“Ah, yes sir,” Scott said, momentarily taken aback. He hadn’t seen President Harmon in almost a month, since the press conference announcing the task force formation. “I—uh—what does he want to know?”
“He wants an update on the hunt,” Phillips said. The word ‘hunt’ caused Scott’s stomach to rumble strangely. “You’re to provide one, and make it to his satisfaction.”
“Well, we have a plan,” Scott said, still feeling desperately unsettled.
“Good,” Phillips said, “make sure it’s ready for prime time.” And he hung up without another word.
Scott hung up the handset and swallowed hard. The saliva in his throat seemed like it had suddenly dammed up. A meeting with the president? Why should he feel so nervous about that? It wasn’t as though he didn’t have something somewhat good to tell the man.
Still, though, that feeling lingered as Scott settled back in his seat and shut his eyes, even though he knew sleep would be a long time in coming.
14.
Sienna
My phone rang as I walked up the stairs to the upper level of my apartment building in Cedar City. I stared at the display blankly. It said unknown caller. I almost answered it, but hesitated, then flipped it to the voicemail I hadn’t set up yet. No one had this number, so it must have been a stupid autodialer. Probably trying to sell me something I had no use for, like life insurance. As if there was an insurance company around that would have taken on a risk like me.
I had my hoodie and wig all balled up under my arm, my glasses firmly back on my nose (they annoyed me even after a month of wearing them) and had my head down as someone approached. I saw it was a guy, totally bald, the shaved-head look, with nothing but a goatee of reddish-blond hair to stand out on his pale face. I didn’t know him, and even though I felt his eyes sliding over me, I studiously avoided eye contact, because I wasn’t Sienna Nealon right now. I was …
Uhh …
Shit, what was my cover name again?
He slowed as we drew closer together on the upstairs walk. It was a sunny day, and that sun was leaking down beneath the overhang that covered the exterior walkway we were on. My bare feet scuffed on the concrete, and I moved aside to give him plenty of room to pass.
“Holeeeee crap,” he said, apparently taking me all in. “You got blood on you.” I looked up to find him studying me with interest.
“It’s been a rough day,” I said, and moved almost against the wall, trying to pass him without further scrutiny.
“Are those burn marks?” He pointed at my t-shirt, where the hoodie’s zipper had seared through my shirt. I looked down. Yep, those were burn marks, little tiny ones like tracks exposing my bare, pale skin beneath. It didn’t help I wasn’t wearing a bra, because it left a nice little swath of between-boob exposed under the little teeth-mark holes. I was just lucky it hadn’t burned harder, or I might have been wearing an open shirt.
“It’s a new style I’m trying out,” I said, covering. I looked up at him, and flipped my ponytailed mohawk.
His gaze fixated on the small, exposed track prints of my cleavage. “It’s a good look,” he said appraisingly. There was nothing dirty about how he said it, fortunately, or I would have been tempted to put his nose through the back of his head. He said it with a kind of sly self-assurance. “That blood, though …”
“That’s, uhm …” I looked down, trying to figure out a way to cover for that. It might have come from when I’d gotten hit in the fight, it might have come from when I pulled the staple out of my head in the desert to take off the hoodie. Scalp lacs bleed a lot. “I kinda got in a scuffle.”
“Man, even Cedar City isn’t safe anymore.” He shook his head, then extended his hand. “I’m Bilson. I, uh …” He chucked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the doors behind him. “I live a door down from you.”
“I’m April,” I said, remembering my cover ID. “Wait, you know where I live?”
“Nothing stalkerish, I swear,” Bilson said, bald head bobbing up and down. “It’s a small community here. Don’t get me wrong, people come and go all the time, but still … tough not to notice new arrivals.”
Shit, was what I was thinking? The whole point of being here was not to be noticed. I didn’t say anything.
“Um, so you’re new in Cedar City? April?” He proceeded right past the nice little point where we could have politely let the conversation die and plunged forward into conversational CPR instead.
“Yes,” I said, feeling pinned in place, as though Iron Moron had transferred his power to my feet, and they now clung to the cement.
“That’s cool,” he said. His gaze swept left, to the mountains that rose above the city. “I, uh, teach self-defense classes in town.” He pointed at the blood on my shirt again. “You know, in case you … need that sort of thing.”
I looked at my shirt and started to immediately shut him down. Buuuuuuut … I was a stickler for training, and it had been a month since I’d had a sparring partner. “Where do you hold these classes?” I asked, trying to tamp down on my interest. I was feeling very slack, and that was a problem since I’d just declared my return to the field of battle with a somewhat explosive kicking of ass. The idea of being out of fighting shape—so to speak—while preparing to go head to head with both the government and the nastiest metas in the country did not appeal. Even a Band-Aid might help patch this metaphorical wound, and sparring with a human or twelve was a Band-Aid, no doubt.
“Every night,” he said, and fumbled, bringing up a card out of his black and grey gym shorts. “Some daytime classes, too, in case you’re on evening shift or something. Address is on here. Easy ten minute or so walk.” He made a brrr sound. “Though you might want to drive.” It was chilly, but not exactly Minnesota-cold yet.
“I’ll … think about it,” I said, pretty sure I was going to land on the side of checking it out. He smiled at me, and I got the sense he knew I’d already come to a decision.
Something made me shiver slightly, and I looked over the rail toward the parking lot. There was a woman standing there, dirty-blond hair piled on top of her head. She was wearing one of those yellow construction vests with the reflective tape, jeans that looked like they’d been given a dirt bath in an old quarry, and sunglasses that were dark enough to hide her gaze. She seemed to be looking right at me, though it was impossible to be sure without ripping them off her face. Which was tempting, because if she wasn’t giving me daggers, she clearly had a lot of anger for the entire rest of the apartment complex. “Uh oh,” I muttered.
“Hm?” Bilson followed my gaze and drew a sharp breath. “Oh.”
“You got a jealous wife or something?” I asked.
“Sandra is not my anything,” he said firmly, giving her a sour look right back. He stepped protectively in front of me, and I almost snickered. Gallant. She broke off her hate-watch of me and disappeared into the parking lot. A big truck started up a minute later, and I caught sight of her through tinted windows as she drove off, throwing one last glare at me as she passed.
“She seems nice,” I said.
“She’s a nightmare,” he pronounced, then shook it off. “We had a thing, but it lasted about ten seconds and ended months ago. She has … issues.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. I could smell the crazy on her from across the mountain. “Ten seconds, huh? Most guys wouldn’t cop to that.”
“What?” Bilson blushed across those pale cheeks. “Well, it lasted longer than that …”
“Sure it did,” I said, playfully. Even ten seconds was sounding pretty good to me right now. I wasn’t a nun, and he wasn’t bad looking, though between hitting on me and dating Crazypants McDirty-looks, he did seem to have some suspect taste in women.
“I’ll see you later, I hope.” The way Bilson said it, I did detect genuine hope.
“Maybe,” I said and started to drift past him. I wanted to get back to my apartment; I felt exposed standing out in the hall, like a drone was going to catc
h sight of me and launch a missile to wipe me off the planet.
“Nice to meet you, April,” Bilson called, his voice following me as I made my retreat. “Didn’t catch your last name, though?”
“I try not to go throwing it around,” I said, playful in spite of the obvious crazy waiting for me in the form of Sandra. “Breakage charges are a real bitch, you know. And so is your ex-who’s-not-your-ex, by my reckoning.”
“I kinda figured that out for myself,” Bilson said. “Later.”
“Maybe,” I said again, as my phone started to buzz again. I fished it out only to find the same damned unknown caller. “Ugh,” I said, once Bilson was safely back on his course to the stairs and out of earshot. I debated once more answering the call, but hit ignore. I was going to have to depower and destroy this phone, just to be safe. I hadn’t carried it to Vegas, but still, no one should have had this number. I fumbled and unlocked the door to my apartment, stepping into the dark, listening for any sound. After a few moments there was none, so I breathed a silent sigh of relief and got about the work of ridding myself of the phone and then cleaning up from my morning battle.
15.
Harmon
I breezed through the White House, ignoring the Secret Service agents as I always did. They might have been potted plants for how well they blended into the background of servants and secretaries and other unimportant support personnel. They did their job, I did mine, and we tried not to cross each others’ paths.
“Mr. President,” Ida Krall said as I stepped into the Secretary’s office just outside the Oval one. “I’ve made the adjustments to your schedule that Jana sent me—”
“Good,” I said, not letting this detail slow me down.
“Sir,” Ms. Krall said, trying to get my attention. Ida Krall was probably in her late sixties, though I’d never cared enough to figure it out. She was a widow, had lived in DC for most of her life, and had a soft-spoken demeanor until someone crossed her. Then I’d seen her channel a dragon, nearly breathing fire in her defense of my schedule. She didn’t let anyone in without an appointment, not the National Security Advisor, not the SecState, not the Joint Chiefs, not even the DCI or any of those other infinite acronyms. “Director Phillips of the FBI is on his way over with—”
“Is there a Director Phillips of another agency?” I asked breezily. Ms. Krall was a perfect foil for my brand of sly, dry humor.
“Yes, sir,” Ms. Krall said without hesitation. “There’s a Director Yvonne Phillips of the Office of Community Services over at the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services.”
“Mercy,” I said in mild surprise. “Who knew? Other than you, obviously.”
“FBI Director Phillips and Agent Byerly are going to be here shortly,” Ms. Krall said without missing a beat.
I sighed. “Very well, Ms. Krall. I trust you’ll give me warning before they barge in. A chance to pull my pants up, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a perceptible tightening of her voice. She didn’t like my humor, let alone when I progressed into the territory of the rude, but what was she going to say?
“And you,” I said, wheeling to acknowledge the two Secret Service agents in my wake. “Stay, dogs.” I smiled, they didn’t. They never did, oddly, when I used this wonderful joke. It was obvious they couldn’t stand me. I didn’t much care, though. I didn’t hate them; I just didn’t deign to notice them.
I swept into the Oval Office and shut the doors behind me. I normally would have left that to someone else, but I didn’t have the patience for Ms. Krall or a Secret Service agent to do it for me. “This was a terrible morning,” I pronounced to the not-quite-empty room. “We’re heading toward a wasted day, in fact, so I hope you have brighter news for me.”
“I don’t know that I have much to share at this point,” Cassidy Ellis said, her pale skin so white it practically glowed against the creamy backdrop of the walls. “It’s not as though it’s been long since last we spoke.”
“Cassidy, I need you nearby,” I said, striding behind the Resolute desk and taking my comfortable seat. There were chairs in the middle of the room designed for more intimate meetings, ones that took place without the forbidding obstacle of a boat of a desk—or rather, a desk made out of a boat—between the participants and the president, but those chairs were terribly uncomfortable, and I avoided intimate meetings wherever possible. Keeping people at a distance was infinitely preferable, even if it was a distance of mere feet. “In case you missed it this morning—” I knew she hadn’t missed anything. Cassidy didn’t miss information. Feelings she missed, and quite often, but raw data? News? Impossible. She absorbed that sort of thing in her sleep, which she did in a coffin-like device designed to isolate her from the world so as to avoid overstimulation.
“I saw,” she said simply. She knew I was just poking at her. Cassidy might have been a somewhat attractive girl if she gained about twenty pounds and spent some time in the sun. As it was, she looked like she would combust in the daylight, if the mere act of laying a hand on her shoulder didn’t break her first. It was deceptive, really; she still had metahuman strength, but she looked almost like a skeleton with long, dark hair. “She’ll be a problem.”
“Of course she is,” I said, thinking irritably of Sienna Nealon once more. “She excels at that. It’s why I wanted her gone months ago.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I was regretting not having had someone actually kill her instead of merely destroying her reputation and kicking the pins from beneath her support system. I thought it would keep her out of the way for longer than thirty days, though admittedly I had hoped my other plans would have come to fruition by now. Now I was feeling the double pinch of my side of the equation not being ready and her side coming ready too early. I sighed again. “I suspect you’ll know what I mean when I say this, but—I only wish the whole world could see things the way I do, and do them the way I do. Competence is at such a premium, and everyone goes rushing around like fools.” I chuckled to cover my mild exasperation. “Take, for example, this morning. I was at a playground—” I stiffened. I could hear activity in the secretary’s office a moment before my phone buzzed.
“Mr. President,” Ms. Krall’s voice sounded shrill over the speaker, “Director Phillips of the FBI is here.”
“Yes, I guessed that Ms. Phillips of the Administration for Children and Families wasn’t showing up out of nowhere,” I said, and nodded to Cassidy. “Go run along into the hallway to my study, will you? Keep the door cracked if need be, but I want you to hear this.”
“I’m … giving everything I have to the project you’ve got me on,” she said, low and a little worried. “I—”
“I need you to multitask,” I said. “My wife always used to tell me that women were good at that.” I smiled at her smarmily. “Prove her right. Do your job, and also help me come up with a way that we can keep Sienna Nealon’s nose out of the business until such time as you’ve completed priority one.”
“I’ve tried to kill Sienna Nealon,” Cassidy said, flushing bright red. “Over and over—”
“You’re afraid of her,” I said, not terribly surprised. “My goodness. She’s thwarted you often enough that you’re actually intimidated by this simpleton. Fascinating.”
She flushed even redder, looking like I’d smeared tomato on her lily-white face. “I’m not … afraid—”
“You know, I talked to Eric Simmons the other day,” standing up and casually throwing out the name of her love. I hadn’t actually talked to him, because he was a worthless piece of surfer trash. I looked right at Cassidy to see that the flush had faded as she’d paled back to her original shade. She knew I was lying—or rather, employing a rhetorical device designed to not-subtly remind her of what I had over her head. “He seems well.”
“Is he?” Her voice was pitifully scratchy, almost non-existent.
“I know you’d like to see him again,” I said, “and I’d take it as nothing les
s than my duty in life to reunite you two love birds.” I poured regret into my words, even knowing that Cassidy, with her failure to understand emotion, probably wouldn’t notice it. “It’d be a real shame if you didn’t hold up your end of our bargain.” I gave her the expectant look, the sort that only a father or perhaps the president of the United States can properly pull off. Not that I was her father. I would have eaten her like a hamster eats its young if my genes had produced her.
“I’ll … I’ll …” She stood, wobbly on her legs which were thin as apple tree shoots. “I’ll listen and—and—” she stammered, “—I’ll get right back to work on both projects.”
“Excellent,” I said with enthusiasm. “I knew I could count on you.” I made a shooing motion with my hand, and she wobbled into the hallway to my study and pulled the door to. I could have let her stay in the room, but that would have required an exercise of power to smooth things over with my next guests, and I didn’t really want to go to any extra effort. I strode back around the carved monstrosity that comprised the remains of the HMS Resolute and pushed the button on my phone to call Ms. Krall. “Send them in,” I said, and settled back in my chair to await my next meeting.
16.
Scott
Scott had been in the Oval Office a few times, but he still wasn’t used to it yet. A Secret Service agent in a black suit opened the door for Phillips and Scott to walk in, then shut it behind them almost noiselessly. There was a peephole, and Scott could sense the agent against the door, looking in. That was creepy, he decided, and it made him wonder what other rooms in the White House might have peepholes.
“Yes, they’re watching us,” President Harmon said from behind his desk, not rising to greet them. “And yes … they watch me everywhere. The bathroom. The bedroom. I can’t wipe my ass in this house without a Secret Service agent looking in on me.” He smiled bitterly. “The price of power, I’m afraid, but also the answer to the age old question of ‘who watches the watchmen?’ Well. Sort of, I suppose. I guess I’m not exactly a watchman, though I am always on watch here.”
Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11) Page 7
