Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39)

by Robert J. Crane

  I slammed into her with my jaws and flung her down, toward the earth below. She flipped end over end, me following after. She got control, started to tilt up to me–

  I booped her with my nose at a couple hundred miles an hour, and she shot down again, flipping wildly, disoriented, like a ping-pong ball slapped by the tip of a pool cue.

  We weren't that high up, but it didn't matter. I struck her again, and again, now traveling at a forty-five-degree angle to the earth, and with each ram of my nose against her flesh, I drove her sideways and down, the clouds covering us from sight as I followed her ass closely enough to never lose sight of her.

  I smashed into her a half dozen times, rattling her bones, her brain, and smacking her clear out of Paris and beyond the suburbs into the countryside before we finally came streaking out of a low-hanging cloud bank.

  The moment the cloud cover broke, I dropped the flames, dropped the dragon form, and caught up to Scout one last time in the air.

  Her eyes were lolling, her head was whipping loosely on her neck, and she was wobbling. All her plasma had bled off; there was no sign of lightning in her fingers or eyes, and she wasn't even flying anymore.

  In boxing terms, she was out on her feet.

  That didn't stop me from catching up to her, looking her in those eyes, and saying, “This is why you should never get too high on your own awesomeness.”

  Then I punched her in the face so hard it closed her eyes.

  She slammed into the earth about thirty feet from a single-story white farmhouse, and boy did it make a noise. I looked around; I was about a hundred feet off the ground, naked, and thankfully not visible to anyone, just hanging there in the nude. As one does, in France. Usually on the beach, but I was all about pushing those boundaries, obviously.

  All the same, I darted swiftly to the ground, coming down next to Scout. I rolled her head back–

  She was out. Not dead. Just unconscious. Bruises were already forming on her face and her naked body. When she woke up, she'd know she'd been in a fight.

  Which was cause for concern. I needed suppressant, because who knew when she'd wake up and–

  Something thudded on the ground next to me. Drawn to the motion, I looked–

  It was a small leather case marked SUPPRESSANT in large letters.

  I spun–

  On the porch of the house, holding a wine glass filled with a full-bodied red I could smell from here...

  Was Harry Effing Graves.

  “Well,” he said, nodding at the parcel he'd just tossed at my feet, “you gonna dose her? Or do I have to?”

  Torn between wanting to tear his head off and wanting to finish the fight, I chose the latter. For now.

  Burying the needle in Scout's neck, I injected the suppressant quickly and without a lot of concern about her feelings. She was already so busted up that without her meta healing powers, she'd be feeling this for a long damned time. Not my problem, of course, but still...

  Once the suppressant was in and I was sure it had had time to work, I rose and spun on my wayward boyfriend. I opened my mouth to give him an earful–

  Another package landed with a plop at my feet.

  “Clothes,” he said, heading me off at the pass. “Also, you probably want to drain her memories of you using your full powers. You know, while she's helpless.”

  I was caught between wanting to give Harry a piece of my mind – fairly large piece, filled with fire and anger and maybe just a little sexual frustration – but also seeing the logic behind his suggestion. Grumbling, I dropped to a knee and shoved my bare hand against Scout's face.

  “I'd steer clear of those souls of hers,” Harry said, then sipped his wine. I could hear it, and it made me a little angrier.

  Once I'd safely grabbed Scout's memories, I picked up the clothing he'd tossed out for me and struggled into the bra first, facing away from him. “Have you been here all along? Since St. Thomas?” I asked, enough time having elapsed from when I'd first seen him – and wanted to kill him – to now to mostly come off calm.

  “No,” he said. “I was in London until yesterday. Setting up the fake trail with the government to that lab where she found the one mysterious vial of the thing she wanted.”

  I paused, hands twisted up fastening my bra, and looked over my shoulder at him. Harry had seen me naked any number of times; my anger was the only thing keeping me from looking at him full-on while I dressed. And that also kept me wearing approximately underwear-shaped flames below the waist. “You set that up?”

  “Yup,” he said, taking another sip of his wine, the cocky bastard. “Couldn't have her develop actual Hades powers. That'd be bad.” He smiled, and it was sort of insufferable and sort of endearing. “For your pals, you know. And the battle.”

  I jabbed a finger at him as I slipped the provided blouse over the bra. “You could have stopped this thing before it even happened. You could have taken out Scout early on, before North Dakota, even.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but then you wouldn't have gotten to go on this incredible, world-spanning, team-building adventure. You and Reed would still be at odds, you'd be chafing each other back in Minnesota, having not gotten to the real revelation about where each of you stands...so sure, I could have nipped this in the bud before it got started. I could do that with a lot of things.” He waved a hand at Scout. “But she'd be dead, because I don't have the ability to turn prisoners over to the Cube and have them receive a fair trial. You doing all this adventure saved her life – and kind of yours, too, because now you've got your cool family thing going again. Oh, and they're on their way right now, just FYI, so you might want to hurry and get those pants on. Not that I mind seeing you in flaming boy shorts.” He smacked his lips together. “It's kinda been a while, after all.”

  “You...ass,” I said, but snatched up the underwear and pants he'd provided, slipping into them hurriedly. “Did you just AirBnB this place when you envisioned I'd land here or what?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you've just been hanging out the whole time?”

  “I don't know how much effort you think goes into killing a guy in the US Virgin Islands and then hopping directly to London to set things up there, but let me assure you – this is the first chance I've had to relax since before things went off in Washington.” He swirled the wine glass, then downed the rest before tossing it over his shoulder. It landed in the most improbable way on a table, rolling slightly and then coming to rest perfectly upright, as though someone had just set it there. “And that's all I'll get, at least for now.” He grabbed a jacket off the porch rail and put it on as he watched me hop, both legs at the same time, into my pants. Socks and boots waited on the steps, I noticed. “Still mad?”

  “You tell me,” I said.

  He pulled a water bottle out of his coat pocket and plopped it down next to the boots. “What about now?”

  I hadn't realized how thirsty I actually was. I eyed the water, my steaming vat of rage bleeding off quickly. “Maybe a little less so. But–”

  “Hey, Sienna,” he said softly. “At what point are you going to trust me?”

  That stopped me right in my tracks. “I trust you,” I said uncertainly. All verbal evidence to the contrary.

  “Okay,” he said, after a brief pause. I sensed there might be more to come, but for now, he seemed ready to let it go. “You know...I thought about doing a slow clap to get your attention instead of tossing the suppressant at your feet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he said, smirking, “but that would have actually made you about thirty percent madder.”

  “Seems low,” I said, lacing my boots swiftly as Harry joined me, and together, we walked out to Scout's unconscious body to wait for our ride. He did not take my hand. Which was wise.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO

  “We are clear of French airspace,” Greg's voice announced. It reverberated through the seat of the living room in which I sat with the others, all circled t
ogether around the fairy light-webbed Scout. She was unconscious and naked but covered as appropriately as I could make her with my web powers. Her face, among other locations, was covered in bruises. “Should make it back to Minnesota in a few hours.”

  I put my head back against the couch, looking down lazily at Scout's unmoving body. Well, not unmoving. Her chest rose and fell regularly with every breath she took, and that wasn't nothing.

  “Got anything to say?” Reed asked. He sat to my left, Harry to my right. They weren't squeezing in on my personal space. Much. I could maybe have handled a little more from each of them, these guys that I loved, each in their own way. These guys that I was also mildly irritated with, also each in their own way.

  “I'd like to thank the Academy,” I said, “by which I mean you guys and gals. Couldn't have done it without you.” I looked seriously at Jamal, Scott, Olivia, and Augustus each in turn. “Every single one of you.”

  “If you get down to thanking your aesthetician, I'm out,” Augustus said, sitting opposite me in his own recliner. Greg did know a thing or two about traveling in style.

  “Pfffft,” I said, waving a hand over myself, “you cannot possibly take even one look at all this and think there was an aesthetician involved anywhere.” I glanced at Jamal, who was very seriously staring at his keyboard. “Any sign of footage on the internet of me at my worst?”

  Jamal looked up. “Not even a whisper.”

  I peered at him. “Whatcha watching?” It had me curious, given there was probably no longer wifi or cell service on this plane given we'd just left the French coastline behind.

  He slid his computer around a little guiltily. I recognized a few frames of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood by the shot of Leo and Brad and their period dress. “I checked the 'net, and once I was sure we were good...” He shrugged. “It's a long flight, y'know.”

  “How do you hear it?” Augustus asked.

  Jamal pulled his finger away from the port of his computer, and a long strand of lightning followed his finger.

  “Ohhh,” Augustus said. “That's smart.”

  “So...we're taking this one straight back to the Cube?” Olivia was keeping a wary eye on Scout, as though she might erupt from the table at any moment. Which was possible, technically, though given that she was suppressed, the probability was vanishingly low. Still, I respected the vigilance.

  “Well, I'm not keen to stop off for ice cream along the way, so...yeah,” Reed said. “Unless anyone else can think of a compelling reason for us to do anything other than haul ass for the prison and get her locked down?”

  “I talked with the president right before Greg got us on the plane,” I said. “The Cube is waiting, and she's going to get the full treatment. They'll be waiting for her at the intake with a fresh dose of suppressant.”

  “Does it ever make you...uncomfortable sending people there?” Scott asked. “You know...after you went there?”

  I shrugged. “They've changed it some since then. People are getting fair trials now, with due process and lawyers and everything. She'll get all that – but also suppressant, and maybe a trip to solitary if she decides to be a jerkass. So to answer your question – no, it doesn't bother me. Frankly, I'm just glad we escaped getting sent to the French version of it.”

  “How long do you suppose she'll get for all this?” Augustus asked.

  “A long time,” Reed said. “Think about all she was complicit in. Oil spills in North Dakota, the destruction of the ship and refinery in Texas, the plant in Arkansas. With Jamal's testimony, they might even be able to link her crew to the near meltdown in Jersey, and we can definitely tie her to the attempted murder of everyone in Madison Square Garden.”

  “She's not going to see the light of day for a really long time,” I agreed. “Unfortunately for one of us, her lifespan is probably like mine, which means five thousand years of misery–”

  “No,” Lethe said, shaking her head slowly.

  I cocked my head at her. She'd been so quiet since I got back in the plane. “What do you mean?”

  “You said it yourself,” Lethe said slowly. “She'll be on suppressant the moment she gets to the Cube. Five thousand years is the lifespan of a succubus, but as long as that stuff runs through her veins...” She nodded at the light-webbed, insensate figure on the table, hair partially covering her face.

  “She's human,” I whispered.

  “And she'll die in the same span as one,” Lethe said.

  I made a face, unsure of how to feel about that. I glanced at Harry, but he said nothing. Still probably wisely.

  “I guess she kind of earned that,” Olivia said, though her nose was wrinkled in concentration, as though she were really thinking her way through all the consequences of this. “She did make a hell of a mess, after all.”

  “And people died,” Reed said, looking sideways, past me and at Harry. I knew what he was thinking, because I was – at least low-key – thinking it myself.

  “People die every day,” Harry said, without really looking up. “Whether you try and save them or not, it inevitably happens. The question you have to ask yourself is...how do I minimize it? And that's a hell of a rub, let me tell you.” He shook his head, still not looking at either of us. “Enough to drive a man to drink and gamble and...well, you know.”

  “No,” Reed said stiffly, “we don't know. Maybe you can tell us about it sometime.”

  “Maybe,” Harry said. His voice sounded very far away.

  “I guess I'm just glad it all worked out in the end,” Olivia said, slipping in like the conciliator. “Minimal-ish damage, you know? I mean, for all the chaos they unleashed, only about five or six people died, right? That's...that seems low.”

  “Could have been lower,” Reed said under his breath. Harry didn't go for the bait.

  I just didn't answer. Because I didn't have one.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-THREE

  Scout

  When she woke, Scout found herself in a darkened room, with a glow illuminating concrete walls. Tight sensations gripped her wrists like fingers of iron, and something wrapped her torso and body like a mean-spirited hug, threatening to squeeze the life out of her.

  “I...I can't breathe...” she said, blinking bleary eyes in the near-dark.

  “Sorry,” came a voice from behind her. Things loosened by a bit, then a bit more. Her breathing returned to steady, and a face loomed in front of hers.

  Dark hair. Pale skin. Flashing, intelligent blue eyes, cold, but interested.

  “You,” Scout said to Sienna Nealon.

  The perverse, amused joy that so often covered Nealon's face was strangely absent. “Still me,” Nealon said, running a hand over the bindings on her chest. They were heavy cloth, with metal jutting through them. They bound Scout hand and foot, like Hannibal Lecter without the mask. Nealon made a show of checking the ones at her legs, loosening them slightly, too. “But not for long.” She stood, not quite looking Scout in the eye, because she was short and Scout was on some sort of gurney that elevated her a foot or so above her normal height.

  “I'm in the Cube, then?” Scout asked, looking around. The room was dense concrete, lit by a few recessed lights in the ceiling. A steel door with a window slit in it waited over Nealon's shoulder, and someone was looking in. “Or the European version?”

  “It's the Cube,” Nealon said, checking the strap across her chest one last time, tweaking it slightly, cloth running against a metal buckle. “I don't know what they do with metas in Europe, and I wasn't going to throw you into that particular meat grinder.”

  Scout looked down. “You suppressed me.”

  “Yep.”

  “I can't hear them in my head,” Scout said, almost choking on it. Isaac, she wouldn't miss, but she'd gotten accustomed to Francine and AJ.

  “I wish I could say you'd get used to it,” Nealon said, standing before her, looking almost...sad? “But you won't. Still, this is the way it is from now on. They'll let yo
u call your lawyer soon. I'll be back to testify at your trial.”

  “I don't care,” Scout said, wanting to spit at her. “Your laws are bullshit. Protecting the powerful but not the planet. And you – you – you're–”

  But Scout faltered, unable to come up with the right word. Instead she glared at Nealon.

  “You want to know what I am?” Sienna Nealon asked. Then her voice dove into a realm where even dogs couldn't hear it. But Scout could.

  “I...am lower than snake shit.”

  Scout blinked. Of all the things she might have expected Nealon to say...that wasn't it.

  “I am,” Nealon said, her face firmly in front of Scout's, unflinching. “I'm a killer. I'm broken. I'm a piece of shit.” She leaned in a little closer. “And I am acutely aware of it, every day. I know just how bad I can be, how rancid I can feel inside. I'm neither better than you nor worse. But I am...aware of it.”

  “Are you?” Scout whispered.

  “I know what I am,” Nealon said. “And the only thing that keeps me going sometimes is the thought that I have to stop people like you from wiping humanity out. You only see the faults; the damage, the bad things we do. You consume it like rotten food, and it taints your perceptions; it's all you can see.

  “But I'm all those things I told you – and more. Maybe even sometimes less. There's good in me to go with the bad.”

  “What you've done here,” Scout said, “is not save the world.”

  “To quote Mencken, 'The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.'” Nealon stared at her. “Ask yourself this – if you're trying to save the world...why are you taking it so damned personally that someone's fighting back against you?” Nealon shrugged. “Destroying the world doesn't save it. Living in it, trying to convince people to change...that'd be a way to save it. Getting them to listen to you, to implement a workable solution, to make them want to? That'd have been a better use of your time than trying to tear apart at the foundations a world that most people just want to live in. I guess that'd be a little harder than blowing shit up, though.”