Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  Scout stared down at her, putting a hand on Francine's cheek. It was already getting cool to the touch.

  She was dying.

  But Scout couldn't leave her behind.

  Planting a hand on Francine's cheek, Scout closed her eyes. It was so cool...

  Then...it wasn't.

  The burning rose in her fingertips, across her palm, running through Scout's body like a wild brushfire in a dry thicket. It flew through her every nerve, a jangling, joyous crescendo flooding her body and–

  She jerked back, looking up at the dark sky, a plane blinking in the darkness overhead like a lost, moving star.

  The sharp intake of cool air infused her lungs, and Scout felt life flood her.

  What the...? Francine's voice sounded in her head.

  Francine! AJ said. Damned good to see you. Thought we lost you there for a minute.

  Someone threw a chair at my head! Francine sounded pretty put out.

  Probably that big dude, AJ said. The one that looked like he takes his steroids every day via elephant needle.

  He's a Hercules, a tiny voice whispered in the back of Scout's head. Isaac. Too shy to show his face.

  “He killed you,” Scout whispered.

  Kill him back, Francine said. Light his ass up.

  Scout sat up. “Okay.” Her fingers were tipped with crimson. She rubbed it on her face like warpaint. “I'll kill him for you.”

  Something blasted her from behind before she could take her first step, though. Cold, painful, it covered her legs, buried her to the waist–

  Scout turned her head; two figures were sailing down from above on a straight line. Not flying. More like riding a zipline that wasn't there.

  One was costumed in bright red and black – Gravity. The local hero.

  The other set Scout's teeth to clenching instantly.

  Sienna Nealon.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN

  Sienna

  “Pin her to the rooftop,” I said to Jamie as we rode her channels down from above. We'd zipped along the skyline at a pace of a hundred miles an hour, shooting from point to point along her gravity channels, making our way from Citigroup Plaza to Madison Square Garden, countless blocks of urban travel done in mere minutes as the city noises wafted up from below.

  “Won't your ice do that?” Jamie asked. I watched her make a motion with her hand, though, like a knitter doing some stitching. She may have been questioning me, but she wasn't delaying on carrying out my order.

  “She's got hot plasma,” I said. “She's going to burn through my ice in seconds – aren't you, Scout?”

  Scout was half-turned, frozen up to her chest, but glaring at me. She didn't answer; her glare did it for her. Just past her, the Punk Rock Chick was flat on the rooftop, her brains hanging out of her skull and her chest not moving.

  “Is that girl dead?” Jamie took a sharp intake of breath, nearly in my ear.

  “Looks to be,” I said. “She had lightning powers, though, so I'd steer clear. Hell, pin her to the ground, too. Ground her out.”

  “She's dead,” Scout said with a savage ferocity that I'd come to expect from her fanatical ass. “Some Hercules in a mask down there killed her with a chair.”

  I clenched up as I touched down. Not from the landing, either. “What happened to him?” I asked, trying to keep cool.

  “Don't know,” Scout said, dripping venom, “but if I see him again...I'll kill him.”

  “You mind checking on...?” I nodded to the person-sized hole in the arena roof.

  Jamie nodded, and headed that way, leaving me standing off with Scout at what I deemed to be a quasi-safe distance. If such a thing existed with this girl.

  She was now up to her shoulders in ice. I thought about adding more, but if Jamie had properly latched her to the rooftop, that would hold her far more effectively than anything I could do. She had plasma at her command, though, and that was worrisome. Maybe lightning, now, too. I concentrated on the memory I had of Jamal, that faint, wispy shadow of him within myself, and positioned myself between Scout and Jamie.

  “There's a guy hanging from the big scoreboard down there,” Jamie called over her shoulder. “Wait a minute...is that...?”

  “I am super deluxe sized!” Friday's voice came from the hole in the roof. “There's so much of me to love.”

  “Friday?” Jamie asked.

  “Really, I'm more like the Artist Formerly Known as Fri – uhhhhaahhhhh!”

  “You're too big to fit through the hole in the roof. Shrink.”

  “I'm never too big. If anything, I'm not big enough for the threat that we all face right now. A desperate threat. For desperate times. I – urrkkkk! Okay, I'll shrink – just give me a second! Stop trying to force me through a tiny hole!”

  I kept my eyes on Scout, and definitely not on the hole in the Madison Square Garden rooftop as it gave birth to Friday. There was some grunting, some irritation (from Jamie), and then I heard his feet hit the ground.

  Scout had my attention the entire time, though, and I hers. She was glaring, and I knew she was going to make a move.

  I just didn't know when.

  “Good to see you, favorite niece,” Friday said, suddenly at my shoulder. Jamie took up position at the other one. I saw her mouth, “Niece?” out of the corner of my eye.

  Scout stared at the three of us through spiteful eyes, half-lidded. The ice around her was holding solid, and I was closely attuned to it, waiting for even the hint of plasma or lightning. “No wisecracks for me?” she asked, dripping venom.

  “It's a serious situation here,” I said, listening to the sirens in the distance. Truth was, in spite of playing cool, I was waiting desperately for the cops to show up. I needed the suppressant they carried as part of their kit nowadays, and I needed it bad. Until I'd dosed Scout in the neck with it, she was still a threat. I even debated killing her right there, but I knew there was no way I'd be able to justify it. Not when she was playing possum, encased in the ice.

  But the idea that she wasn't dangerous? Pure poppycock. Even in that ice, she was more dangerous than she'd ever been.

  “You know what else is serious?” Friday asked, apropos of nothing. “Perineal tanning.”

  There was a moment of quiet in which you could have heard a mouse fart. “What?” Jamie Barton asked, aghast.

  “Never mind,” Friday said, and then he nodded at the fallen figure of Punk Rock Chick. “Did I do that?”

  “So she says.” I nodded at Scout. “Colonel Friday in the arena with a flying chair. What were you doing here?”

  “My aim is impeccable,” Friday said. “As is my taste in music. Morna Grey is totally my jam.” I caught a grudging nod from Jamie out of the corner of my eye. “Saw Lightning Lass draining the scoreboard of juice and figured she was planning to bring the show to a shocking finale. And not the three-fingered kind, either.”

  I defied the urge to blink. Barely. “So,” I said to Scout. “You're going from trying to stop pollution to wiping out the people who pollute? Was that the idea? Unleash a little lightning in a bottle on Madison Square Garden?”

  Scout's eyes were filled with undiluted spite. I saw a dark hate there, some of the worst I'd ever seen. “Yes.”

  “Mother of God,” Jamie breathed.

  “Really, more like 'Sweet merciful Zeus,'” Friday said. “Because that's what that chick was. A modern day Zeus.” He paused only for a second before pursuing that idea to the kind of hideous conclusion that I'd come to expect from swole, filterless Friday. “I wonder if she screwed around like Zeus?”

  Don't say it, don't say it– “Well, I walked in on her nailing one of her fellow terrorists in Houston during the refinery thing,” I said, because apparently the blood of Simon Nealon included disturbing interest in salacious detail coupled with a lack of filter, “So...maybe?”

  I thought I saw a flash deep in Scout's eyes, but maybe it was the light of a search helicopter coming in overhead. The whip of the chopper blades wa
s loud.

  “Come on,” I muttered under my breath, hoping the side of the helo would disgorge some cops, hopefully with an ampoule of suppressant. “Come on.”

  “You seem a little stressed, non-skinny succubus,” Scout said, staring me down. “Worried about something?”

  “Honestly? Yes,” I said. “I'm worried I'm going to have to kill you right here.”

  Scout's face looked implacable, nearly blank for a moment.

  Then she laughed.

  Then she turned into a creature of pure plasma, dissolving the ice I'd put around her in a quarter second.

  Floating in place, the ceiling of Madison Square Garden around her began to melt into slag. Burning hot, it dripped down...

  And was caught in a flat gravity well below as Jamie rose up, ready for battle again.

  “Stick one more tug on me and I'll lay down so much plasma on this circus of opulent waste that they'll be pulling scorched bodies out until Labor Day,” Scout said, her face subsumed in a wall of bright blue heat. “I'll run so much electricity through the superstructure that Manhattan will go dark for a decade.”

  “That much energy use is going to be really bad for the planet,” Friday said, completely deadpan. “Have you no decency when it comes to climate change?”

  “Scout,” I said quietly, “don't make me–”

  “Don't threaten me, you weak, pathetic, so-called 'hero,'” Scout's voice was dark and even, not strained at all. She was mad, but a cold fury, the kind that subsumed the last vestiges of her humanity. “It's a joke. What are you going to do? Throw more ice at me?”

  She wasn't far off. In terms of powers I'd exposed, ice was basically it. That and super strength, and it seemed unlikely that punching her in the plasma was going to do me a fat lot of good.

  “I'm leaving,” Scout announced. “Flying away. And you're going to let me – or a whole lot of people are going to die.”

  “A whole lot of people are going to die next time you appear,” I said, wanting to close my eyes, to look away from the horrifying revelation I'd just had. “You've lost it, Scout. Wherever you started on this crusade, you've gone way off mission.”

  Her face tightened up. “I've never seen it more clearly. What needs to happen. What I need to do.” She stared at me with those glowing plasma eyes. “Thank you for that.”

  There was no warning before she lashed out at Jamie with a flash of plasma. It came swiftly, and the wave of heat was astonishing, reminding me of how Veronika had thrown a similar blast over my head only last week.

  This one shot toward Jamie and she flung her hands up. It curved away, trailing edges of blue flame, striking the ceiling of Madison Square Garden and turning another patch of concrete to slag.

  With a scream, Jamie thrust her hand down, trying to catch the detritus of the strike. Molten refuse was dripping, and then froze, in midair, beneath her.

  Beneath us all.

  “Our bad guy flew off,” Friday said, pointing into the sky. I followed his finger, but couldn't see her.

  She was gone.

  And the next time she showed up...

  A whole lot of people were going to die.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN

  Scout

  You could have stayed, AJ said as they flew off into the darkening skies above New York. You could have killed her.

  “I don't think I could,” Scout said numbly. “Not now that I'm all alone.”

  You're not alone, babes, AJ said. We're with you.

  “I know. But one person...with everyone focusing on me?” Scout shook her head to no one in particular. The cold was starting to seep in. She was going fast now. Incredibly fast, trying to figure out the direction she was heading by looking at the lights of the cities below. Far ahead, on the horizon – was that Boston?

  Yes, Isaac said quietly. She got the feeling he didn't necessarily want to answer, but that he was somehow compelled to by the force of her anger, which was prodigious.

  I want to see those bitches fry, Francine raged. Especially that big pig with the muscles that killed me. With a damned chair. The freaking raw indignity.

  “We'll get them,” Scout said softly. “I have an idea.”

  What idea? AJ asked. Like, a target?

  “No,” Scout said. “Like...an idea. Of what to do next.”

  Boston was ahead. She'd hit that in an hour or less at this speed, she knew that. After that...

  She needed to head east. The compass on her phone would probably help. She could set the bearing and just jet over the Atlantic.

  Wait... Francine said. ...You think...?

  “Based on my conversation with her last night,” Scout said, filling in the gaps Francine was reading in her mind, “yeah. That succubus she tangled with in Scotland? There has to be something to her.”

  Such as? AJ asked.

  “She's the one who stole Nealon's powers,” Scout said. “Remember? It was all over the net. No one knew how it happened, but that must have been it, the succubus she faced. She found someone who could beat her. Someone just like her. Someone just like...me.”

  You want to find out how? Francine asked. Put your phone in your hand. Let me show you how to use my power, and we'll scan the internet for all the deets while we fly. Maybe there's an answer out there somewhere, under digital lock and key, about how she did it.

  “Yes,” Scout said, “I want to find it. I want to find out how it happened, and use it.” The cold wind ripped at her cheeks, but she didn't care. “I want to use it to destroy Sienna Nealon.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN

  Sienna

  “She just added another soul to her collective,” I said to Agent Li, who had listened to my whole report on what had just happened.

  Li was staring at me with his usual peak hissy-pissiness. I could tell he was seeking a way to make this unfortunate result my fault. When he spoke, it was brusque, but not malicious. “I guess we were lucky it wasn't a lot worse.”

  Then he just walked away, probably to make his report to Shaw, who I figured had gone home for the night. Home for him was Connecticut, which meant he wouldn't be here for the better part of an hour.

  “Soul Collective would be an awesome name for a band,” Friday said, sauntering up behind me. “You know, in case you ever decided to ditch this unforgiving law enforcement gig and pick up the family tradition by learning an instrument. With your speed and dexterity, you could shred with a guitar.”

  “I don't think I'm going to have time to take up guitar,” I said.

  “Or just use your voice. Mine is a powerful instrument.”

  “Mine breaks glass now,” I said.

  “I'm sure it's not that bad.”

  I tilted my face toward a nearby ambulance and ripped loose a Brance Venable vocal riff that shattered the back window cleanly, sending a spray of glass dust into the air and an EMT leaping for cover. “It's that bad.”

  “Well,” Friday said, eyes wide, “I guess you could be one of my backup dancers, if you promised never to sing.”

  I gave him a half hug. “I'm glad you were here to save the day. The concertgoers would have died if not for your old-timey taste in music.”

  “I like all kinds of music,” Friday said through his mask's mouth hole. “I'm pan-musical-sexual. Except I'm not into dudes.”

  I shook my head. “Shrink.”

  “Fiiiiine,” he said, like he was being supremely put upon, but shrink he did, down to the approximate form of the super singer, Swole H. He didn't take his mask off, though. “Oof,” he said once it was done, “I can think so much clearer now.”

  “I appreciate the assist from Friday,” I said, “but you're better off sticking with your brains over brawn. At least most of the time.”

  I had a feeling he was blushing behind the mask. “My brains can't break the skull of a Thor type standing in the rafters before she delivers a show stopper that electrifies the crowd. My brains can't launch my body up there to do mortal combat with her par
tner, who seemed damned like a succubus to me. Relation of yours?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “Not that Lethe knows of, either.”

  Friday bristled, eyes darting under the mask holes. “She's not here, is she?”

  “In New York? Yes.”

  “Is she still trying to kill me?”

  “I don't think so,” I said, then pointed past him at an SUV that was just pulling up under the police tape. “But you can ask her yourself if you're wondering.”

  He made a noise that sounded like an “Eep!” and lit out to hide behind me. In his smaller form, he could almost pull it off.

  Reed was the first to reach me, face drenched in concern. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, holding up both hands. “Friday here managed to clock another kill, but not before Scout absorbed Punk Rock Chick's lightning powers. And our villainess flew off under her own power, so I think she drained Isaac, too, though under what circumstances...” I shrugged.

  Reed took it all in. “She's got all their powers now.”

  “One girl,” Friday said, “Three cups.” When he caught me giving him an utterly disgusted look, he actually wilted. “Sorry. Filter failed me.”

  “At least you're contrite about it when you're small,” Reed said, “because when you're big you're unapologetic.”

  Lethe appeared, silently, at the edge of our little grouping. She looked at Friday as if he were something that had come from the bottom of her shoe. “I see you've organized a trash cleanup.” She nodded at Friday, still hiding behind me.

  “Hi,” Friday said. “Are you still trying to kill me?”

  She peered at him, making a face. “Not right now, no. Maybe later.”

  “You have a personal history problem that could be recorded in encyclopedic volumes,” the voice of Jamie Barton announced. She'd slipped up behind me, apparently done giving her statement, too.

  “Nobody wants to read about my life,” I said. “It veers too often from comedy to tragedy to erotic romance for anyone to give it any thematic consistency. Where are the others?” I directed this at Reed.