looking over my shoulder at the diary. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Logging evidence,” I said, trying to concentrate and waiting for the phone camera to adjust focus so the words didn't blur. “If you want to make yourself useful, would you mind going down to the crime scene and letting me know about anything of interest that comes in?”

  “Why don't you let me do this?” Hilton asked. “It looks easy enough.”

  “I'm almost done, and I've got a process I'm following,” I said, dragging the latest twenty or so shots into the flash drive to back them up. “It'd take more time to bring you up to speed on it than to just finish it myself. But seriously, I need to know if any evidence comes up from the scene – either of them, actually, since we have forensics working over the place where we think the shot was fired, too.”

  “Wait, what?” Hilton rubbed at her face. “Aren't they the same scene? Or did the body get moved?”

  “Sniper,” I said.

  I saw Hilton's eyebrows rise out of my peripheral vision. “Uh...that's a little weird. Sniper, I mean.”

  “It literally happened last case, too.”

  “Yeah, but they aimed at a tire, not a person. And it was still alleged when I checked out.”

  “Mmmhmm,” I said, trying to line up my last three shots. “Well, consider it confirmed. Two sniper cases in a row.”

  “Plus that New Orleans one last year,” Hilton said. “Huh. I didn't think we dealt with sniper type murders very often.”

  “They're a tiny proportion of murders in the US,” I said, my mind elsewhere but the facts spilling out of my lips by rote habit, memorized statistic. “I think only seven hundred or so people a year die of rifles, and that includes all rifles – AR-15's, sniper type killings, mass shootings – everything. More people die being beaten to death by fists and feet.” I snapped the next to last picture. “But since most of those 'feet and fist' killings are just local murders, there's not a lot of times that the FBI would get involved. Ergo, our cases are weighted toward ones where a more 'sexy' murder weapon is used.”

  “'Sexy' and murder are not two words that should be used together,” Hilton said. “I guess I never realized – hey, what the hell?”

  I jerked my head up just as I snapped the last picture. Hilton was staring past me at the entryway. I turned to follow her gaze, and found–

  Someone was there.

  Someone who shouldn't have been.

  Someone who was wearing...a mask.

  And all black.

  “Sonofa,” I said, getting to my feet immediately, pulling my gun a half second later. “Freeze!” I shouted, using my free hand to yank the diary off my desk, shoving it into my coat pocket. Hilton, behind me, pulled her pistol as well, though not nearly as fast.

  The figure looked to be drenched in shadow, the mask almost a living thing. They were there for a second, then–

  Gone.

  I didn't dare put down my gun, and neither did Hilton. I swept the room, looking–

  “There!” Hilton shouted, backup pistol pointed right at the shadowy figure. “Don't move!”

  The shadow had moved, though. From the entryway, it had gotten to twenty feet from me, and was calmly striding to close the distance. Not stopping, it continued toward us–

  Hilton opened up on it before I had a chance to shout, “Wait!”

  The shadowy figure paused as the first shot fired, glare lighting up its dark silhouette.

  Then it seemed to...bend. And sweep. Twist. All so fast that it blurred, looking like Agent Smith in The Matrix, bullets sweeping past the ghost afterimage of chest and arms as the parts of it moved so swiftly as to defy the laws of physics.

  And then...it was next to me.

  “What the f–” I started to say as I swept my gun around.

  I didn't get a chance to.

  With only a moment's notice, the shadow lifted a hand–

  And I flew back, crashing through the wall off the office and onto the street, slamming into a parked car and bouncing off, alarms and pain blaring into my subconscious as I sagged onto the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pain and I were old friends by now, but crashing through a wall and slamming into a car was still not exactly fun. So I guess pain was more like a relative that I didn't like that was always just dropping in when I least expected and causing all manner of problems whenever it visited.

  Now that I think about it, pain was basically my Aunt Charlie. But with a little more, y'know...pain.

  I tried to sit up, but the shadow thing – meta, I assume – was already there. Early morning pedestrians were scattering from in front of our offices. I caught a glimpse of one guy in a suit hightailing it around the corner, fear written on every line of his face. A guy in a wheelchair was rolling furiously down the sidewalk in a mad effort to get clear of this shitshow. Some woman kicked off her heels and hauled ass across the street, runs in her panty hose manifesting as she sprinted.

  All this and more I saw as I rose into the air, a shadowy hand wrapped around my neck. There was a lack of pressure, thankfully, but the hand was...well, big. Bigger than any hand had a right to be. It almost looked like oozing shadow had wrapped itself around my chest and under my arms to hoist me up. Looked painful, but I wasn't really feeling it.

  Yay.

  “Really...you should knock when you visit people,” I cracked, because...well, it's me. I slapped down at the...limb? Wrist? Whatever was holding me, I made a play to smack it. The damned thing seemed to bend out of the way of my hand, and I struck at air. Whiff. Strike one.

  “Do not defy me,” the shadow rumbled, and the voice was like Ian McKellen, pissed off and speaking through a running fan, warbling deeply.

  “Wouldn't dream of it,” I said, and made another attempt at smacking loose the...whatever was wrapped around me. Strike two. Didn't even lay a finger on it. I was kicking my legs to zero effect. I didn't move one iota. “Okay, I lied. I'm not only dreaming of it, I'm doing my best to make it happen. Any chance we could meet halfway on this defiance thing? Maybe I downgrade to 'surly resistance' and you let me at least seem like I'm making a dent in your–”

  The damned shadow lifted me up slowly and threw me across
the street into a parked yellow cab. I made full contact with the back of the car and boy, did it feel great.

  Just kidding. It hurt like hell, and the cab hit the curb and busted an axle. The rear bumper skidded up onto the pavement and hit a newspaper dispenser, making a horrendous noise and sending a hundred copies of the Washington Free Press into the air. And probably increasing their circulation numbers by 10,000 percent.

  I blinked my bleary eyes to a dusky sky overhead, hints of pink lacing their way across the clouds. I pushed up, and nothing felt good. Like, at all. My teeth even felt like they'd been shaken loose. “Okay...I'm now willing to downgrade my defiance to...like, maybe 'crabby bantering.' But that's as low as I'm willing to go.”

  The shadow moved toward me, remorseless, no face for me to even argue with.

  “All right, and this is my final offer,” I said as I pushed to my knees, wobbling, blood dribbling between my lips. “'Veiled insubordination.' Huh? Whaddya think?”

  The shadow stopped. “Your offer is accepted.”

  I just stared, not really sure what to say to that. “...Really?”

  The figure darkened somehow. “No.”

  Then he lit up with fire, and casually tossed it at me.

  Somehow I almost dodged. Which is to say I got out of the way of a blast of flame about a second after it passed over me. My clothing singed, my eyebrows singed, and I thudded on the concrete, dropping and rolling but not daring to stop.

  I came to rest against the tire of one of our FBI SUVs that had been parked on the street. It was a gentle thud compared to the beating I'd suffered thus far. The shadow was still behind me, and I scampered to my feet, beating my ragged, skinned palm against a still-burning fire on my coat sleeve. I made it behind the SUV, gasping and hurting, looking for something to throw, something to hit him with.

  Except bullets hadn't worked. And I hadn't been able to lay a hand on the bastard yet.

  “Ideas, ideas, come on,” I muttered, looking around. A NO PARKING sign.

  I blinked. It wasn't just a NO PARKING sign...

  It was there because of the...

  Hah.

  The shadow appeared from behind the SUV just as I reached my target. If he could have shown surprise, I think he would have, because he stared at me, pausing mid-step.

  Because I had reached...a fire hydrant.

  “Try that flame shit again, Sparky,” I said, and brought my fist down on the hydrant's valve, sheering it off as I went down on one knee. Water shot out into the street, and I hugged the hydrant, twisting it toward the shadow–

  It sprayed at him, and–

  He was gone.

  “Uhm.” I looked around, because he'd literally vanished into thin air. “Hilton? Do you have eyes on–”

  “Right there!” Hilton shouted from the direction of our offices. I guess she was okay.

  I wasn't, though, because the shadow...

  Was right next to me.

  “No fire,” he said, and swept down on me, darkness shrouding over my every sense. I thudded against the hydrant, breaking it cleanly off as water shot up...well, me, entirely, coating me.

  Then...something else crawled up my flesh, following the water.

  Cold.

  Numbing.

  Interminable.

  I couldn't move. Couldn't cry out, as water coursed down onto my face and ice followed, tracing the wet, soaking path of my clothes, crawling across my skin like a Minnesota pond in winter as I was shrouded in the darkness of the shadow and frozen, like a statue, there on the street.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Sienna?” a muffled voice penetrated my icy catacomb.

  My ears were numb. My face felt like it had experienced the worst windburn in history. I couldn't even move.

  “Are you in there?”

  Where the hell else would I be? I wanted to shout. But I couldn't.

  Couldn't shout. Couldn't scream. Could barely breathe. Cold air touched the back of my mouth. Somehow it had been frozen open, a channel giving me ready oxygen – and little else.

  A shock thudded through me as something made hard contact with me, like an earthquake in the distance. It happened again, and I felt it down to my fingertips.

  Mostly in my fingertips, actually. The ones in my right hand.

  Something cracked near my finger and I felt something – warm air numbly touching my knuckles, like someone breathing on them in the dark. I tried to move them and succeeded.

  “Oh, thank God!”

  A determined tapping replaced the shock of the hits. Warm air brushed against the back of my right hand, then my wrist.

  “Help me get her out!” Hilton shouted. Other voices answered, though they were so muffled – and my brain so addled – I couldn't fully interpret them.

  More numb warmth crawled up my right wrist to my elbow. I moved my fingers, tried to push against the concrete I felt like I was encased in.

  A splintering crack filled the air. The ice mold that had me in its impossible grip gave – a little.

  I strained again. Against it. Flexed my hamstrings. My quadriceps. The ice made a terrible cracking sound.

  Every inch of my skin felt dull. How long had I been in the ice?

  Too long. Humans weren't supposed to freeze themselves into ice statues, especially not when already drenched with water after being sprayed liberally by a busted hydrant.

  The ice casing shattered with my last effort, shards and cubes raining off me where I was now freed from its hard grip. My feet were still stuck, but the rest of me was loose, and I shook the fragments off, raining slush on the people surrounding me.

  “Yikes,” Hilton said, taking a step back. A couple local cops were standing around with her and did the same as I shook like a dog. “You okay?” she asked.

  I brushed a series of ice fragments off my back then stooped, untying my boots. They were still stuck in the base of the ice sculpture that had been my prison, and it was going to be easier to step out of them than try to break the solid structure beneath my feet. “Me? I'm just great,” I said, slipping one sodden, frozen sock after another out of my boots. “I got beaten, thrown, singed, drenched and frozen all in one fight.” Slinging my right hand in frustration resulted in a wave of slush flying out of my sleeve. “Best day ever.”

  Hilton gave me a pitying look. “At least you didn't die.”

  “Lucky me. I live to be sleep deprived another day. Also,” I looked around for any sign of the shadow creature, “what was that?”

  Now Hilton's eyes widened. “I dunno. Some meta?”

  “Maybe,” I said, gently tapping my head as I leaned it sideways. A little piece of partially melted slush plopped out of my ear canal. Another dropped from my hair, which – and I may be overstating this because it was never styled to start the day – was ruined. “Never seen anything quite like it before.”

  “It was like Venom from Spider-Man,” Hilton said. “But with more...shadow mixed in. Maybe some smoke, too.”

  “Also, fire and ice,” I said, looking down at the front of my blouse and jacket. Both were nicely singed, like I'd splayed out on a burning grill for a few minutes. Which was ridiculous, because I definitely didn't have time for any loafing about right now.

  “Anything broken?” Hilton gave me the once over.

  “Nothing that won't heal given a few hours of not being thrown through walls,” I said, doing a quick assessment. I'd definitely taken damage during the phase of the fight where I was being rammed into various objects, but everything was nicely numbed by the ice statue portion of the battle. I patted myself down, looking for egregious wounds. Nothing stood out, but–

  My face must have shown my dismay, because Hilton stared, asking, “What?”

  I patted myself all over again, with numb, wet hands, checking every pocket.

  It wasn't there.

  “The diary,” I whispered, feeling the chill over me. “It's gone.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “But you have the di
gital backup, right?” Hilton asked, following me as I leapt back into the FBI offices via the convenient hole in the wall that I'd made while exiting earlier. “I mean, I watched you copying the files to–”

  I cursed under my breath as I leaned over my computer. I was almost afraid to check, given how sodden I was. Hilton came in beside me and I solved one of my problems by drying a wet, frigid hand on the front of her jacket.

  “Hey! That's cold!”

  I ignored her, quickly logging back in on my computer. My phone was still sitting there, plugged in via USB–

  The photo app...was blank.

  All my photos were gone. All of them.

  I ignored the computer, still struggling to boot up. Now I was paying full attention to my phone. There was not a single photo on it. Not that I'd been a prolific photographer, but I'd taken some photos in my journeys.

  None of them were there. Not on the phone, not in the cloud.

  “Shit,” I breathed, then dove into working on the computer.

  None of the files had saved.

  And when I checked the flash drive...

  It was empty.

  I cursed out loud, very loud, loud enough they probably heard it as far north as Pennsylvania and as far south as Norfolk. “It's all gone,” I said, tossing my phone back on the desk. “Everything...the diary, all the digital backups.” I clenched a fist. “Whoever this asshat was, he got it all. Wiped it out.”

  Hilton still had that aura of unbelieving. “You think that was the purpose of this attack?”

  I didn't look her in the eyes, because I was still staring in partial disbelief at my computer. My sleeves and pants legs and all points in between dripped on the carpeting. “Yeah. That's exactly what I think.”

  “What happened here?” came a stern voice from the door. Familiar, too.

  “Director Chalke,” Hilton said, and she sounded like she'd swallowed a bug. A VW one, actually. Choked.