Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  Lightning flickered from Francine's hands, flashing in the darkness, quiet without the thunder to accompany it. Great arcs of electricity leapt from her, striking down on the pumps, sparks flying, the bolts dancing between the hammering metal structures–

  The explosion was quieter than Scout would have imagined. It was muffled, an escape of air and rush of flame, racing skyward, up, up toward Isaac and Francine–

  Isaac's reflexes were quicker than that, though; he shot sideways, taking a long loop away from the fire toward the tower in the distance. Through the rising flames, Scout saw the flashes again, then a larger, more bellowing explosion–

  The golden grass was now orange, lit by the fiery glare rising off the pumps and then from the tower structure in the distance.

  “Hoo hoo hoo!” AJ crowed. “That's a beautiful thing, man.” He kept the AK-47 cradled on his lap, his face lit by the flames now raging only a few hundred feet away.

  Scout put her hand against the window and could feel a slight warmth. Probably the sun rather than the newly-lit fires, but still.

  The door opening beside her came as a shock. “Let's go, let's go,” Isaac said, hurling himself into the back seat next to her.

  Francine, flushed with pride and staring at their handiwork, threw the car into gear the moment she was in. She let out a whoop as the Ford's tires hit the dirt road and let fly with gravel. “I want to do another one!” she shouted.

  “And so we shall,” Isaac said. He caught Scout's eye, then offered a hand, a brief brush of her cheek. “So many more.” He turned his head to look at the fires, burning bright, blazing, rising higher and higher into the sky as the oil – that precious, worth-fighting-wars-for oil went straight from ground to atmosphere, cutting out the middle man. “We'll burn it all. Until it all comes crashing down.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sienna

  “Morning,” Reed grumbled as I got in his car. He was waiting on Ariadne's driveway, and his eyes were lidded and dark, almost slitted, partially hunched over the wheel.

  “I notice you skipped the requisite 'good' attached to that,” I said, looking sidelong at him as he backed his car out of the driveway slowly. For a human. For a meta it was so slow it almost qualified as dead. “Rough night?”

  He furrowed his brow. “No. I had a rough afternoon yesterday, but my night was fine. Isabella sends her love, by the way.”

  I stared at him. Didn't say a word.

  “Fine,” he said, blowing air impatiently through his lips as his car shuddered during a slow turn out of Ariadne's subdivision. “She sends...something. More than a hello but less than...”

  “Warm?” I offered, and he almost smiled. Almost.

  He nodded to the second coffee cup in the holder. Peace offering.

  “I see you speak my love language,” I said, and went right to it. Much better than the sludge from the office yesterday. “Seriously, though, your jaw has to be feeling better by now.”

  “My jaw is fine,” he said, back to tense. “It healed within hours. My pride, on the other hand...”

  “Dude, she's the daughter of the God of Death and was literally the first Valkyrie,” I scoffed. “Get over it. She could probably kill almost anyone five times over and barely notice it. No one thinks less of you because of that.”

  “I know,” he said, hanging onto the wheel around a turn onto a main thoroughfare. The sky was gray, thick, dark. I could have sworn I smelled an element of smoke on it, though I didn't know where it was coming from. It was hard to believe someone was burning a wood stove in sixty-degree weather, but Minnesotans were a weird lot. “I think her kicking my ass was just a punctuation mark on stuff already worrying me.”

  “You, worry?” I sipped my coffee. “Surely not.”

  He shot me a sidelong look of pure acid, brushing back his dark hair, which was loose today. “This is a time of transition, okay? Normal people have difficulties with those. There's a lot of uncertainty.”

  I tried to put the snark aside. Also, my coffee, back into the holder, to show him how serious I was taking his fears. “What's worrying you?”

  His shoulders sagged, though he still held the wheel with both hands. The squeal of the brakes as he came to a stop at the red light suggested he'd been taking the recommended maintenance of his car as very loose suggestions. We both cringed at the sound of them squealing. When it stopped, he said, “Okay, here's the big one – who's the boss now?”

  I tried not to chuckle. I failed. “You men and your hierarchies. You can be if you want. I have no problem sitting out in the bullpen like one of the little people.”

  “You're gonna let me boss you around?” Reed asked, dripping skepticism. “Let me tell you what assignments to take?”

  “If that's what you need in order to feel good about yourself,” I said, maybe hamming up my voice a little with some mocking, “to boss your little sister around...sure, why not? I can take it. I'm a big girl. Not as big a girl as you sometimes, but...”

  He sagged, and when he pressed the accelerator it made kind a strange noise. To me it suggested once again Reed had been skimping on another thing in his life in order to keep the agency running. But maybe I was reading too much into it. “I don't have a problem being bossed around by my little sister,” he said. “We didn't grow up together; these labels...I don't care who's older.” He paused and turned, slowing for the next light. “What I worry about...is you.”

  “I understand,” I said, sipping my coffee coolly. “I am very worrisome.”

  He made a grunting noise. “Can you take this seriously?”

  “I am taking it...well, on board,” I said, pausing in my coffee sipping. I had to sip or I'd be through a large coffee in three and a half minutes. “I'm not looking for a repeat of the last time I was doing the agency thing, Reed, which is why I'm fine if you want to keep leading. I'm just here to add some firepower, put some wind in our financial sails, and not have some asshole in DC bossing me around anymore on the way to destroying me.”

  He squinted at me. “If you'd played along, would the Network have wanted to destroy you?”

  “I hear your question, and would prefer to ask my own in return,” I said. “If you were enslaved by a bunch of self-righteous technocrats, would you eat their shit for an entire year before seeing an actual body count coming and substituting them for the innocent people they were about to kill?”

  He froze. “See, this is another problem I have. You talk about possible futures like they're a sure thing.”

  “...And?”

  “And you don't know they're a sure thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Where does all this come from?”

  “You know where it comes from.”

  “I do,” he said. “Harry. Harry, who we don't fully know and who I don't fully trust.”

  I sighed. “I know Harry. You know Harry. Well enough, anyway.”

  “I don't.”

  “Well, he kept the agency afloat while I was away with that Murfreesboro thing, so...a little trust might be in order.”

  “Harry exerts an enormous amount of influence over you,” he said, jaw tight as if Lethe had freshly kicked it. “He sees the probabilities of the future. I get it.”

  “You just don't trust his reporting...?” I asked, clutching my cup to avoid...I dunno, throwing coffee at him for the sheer wall of implications he was bringing up.

  Because if Harry was untrustworthy...and I'd just wiped out a whole load of people on his advice...

  Well, then not only was I a useful idiot for Harry, but a murderer as well.

  “I don't know enough about his reporting to trust or distrust it,” Reed said, and the tension just bled out of him. “He does his thing, he tells us what he sees, and we have to make decisions based on that. Is he lying? Is he being fully truthful? I don't know.” He shrugged wide, leaving the wheel in the hands of Jesus for a few seconds. “I hate not knowing. Especially when the stakes are this damned high, Sienna.” He clenched. Like, everything.
“You killed so many people solely on his say-so. Some pretty cold-bloodedly, near as I can tell.”

  “Maybe you're assuming too much,” I said. I hadn't exactly confessed to all I'd done in the process of getting clear of the Network. I'd talked to Reed in dreamwalk the night after I'd finished, but I hadn't laid it all out for him. “After all, I saw their communications inside their app. Veronika attested to everything Harry was saying. They were trying to assassinate the president.”

  “I don't disagree,” he said. “But extrajudicial killings...Sienna, that's what got you in this trouble to begin with. Not your sparkling personality – though that doesn't help, like, ever–”

  “Well, it helps me.”

  “Helps you what?”

  “Helps me make it through the day without killing additional people.”

  He shook his head. “It's not the killing, Sienna. As near I can tell, you've never killed an innocent human being. Not even close, in fact. But you haven't followed the rules or the law or...basic human decency in some cases. And that's what gets you in the shit. And speaking purely selfishly – I don't want you in the shit. Because I don't want to end up in there with you, and I feel I barely lucked out of it last time.”

  I nodded. Nodded again. A third time. Didn't say anything for a minute. “You're right,” I finally said. “You're right.” I had to take accountability, and it was my fault. “I haven't been circumspect in my actions sometimes.”

  He shot me a sidelong look. “Is this contrition? Because I'm having a hard time squaring it with the fact you just wiped out all your enemies. Again.”

  “Hey,” I said, mildly annoyed, “I didn't kill all my enemies in Revelen, did I? A sizable number of them walked away. Hades, Arche, Owens...Yvonne...you know, I don't actually know her real name. The Glass Blower. I wiped out the Network because they were a threat, and I didn't even take them out to the last man. I let one live.”

  He gave me a hard look but said nothing.

  “Also, this did receive the blessing of the president,” I said. “Just...pointing this out for posterity.”

  “The president may be okay with killing American citizens without trial,” Reed said quietly, “but I struggle with it. Every time. The thing I did in Revelen? To those mercs? To save you?”

  “The wind grinder? That was horrifying. And awesome. But mostly horrifying.”

  “It still haunts me,” Reed said, and I could tell by his tone that it did.

  “It should,” I said softly. “It should.”

  He looked sideways at me. “Do the things you do...do they bother you at all?”

  I felt a little pinched. “No.” I shook my head. “Being completely honest...no. I kinda wish I hadn't vengeance killed some of M Squad back in the day, and I maybe – just maybe – could have gone a little softer on Nadine Griffin in retrospect, but everyone else...” I shrugged. “Like you said, none of them were innocent. In a perfect world, sure, I'd like to have found a different way to handle everyone I've done in.”

  “'Done in.' That's softpedaling it a bit, don't you think?”

  “Fine. I wish I didn't have to kill anyone,” I said. “In a perfect world, I wouldn't. I could take my time, not make split-second decisions that result in a death. In a perfect world, though, people wouldn't be so horrible that they're set on killing another no matter the cost, because that's what I run across when I end up doing that inevitable terrible thing. Soldiers in a war zone trying to track me down. Rose on a hell bender toward vengeance and world conquest. That multi-talented asshole in Minneapolis, determined to climb to the top of the food chain. Some mobster in Japan who wants to die by my hand and drags all his cronies into assaulting me with his dumb ass. I don't choose my enemies, Reed. They choose me.”

  “I get...all that,” he said. “And I'm not trying to turn this into a guilt-fest...in spite of my last question.” He sighed as he clutched the wheel. “I just want to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. Almost three years.” He looked sideways at me. “That's how long you've been gone. Like a prison sentence.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “Next time it'll be longer.” He met my eyes. “Just...try being a little gentler. We don't have the sanction of the government now. Hopefully we will, wherever we're working, but...even so, it's tougher to deal with these things as a civilian contractor. You kill the person, even if it's justified criminally, you could face civil liability.”

  “Bankrupting our little venture,” I said, nodding along. “I know. I'll...I'll try, okay?”

  He nodded. “That's all I'm asking.” He took a long, deep breath. “Now that you're back is there...any chance of outside funding for the agency? Maybe from Mr. Jonsdottir?”

  I chuckled. “I don't know how much scrutiny we're under, but I suspect my offshore accounts need to stay out of the business for a while, at least. Just to be safe.”

  He nodded slowly. “Guess it wouldn't be very good if we managed to steady ourselves and stay out of trouble with the law for killing people only to end up convicted of money laundering or something.”

  I frowned. “Would they send us to the Cube for that, do you think? Because if not...that's way easier than the last stretch I did.”

  He laughed. “I don't kn–” His phone, in a holder attached to the dashboard rang, and he looked to it. “Augustus.” Punching the accept button, he said, “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Augustus's voice rang out over the speakerphone. “Are you close to the office?”

  “About five minutes out,” Reed said, suddenly tense. “Why?”

  “Turn on the news. We got a thing,” Augustus said. “Some metas attacked the oilfields out in North Dakota this morning.” His voice ratcheted up. “They're saying the whole western part of the state is on fire.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  North Dakota was burning.

  It was tough to watch, the NNC news feed showing live helicopter footage on the TV in the corner of the bullpen. Oil fields were burning madly, flames rising hundreds of feet into the air. I could imagine the heat from here, could almost feel it tugging at me through my Gavrikov powers when I pictured him.

  Somewhere out there, only a state away, the world was aflame. If I'd been there, maybe I could put out...well, a small part of it, perhaps, but that was all. My fire powers weren't quite what they used to be and snuffing something like this would have been nigh impossible for me even before Rose.

  Still, I cursed her name, as per our usual arrangement whenever I thought of the Scottish bitch, and kept watching, glued to the traumatic event unfolding in front of me.

  “It seems that nearly a dozen oil fields were hit this morning, all ablaze now, all reporting a similar phenomenon – two people, one flying, the other being carried, sending lightning down like some kind of avenging god,” the reporter said in a voiceover worthy of award in a contest for the purplest prose. “Now North Dakota is burning, and for what reason? Well, one could only speculate–”

  “That's about all I can stand of that,” I said, hitting the mute button. I didn't hear any argument.

  “This is terrible,” Scott Byerly said, unable to take his eyes off the spectacle.

  Jamal's trance seemed to have been broken by my hitting the mute button. “I'm looking over the 'net right now for some security footage or something we can use from this.”

  “Use for what?” Augustus asked. “You think North Dakota will hire us to deal with this?”

  “They should,” Reed said. “This is right up our street.”

  I chuckled. “I figure they'll just send a deer hunter with a rifle out to each and every oil field, wait for these guys to show up, and bag 'em.” Everyone was looking at me, and not in a flattering way. “What? It's cheaper than hiring us, and it'd work, too.”

  As if ominously hearing our conversation, the phone began to ring. With a shake of his head, Reed went to answer it.

  “You'd really do that?” Augustus asked. “If you were in charge?”

 
“And not a meta?” I shrugged. “Hell yes. You've got one flyer and one Thor type, it sounds like. A bullet can hit from a hell of a lot greater distance than a Thor's lightning.” I looked to Jamal. “Am I right?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “But if you were going to deploy us out there,” Scott looked at me, deadly sincere, “how would you play it?”

  Was he asking me because he expected me to lead this expedition, if it even happened? Or was he just curious because of my reams of tactical experience? “Uh, I...uhm...”

  “Good news, everyone,” Reed said. Saved by the bell. “That was North Dakota.” He wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning, either. Too serious a situation to be happy, too good a news to wear a grim look. “They're hiring us to deal with this.”

  “Lot of business coming our way lately,” Scott said. “Can't say I'm happy about it, exactly.”

  “Easy to say that when daddy's money's going to keep you from starving regardless,” Augustus said under his breath. Scott blushed.

  “What's the play, boss?” I asked, looking to Reed. I needed to set the tone on this thing. Everyone else looked with me, a second later.

  Reed still didn't smile, but he did nod about a millimeter in my direction, which I figured was him thanking me for bowing to his authority. “Looks like a big job, so we'll take a team of four – Augustus, Jamal, me, and you, Sienna.” He glanced at Scott. “You hold down the fort.”

  “Cool,” Scott said, apparently resigned to playing secretary for us. “I will just stay here and...sit on my hands while a fire burns out in the Dakotas.” He looked pointedly at Reed. “If only you had someone who could help put it out.”

  “That's not what we're going there for,” Reed said, then hesitated. “But if we were, why would I want to deploy water on an oil fire?”

  “Boom,” Augustus said. “Bossman coming in and laying down the science.”

  “Fair enough,” Scott said, sounding appropriately chastened. “Any idea when you'll be back?”