Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yeah, I just killed her last living associate within five seconds of encountering her.” Friday shrugged broadly. “Who none of the rest of you could take out. I'm completely useless in this fight, I see.”

  “Friday, she's now equipped with flight, plasma, and lightning,” I said. “Your only shot is to swing something heavy at her from a distance, and while I respect that approach, you have to know it's not optimal.”

  “You're going after her with just ice,” he said, eyes rimmed with concern through those mask holes.

  “I've got more than ice,” I said. “I've got the innate meanness God gave a junkyard dog.”

  “That's a fact,” Jamie Barton muttered. When she caught looks, she blushed. “I said that out loud, didn't I? Didn't mean to.”

  “So Gold team is me,” Reed said, “Sienna, Augustus, Jamal, Scott, Lethe, and Olivia.”

  “Let's do it,” Scott said.

  “Man, Mom's going to be so mad we're not taking her to Europe,” Augustus said.

  “I say we don't tell her squat,” Jamal said.

  “Any chance we get to do some tourism this time?” Olivia asked hopefully. “I mean last time, all we saw was that little Scottish village...”

  “I'm calling up Taneshia and Veronika, and bringing Kat and Eilish here,” Reed said. “You'll all band together and be ready to jump all over Scout if she shows her face in the US again.”

  “I'll strap her to the center of the earth and let gravity hold her down,” Jamie said. “If I can create a strong enough channel around her–”

  “I like all these plans,” I said, “but some of those people...you're going to owe them.”

  The look he gave me was way beyond sour. “Why don't you let me worry about that? You've got a call of your own to make, after all.”

  I nodded into his withering glare, trying to conceal a smile as I pulled out my cell phone and dialed a number that was rapidly becoming familiar. It was answered on the first ring, and I found myself saying, “This is Sienna Nealon...I need to speak with the president.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN

  “Why are we meeting here?” Lethe asked. We'd adjourned to pack after I'd called the president, and met back at the conference room in the FBI's Midtown command center.

  “Presumably because we'll catch transport to the airport from here,” I said, playing around with my phone. It had come with a pre-installed suite of games as well as access to the app store, but I really liked the solitaire app. Which had apparently been designed by Cassidy herself.

  “Why not the lobby of our hotel?” Scott asked. He, Jamal, and Augustus had made their way back. Reed and Olivia were still MIA. Angel, Jamie and Friday had departed, with only a brief goodbye between me and my uncle.

  “Who knows?” I asked, sending a quick text to Harry. Could really use your help right now. Please call. I'm about to go across the pond. I thought about it and added. Maybe to Scotland, even. Call me.

  It didn't even show as delivered. Wherever Harry was, his phone was out of service.

  “Reed would know,” Jamal said.

  “Reed would know what?” my brother asked, rolling in with his bag on his shoulder, Olivia a couple paces behind him.

  “Which way the wind is blowing,” Augustus quipped.

  “Why we're meeting here instead of somewhere more convenient,” Lethe said, “like our hotel lobby.”

  “Because we need to be somewhere convenient for pickup,” Reed said, adjusting his bag as he checked his cell phone.

  That provoked a moment of silence. “Why is our hotel lobby not convenient for pickup?” I asked, the first to get it out.

  Reed's lips stretched in a thin smile. “Because it's not.”

  “Not wh–” I started my follow-up then stopped when a foot-long scale model of a Concorde Jet appeared on the conference table, literally out of nowhere. “Oh.”

  Greg Vansen appeared a second later, wearing a very dapper flight uniform. His expression was pure business. “All board,” he said simply.

  “When you're going across the Atlantic,” Reed said, a little haughtily, “you should go first class, and by the fastest method available.”

  “Mmhm,” I said, watching as he dodged my vaguely accusatory stare, meeting it with nothing but a reddening of the cheeks. “Now who's keeping secrets?”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY

  The Concorde stayed small until we were clear of the FBI building, then grew larger and larger until it was two or three times its usual size. Greg sat up front with Reed, and I could feel the push of the throttle as the now oversized plane blew past supersonic speed and the theoretical limits on a regular sized Concorde's airframe.

  “So how does that work?” Augustus asked. He'd staked out the seat next to me but immediately started reading from his tablet. Which didn't bother antisocial me; I'd figured he just wanted silence for the trip, and assumed I was his best seatmate for it. “The 'growing the plane' thing Greg does?”

  “The limits of the Concorde are based on it being its normal size, right?” I blinked, watching the ocean glitter by below, the moon shining down on it. There were no clouds, and the chop on the North Atlantic was visible even at this height. “When he grows it like this, it can travel at twice the normal speed of a Concorde, because it's twice the size. That's all I know.”

  “Feels like there's a physics problem in there somewhere I don't understand,” Augustus said, “but okay.”

  “Whatcha reading?” I asked, nodding at his tablet.

  He frowned. Which he had been doing the whole time he was reading. “Downloaded some climate change literature. Book talking about the problems, the potential solutions. Three books, actually – a dire one, a middle-of-the-road one, and an overly optimistic one. I read the optimistic one first, over the last few days, because it dovetailed pretty well with what I already felt.”

  “Seeking confirmation bias? That's a popular activity.”

  Augustus grunted. “Which is why I picked up this one. It agrees with me not at all.” He waved the tablet at me. “You know what these environmentalists want you to give up? Every-damned-thing. Like beef. Meat, in general, but beef in particular.”

  I thought about it. “Because cows...fart?”

  “They have a high carbon footprint,” Augustus said. “Require more land to be cleared than, say, chickens. But they're not cool with meat in general.”

  I cringed. “I had heard this...but promptly ignored it, because I am not a vegetarian.”

  “Yeah, I already gave up my BMW on the way back down to poverty,” Augustus said, “hell if I'm giving up meat. Hell to the no. I swear, these people just want an excuse to suck all the joy out of life.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I looked at his tablet. “What else?”

  “You name it, they want you to stop it,” Augustus said. “Powering your phone, watching Netflix, driving a car, living outside a city–”

  “Wait. They want me to live cooped up with massive numbers of people? Ew, no.”

  “Haven't you been doing that for the last year?”

  “Well, yeah. And people died.”

  “True, true,” Augustus said. “Anyway, that ain't all – the list includes having kids–”

  “Wait – they want humanity to go extinct?”

  “I don't know about extinct, but they're definitely into limiting.”

  I shook my head. “This is starting to sound like Thanos stuff.”

  “They want carbon taxes to offset the emissions needed to grow food, manufacture and transport goods to market,” he said. “To stop airline flying – probably for everyone but them, in most cases. They want you to stop using plastic. Like, all plastic. Water bottles. Straws.”

  “Hardest hit: Reed, his Legos, and his action figure collection.”

  “You're not wrong,” Augustus said, glancing at the tablet. “They're mostly on single-use plastics right now, but I'm sure they'll be coming for kids’ toys soon enough. Which kinda brings us back to
the 'less kids' thing.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I said, “this does explain why, when I was in Tennessee a few months ago, some restaurant had the audacity to give me a plastic straw. I thought the argument against plastic straws was all based on ocean pollution. And Tennessee is hundreds of miles from even the Gulf of Mexico, so why, y'know? It all starts to come together now.”

  “Yeah, it's a whole thing,” Augustus said, staring intently at the screen of his tablet. “Basically anything you enjoy, they'd like you to stop doing that. For the good of the planet, definitely.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You sound skeptical.”

  “No, after reading this, I think the warming is probably happening,” Augustus said, making a face. “My issue isn't that. It's the solutions. They all come at the point of a government gun, man. And they're like, ironclad, bordering on making 'em crimes. 'You had four kids? Criminal! You used a single-use bottle at the gym! Go to the gulag!'” He shook his head. “It's all – cancel plastic bottles, plastic straws, stop eating meat, entirely, and scrunch into the cities, to hell with your farms.”

  “Who's going to grow the food when we're all living tightly packed in cities? Which I assume is so we can get rid of all our cars?”

  He shrugged. “Robots? Kidding. Presumably it'd involve reducing the number of people living out in the sticks to just the essential farmers. Or people who can afford the carbon offset credits.”

  “Gotta admire a plan that returns country estates to the exclusive province of the rich.”

  “I doubt that's the intention,” Augustus said. “But it is the result. Isn't that always how it works, though? Leonardo DiCaprio preaches against climate change, but then supposedly flies a pizza from New York to LA on a private jet. A pizza.”

  “Hey, man, fresh pizza has a short shelf life beyond which it is no longer viable. Kind of like his girlfriends.”

  “But worse...” He squinted at the tablet, then turned it off.

  “Come on, Augustus,” I said, nudging his shoulder. “Tell me what you really think. You've been so reserved thus far.”

  “Reading the actual science...or the summation of it, by people who know what they're talking about,” he said, concentrating deeply, “man...it ain't as bad as they say. Like, there are possibilities to mitigate this damage in the future. Carbon capture technology. Dikes against vulnerable areas. Nuclear to help reduce emissions and reliance on coal and oil. Even positive growth in wind and solar, though those are limited. Battery life – those are experiencing huge improvements. And the entire world getting wealthier? A massive net positive if you care about getting people to a point beyond subsistence, where they can actually give a shit about environmental issues rather than just figuring out what they're gonna burn to stay warm that night and eat that day.”

  “...But?”

  “These politicians, these talking heads,” Augustus said, looking genuinely pained. “There is something other than the science at work here. It's not about the actual threat. The causes, the possibilities to stop it. There's something way deeper there. A certainty...”

  “You didn't know much about this a few days ago, did you?” I asked softly. I was pretty sure I saw what he was getting at.

  “No, which is why I bought the books,” he said, brandishing his tablet. “I want to know. I want to read the reports. See the...well, truth, as we understand it. See the argument. And the argument – well, it says a lot of the same things: in the short term...we're screwed if we tried to get to zero. Unless you want a whole lot of people to die.”

  “I'm generally not in favor of that, in spite of my reputation to the contrary.”

  “But what's amazing to me,” Augustus said, “is not the scientists, who run the gamut from gloomy to positive about what we can do. It's those politicians. Those public speakers. Those Instaphoto influencers, who speak at the top of their lungs about how we're all going to die in ten years. Where the hell are they getting all this bullshit? And why are they so in favor of shutting down things that actually would work? How can you be in favor of decreasing emissions but not in favor of nuclear? How can you say you want to get to zero carbon...but not want to burn any natural gas, which is the reason we're actually decreasing our emissions in the US over the last few years?” He shook his head.

  “There's a...phenomenon I've noted,” I said. “As I get older. Maybe I read it in history. Maybe I picked up from being...well, an arrogant ass in my youth.”

  “...Aren't you still in your youth?”

  “Whatever. When I was younger and dealing with these guys like Sovereign and Harmon,” I said, “and noticing they shared a key characteristic when it came to motive. I nicknamed it 'Deus ex homines,' though my Latin sucks and I'm not sure it translates exactly – it means 'God from man.'”

  Augustus narrowed his eyes at me. “Go on.”

  “Maybe it goes by another name,” I said, “but it's just the idea that you, as a human, can transcend the gaping flaws inherent in our species, the largest of which is, I'm sorry – arrogance. It's that gut-deep certainty that you know what's right, and everyone else is wrong.”

  “Okay, I've seen that,” Augustus said.

  “We've all seen it,” I said. “We've all done it, about one thing or another, talking out our ass when we had no idea if we were really right or not. It's emotional rightness, nothing to do with actual rightness. It's the arrogance that comes from never looking in the mirror and analyzing your screwups and owning up to them. I'm a fallible human being and I've screwed up more times than I can count–”

  “Reed would like an itemized list with your signature.”

  “Reed would like me to say I was wrong even once,” I said with a smile. “But I have been, and I am, which has led me to this new, stunning phase of my evolution.”

  “...Which is?”

  “I don't know anything,” I said.

  “I thought you just said–”

  “It's figurative,” I said. “As in, 'I am unsure of when I am right and when I am wrong on many things, and so I am not going to speak in ridiculous certainties any more than I have to.' And I'll probably fail at that resolution in five seconds, but...whatever. I'm going to try and be more humble going forward, and open to the idea that in a situation when I feel like I know something...I may well be wrong. Because I have been. So many times before.”

  “That sounds like some Confucian wisdom right there. Like that whole nostrum about a fool never doubting himself or somesuch, only intelligent people realizing they know nothing.”

  “Might have been Siddhartha,” I said. “Regardless, the point stands. We have the power of the old gods at our fingertips, Augustus.” I glanced out the window. “It's easy to get arrogant when you have the power to force your will on the world. Easy to demand sacrifices from others when you don't have to give up anything yourself. Easy for me to say, 'Don't fly, peasants,' when I can jet 'round the globe myself.”

  “I don't think I'm gonna fly on my own again anytime soon,” Augustus said, looking suddenly pensive. “Voluntarily, if I can avoid it. I mean, I'll go for work, and maybe home a couple times a year, but...” He shook his head. “I think I might make a change or two after reading this. For myself, you know. My own...edification. Do my part.”

  “That's the way to do it,” I said, settling in next to him as he picked up his tablet and started to read again, leaving me with a silence I didn't feel like breaking, either.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE

  Scout

  London, United Kingdom

  She slipped up to the window and knocked on the glass. She hadn't expected anyone to still be here, this late into the night.

  But here he was. And here she was. And wasn't that just lucky?

  The London air held a chill that barely touched Scout's numb flesh. A flight over the ocean through the cold night had done that to her, left her kissed by ice. Or maybe it was the residual numbness from being trapped in Nealon's block of frozen hell. Either
way, Scout was left naked (from burning off her clothes in the escape) but not shivering. And tapping on a window in London, waiting for the man within to look at her.

  He looked around the confines of his office in surprise. Scoured the bookshelves, as though the sound had come from there. Finally, he turned in his swivel chair, and his eyes came to rest on Scout. He stared at her dully, seemingly unsure of what he was seeing.

  Understandable. She was a woman, and naked, hanging outside his fourth-floor office window long after midnight.

  Then she shattered her way through the window, showering him with glass in the process.

  “I'd be sorry to do this to you,” she said. She was bleeding heavily, slick fingers tracing crimson lines across his face. He was screaming, screaming loudly. Down the hall, someone was coming–

  Scout kicked his desk over and gave it a shove with her bare, slick foot. It slid into the door and slammed it.

  “Shhhh,” she said. He didn't stop screaming. She didn't really expect him to, but it did put her on edge.

  He's just another consumer, AJ said.

  He's nothing, Francine said. Get what we need from him.

  There was hammering at the door now, loud, thunderous.

  “Shhhhhh,” Scout said, sticky, bloodstained fingers pressed to his cheeks.

  He was sitting back now, writhing in pain, in pleasure. She felt the same, couldn't stop herself.

  Fortunately...this time she didn't have to.

  Ask the question, AJ said.

  Come on, Francine said.

  “Oh, right,” Scout said, and did.

  What do you know about the Scotland succubus?

  The answer didn't come; this man – one Martin Rowland of Scotland Yard – was too junior. He was making his name on knife crimes.

  But...

  He knew who would know.

  And that was all Scout was really looking for.

  Her eyes snapped open. The door was starting to open; the desk was starting to slide.