Music: Out of the Box 26 (The Girl in the Box Book 36)

by Robert J. Crane

  “While you sift through witness statements.” I just stared at him.

  Chandler nodded. “That’s right.” His smile evaporated. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  I took a deep breath, unable to shake the frown on my face. “This is...very unlike what I’m used to. Usually people pick me up, the FBI and the locals drive me around, supervise me like a hawk the entire time, and I really seldom get to drive. And never a car as nice as this.”

  Chandler let out a rumbling chuckle. “Sounds like your job really sucks if your bosses don’t even trust you enough to drive a car. I mean, you’ve got superhuman reflexes.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the fob, and a sudden itching desire to see how it drove washed over me. “Yeah. Yeah, they do oversupervise me.” I said it, but not quite with a straight face. I had a near-legendary propensity for getting into trouble, after all, so me being supervised was not an idea entirely without merit.

  Still, I hadn’t realized how suffocating it had been. And taking New York transit meant that the last time I remembered driving myself anywhere had been in New Orleans, when Holloway had been too drunk to drive us back from a restaurant.

  “Okay, I’m going to go get this mythical lay of the land,” I said, shoving the fob into my hoodie pocket. My leather jacket was in my luggage, unfortunately. “Check into the hotel. See what I see.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Chandler said. “Get after it.”

  I got in the car and started her up as my phone buzzed. Message from Chandler with an address. I punched it into the car’s nav, and a gentle, slightly robotic female voice started giving me guidance.

  I set the seats to the right distances, admiring the smooth feel of the leather. I applied a foot to the pedal—slowly—and felt the subtle purr of the engine as I took the car through a gentle slalom around the parking lot. She handled well, and I remembered how to drive pretty quickly, though I’d never felt super comfortable with it.

  The BMW, though, made it feel easier than it maybe was. Pretty soon I found myself on the freeway and hit the windows. They rolled down, and my hair whipped around me in the breeze, strays finding their way loose from my ponytail.

  This was the life, I had to concede as I headed south toward downtown Nashville. The tall buildings were rising in the distance, and I could see the Eye of Sauron building over there, across a river. The BMW breezed along like a leaf carried on the wind. I slid in and out of the lanes of a mostly-empty freeway, passing the slower cars like they were standing still.

  I’d forgotten the freedom that driving brought, that singular feeling of possibility that came from being on the open road with the wind whipping all around you. I settled back in the comfortable seat and pressed the pedal down a little harder as I headed toward Nashville, feeling strangely happier than I’d been in a long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Reed

  I shuffled out of the warehouse with only a few words exchanged with Ben Kelly. The admin assistant was muted, surprised, like the wind had been taken out of his sails from my little talk with his boss. He muttered a few platitudes about hoping I’d see my way through this, and I departed without any promise of future action or appointment to do anything else for them. Which was certainly more comfortable for me than committing to any specific action.

  The crowd outside was just about where I’d left them, standing off from the cops at a reasonable distance. I guess I’d defused the tension with my wind-blowing tactic, because the separation between them remained. There was definitely some grumbling on the labor side, and the cops remained plenty tentative. They were doing their jobs, protecting property, but I couldn’t see this going any kind of well if the crowd made the decision to storm the warehouse and start burning shit down. Not that I thought it had come to that point, yet.

  “Hey,” someone called as I stepped through the fence. I caught sight of a woman at the fore of the crowd, dressed like the rest in Lotsostuff company overalls. She was a little past her prime, wrinkles around her eyes combined with the leathery look of her skin telling me she’d some mileage. She looked serious, though, waving me over. “C’mere!”

  I glanced around at the cops, who said nothing and kept their eyes straight ahead, save for one slightly overweight cop who gave me a wide-eyed, “Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” kind of look.

  Which I ignored. I’m not really the listen-and-obey type. I headed straight for Lady Overalls, taking note of the guys flanking her on either side like personal security. One was a big black dude, had to be 6’ 5” or so, bald, arms folded forbiddingly across his Lotsostuff jumpsuit. The other guy was like a study in contrasts. Probably 5’9”, white, nervous, twitchy, watching everything going on around him like someone was going to come thundering out of the crowd and smash him across the face with a fish or something.

  I walked right up to the older lady, my own hands planted firmly on my hips to indicate I wasn’t opposed to listening, and I stared right at her before smiling. “Yes, ma’am?” I even remembered my manners.

  She didn’t scowl at me calling her ma’am, which I took to be a good sign. “You just flew in here like you came off a cloud.” She rolled her tongue around in her mouth as she looked me over. “What’s your plan here, Angel Boy?”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m no angel.”

  “Well, you got the face of one,” she said, and a wicked grin split her lips. “And the rest of you ain’t doing a bad job representing, either. So...what do you want here, Angel Boy? You playing with Mr. Mills up there? You hired security?”

  That got me bristling. “No. I work for myself.”

  She raised her eyebrows, which were two heavily painted lines. “Oh, lookie here. We got ourselves a concerned citizen.” She made to offer a round of applause, which the crowd immediately joined in on. I guess I’d found their fearless leader. “What concerns you enough to fly on down to our little corner of the country? Plight of the working man? And woman?” She added the second as almost an afterthought.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to stay noncommittal. The crowd was back to shouting stuff at the cops, even though I caught enough eyes that I knew they were watching her for cues. “I’m always concerned about the plight of the working-class.”

  “Maybe you are an angel, then,” she said, but the cynicism in her eyes said she didn’t buy that, not for a minute. She slid on up to me, though, and reached up to pat me on the shoulder. Her flanking bodyguards hung back, watching me, especially the big black dude. “But if I were you, I’d watch which side of this thing you sit down on, if you know what I mean.” Her hand slid down to my pocket, slipping something into it as she patted me again. A little familiar. “You might end up the wrong kind of angel.” And with a wink, she slid back to her bodyguards.

  I had a feeling by the way she’d moved, the way she acted, she’d commanded the attention of men aplenty in her day. I shook off the interaction, and turned my back on the crowd to walk away. I waited until I was far enough from the crowd before I reached into my pocket to see what she’d put there.

  It was a piece of paper with a note written on it. Pretty simple:

  Puckett’s. Murfreesboro. 7 o’clock.

  Guess I had a dinner date.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sienna

  I really don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not on the job.

  Especially when I’m in a strange town, separated from my Netflix account, without even any luggage to call my own. I’d checked in with the airline (my luggage had somehow caught a non-stop flight to Seattle; Such a mystery how that happened, Ms. Nealon, we are so sorry and will definitely fix it ASAP!), checked into my hotel, and now I was just sitting with my charging cable plugged into my phone, on my hotel bed, scrolling to the ends of the internet.

  Sure, I could have downloaded Netflix onto my phone and watched something, but bleh. My screen was tiny, because I had to carry the damned thing in my pocket since I wasn’t a purse girl.


  So...scrolling the internet. Yeah.

  I’d had enough of my criminology audiobook. I pondered loading up my reading app and doing a little of the eyeball-style reading. Aaron Mendelsohn had recommended a book to me on the history of assassination as a policy tool in the Middle East. It was pretty good, what I’d read of it, but not exactly light.

  My hotel had a great view of the city. I stared out, flat on my back, looking across downtown Nashville.

  There was Broadway, already teeming with activity, though twilight was still a ways off. I’d read about it; you could literally hear live music any hour of the day there. Which I thought was kinda awesome.

  But it was all in the bars, which for me, the recovering alcoholic, was less awesome. Testing my will to stay sober against my will to have a whiskey? Not a thing I tried to do. Not because I feared losing control again—much. But it was always a danger in the back of my mind, which was why I avoided the drink. And the bars.

  This was not a year where I could afford to lose control or crack under the pressure. The stakes were too high, the margin for error too low. Getting drunk would not help me thread this particular needle.

  I pushed off the bed and made my way to the window. Drummed my fingers against the glass as I looked out. One of the buildings downtown looked old and had a dome atop it, like one of those seventies classics where they put a restaurant up there that slowly turns to take in the whole city. A glance to my left revealed a massive construction project ongoing, blocks and blocks of it. North of that was what looked like an old federal building or railroad station, complete with a clock tower. That must have been old downtown.

  The Eye of Sauron looked across the intervening buildings at me. Who had designed that? It must have predated the Lord of the Rings movies at least by a little, because there was no way some company would have approved that sucker to be built knowing it would draw those comparisons.

  When my phone rang, I almost leapt to answer it just so I could have something to do. The 615 area code would have given away the game even if I didn’t already have Chandler’s info programmed into my contact list.

  “Hey,” Chandler said when I answered. “How are you liking it so far?”

  I froze. He must have been talking about the car. “Very smooth ride,” I said.

  “Ah, good. And the hotel? Are you finding some time to relax?”

  Tell him you’re sitting on your ass doing nothing, and it’s stressing you out.

  I did not say that. “Yep,” is what I went with instead. Seemed more diplomatic.

  “Good, good,” Chandler said.

  “So...what’s up?” I asked. “Making any headway?” I might have sounded a little eager. I tried to tamp down on that enthusiasm. Sienna Nealon was supposed to be cool, after all, and fearsome. She wasn’t supposed to sound like she was waiting for some cute guy to call and ask her to prom.

  So sad that, for me, getting called to go fight a bad guy was as appealing or more so than getting asked to prom.

  “Hey, before I forget, I meant to tell you there’s an AR-15 and a Mossberg shotgun in the trunk of your car,” Chandler said.

  “You are such a sweet-talker,” I said. “And I really love the gift horses you guys bring, because...you get me. You guys really get me. But seriously...anything on the search?”

  “Eh, not really,” Chandler said. “We’ve got eight guys on it, and we’ve watched all the angles, but there’s really no clear shot at a face, so we’re left with a generic description. White male, twenties or thirties, brownish blonde hair, a shade under six feet, we think.”

  “Is that from the footage or witness statements?”

  “Both. We had one lady do a composite sketch with an artist because she said she thought the guy was handsome until he started singing and blew out her eardrums. Took the artist a while because the witness isn’t hearing so good right now.”

  I cringed. How much would it suck to go for a night on the town and get your eardrums blown out? “At least you’ve got something.”

  “Not much, though. We’ll have Metro PD disperse the sketches. They’ve got units on Broadway now, keeping an eye and an ear out, but so far...all is business as usual. The only eardrums hurting are from amplifier feedback and people who actually can’t sing but belt it out at the top of their lungs as they walk down the street drunk.”

  “That’s...peaceful,” I said, channeling my disappointment and trying not to be too obvious about it. Having people get hurt was a bad thing, Sienna. “Maybe this guy realized the error of his ways and he’s not going to cause any more trouble.”

  “Is that the way it usually works for you?”

  “No,” I said. “Usually once a meta gets powers, they escalate things a little at a time in using those powers. Rob a convenience store. Then a bank. Their aims get grander and they get bolder as they realize the laws that applied to them before don’t really do so anymore. It’s like a modified version of any perp as they climb the criminal ladder and get more and more comfortable on the other side of the law.”

  “That’s interesting,” Chandler said. “We haven’t had much in the way of meta incidents in Tennessee. This is a real learning experience for me.”

  “So glad I can be an educator,” I said, checking my watch. My stomach let out a growl. “What’s the plan for tonight? You going to Broadway to see if this guy makes another appearance?”

  “I think I’m going to hunker down with the crew and keep churning through the tapes, but...you know what? You should hit Broadway tonight.” His voice rose, like he was excited for me. “You could pull up a chair and chillax at a bar, take in some live music.” He was animated, like this was his kind of idea of a fun night. “If we need you, or something happens, we can call you up. Or if you want to check in with Metro PD, let them know where you are, they could just send in a uniform and pull you out if things go down. They’ll have a heavy presence on Broadway tonight. Cops on every corner.”

  Relax and listen to music while waiting for a perp to make his move? I frowned. This was the weirdest assignment.

  But...that actually sounded kind of...

  Good?

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll grab something to eat and head on over to Broadway,” I said, coming around to the idea. And the strangeness of being relaxed and not tense and crazy while waiting for terrible things to happen.

  “Awesome,” he said. “Hope you have a quiet night, but it’s good to have you around in case it’s not. Later.” He hung up.

  I pulled the phone from my ear slowly, holding it as though I didn’t know whether I should pocket it or hang it up or just drop it like a mic. This was such new territory for me. I was hungry, and I was going to go get dinner—on my own. Not an unusual turn of events for life in New York lately, but it was extremely strange for when I was on assignment.

  Still, I couldn’t knock the freedom of it. I could go anywhere, eat anything. It was all up to me, no partner or sidekick or random jabroni to push me into a decision. “Hmm,” I said, feeling a little at loose ends. “Well.”

  How weird was it that I wasn’t used to being on assignments and having the freedom to do what I wanted?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The neighborhood I was staying in was called The Gulch. I found this out from the hotel’s friendly desk clerk whose life story I caught as I was asking for her advice on a place to eat (Jenny moved from Boston two years earlier because Boston was, “like, so terrible in the winter, and here’s it amazeballs. Did you see the cherry blossoms?!”). Her enthusiasm was infectious, and she sounded a little like a tourist ad in much the same way as Chandler.

  I walked out the hotel’s front door knowing that I was going to Saint Añejo, a Mexican place only a few blocks from my hotel. I made it in about fifteen minutes, walking the hills of downtown with a relaxed ease borne of my complete lack of anywhere to be right now. The sun was starting to set somewhere beyond the tall buildings and occasional construction cranes that made up the Nashville skyl
ine. Shadows greeted me like an old friend, and cars with their headlights on slid by on the streets.

  No one said anything, no one honked. Unlike New York, Nashville was a surprisingly quiet city. There was little trash littering the sidewalks, and I only saw a couple homeless people on the entire walk. Maybe this was the nice part of town. It certainly seemed to be filled with brand new condo buildings that stretched toward the darkening sky.

  Saint Añejo was a charming little place in a brick building, tucked away in the middle of a city block and surrounded by other restaurants. I saw signs for Moto, Virago and Whiskey Kitchen, along with a rather opulent place at the end of the block that had no sign. A couple of BMWs pulled around the corner, telling me that whatever that place was, it was probably a little too upscale for someone dining on a government paycheck.

  There was a valet booth right across the street from the restaurant that looked like it might serve the whole block. Behind me, the entirety of Nashville was visible across a huge train yard with a dozen tracks. The building that looked like an old train station sat across the tracks and a parking lot, looming over it all with its huge clock tower. That looked like old Nashville; everything else beyond it seemed fairly new.

  I got a table in the bar area and didn’t spend much time lingering over the menu. I ordered tacos, and not the kind you get from a truck or an old-school Mexican restaurant. These were upscale tacos. Not fancy BMWs upscale, like that place around the corner, but definitely nouveau cuisine, the type of thing you see in the trendy restaurants. One of them was Korean barbecue, the other a Nashville Hot chicken, whatever that was. The server asked me if I wanted a margarita. I actually hesitated for a second, then remembered I was sober almost a year now. “No, thanks,” I said, trying to shake off that momentary feeling of utter relaxation of all my standards. I was on the job, too. This was no time for bad decisions to creep in.