Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yeah, the current one doesn’t seem to be doing much,” I said dryly. “I mean, I’m sitting right beside him and he still can’t find me.” I sobered up. “I think you’re going to have to at least tip off the local authorities about June and Elliot.” I paused. “Or …”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “Or what?”

  “Or I could,” I said. “I’m a dire threat. Put me in play down here and—”

  “You could get yourself shot in the head by a remorseless sniper who’s tasked with bringing you down, while Elliot and June waltz right past into the Magic Kingdom, which is going to be a lot less magic when she poisons a bunch of children as she robs a hot dog stand or whatever.”

  “You think they have hot dog stands at Disney?”

  Scott stared straight ahead at the road. “Not exactly, I don’t think. But I do remember a restaurant in Fantasyland with a Pinocchio theme that had pretty great hot dogs.” I just stared at him through dark eyes. Of course he’d been to Disney as a kid, probably multiple times. He must have caught my look, because he got suddenly defensive. “What?”

  I should have stolen a few memories of your happy lark of childhood, I wanted to say, but it felt like a contentious thing to bring up, especially given the happy lark times were well over now. After all, he was working for a federal agency almost exclusively to keep me from being brought to justice unjustly. After I’d stolen all his memories of our relationship. There’s Sienna snarky, and then there’s being an asshole, and this felt over the line.

  “Sounds like the happiest place on earth,” I said instead. “How do we handle this, though? Seriously. We don’t want them boxed in. We want them scared off, not trapped and ready to lash out anywhere near a place where thousands of families come to vacation.”

  “Well, what would deter them?” Scott asked.

  “I don’t know—exactly,” I said. “It’s hard to tell. Will police presence, lurking around the gates make them turn back? I can’t imagine Disney would be too sanguine about having cops all over the place at their entry points, lights flashing. But at the same time, if they see nothing waiting for them, in they’ll go, because why the hell not? Then maybe you end up with another beach incident, or worse, when someone pisses them off. So it’s a line between what the locals will even allow and what will dissuade our fugitives. Cops dissuade me from going places, but I’m sane—”

  “So say you, and probably none of the rest of us. Also, you were just in a crime scene swimming with cops.”

  “Haha, you recruited me to help you, so which of us is crazier? The crazy or the one who asks for help from her?” I paused. “The real question is … are these two actually crazy? Will they see danger and turn back? Or look at it as a challenge?”

  “June didn’t seem too put off by me as a challenge,” Scott said.

  “Because you’re a pushover, cream puff,” I said. “Seriously. I’ve met marshmallow dips that are made of sterner stuff than you.” I wasn’t entirely serious. Scott could cause havoc and pain when he intended to, it was just that he intended to a lot less often than yours truly.

  “And to think I once drowned a man in a casino lobby for you,” Scott said, shaking his head sadly.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You remember that?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “What happened after is a bit blurry, though.”

  The hot rush of guilt and shame burned my cheeks. Again. I remembered what happened after that, from both his perspective and mine. He’d macked on me back in the hotel room.

  “I say you call the locals, ring the alarm bell and get them to post the cops,” I said, changing the subject but trying not to seem desperate about it. “And if our dynamic duo decide to make a mess … we stay in close. Because the alternative that Phillips is essentially pitching is to have no response ready and just let them come waltzing in … leaving a whole park full of people in the line of fire. Or toxin. In the toxin line.” By now I was babbling, my brain still fixed on that stolen memory guilt thing.

  “Yeah,” Scott said, and nodded once, a resolute look gleaming in his eyes. “I’m not letting innocent people die because Phillips doesn’t want to chance this turning ugly.” And he hit the search bar on his phone, typing in “Orange County Sheriff,” before dialing the number that came up.

  19.

  June

  She and Ell had spent a quiet night in a hotel not too far from Disney’s massive compound. Normally when they stayed in a hotel, they’d make love, giggle, laugh, have fun.

  There was none of that this time. Ell had gone to bed early, turning out his bedside light to signal that he didn’t really want to talk anymore. They’d talked it out about as much as June wanted to, anyway. Ell was sad, and he was going to continue to be sad, especially after they saw the news report briefly saying that a security guard was in critical condition after a bank robbery. No mention of them, June was a little disappointed to see, but that was pretty standard by now. For some reason they couldn’t seem to get actual media coverage even if they’d wanted it.

  And she did sort of want it. It’d give her a feeling of accomplishment, like she’d done something with her life. More than anything those sorry bitches back in her high school had done by this point.

  She’d been excited, though, as Ell had sunk into his sullen silence on his side of the bed. She’d quietly bounced, all thoughts of the robbery and how it had gone wrong banished in her enthusiasm. Sure, she dwelled on it a couple times, let it drag her mood down a little, but …

  How could she stay down?

  Because this morning … they were heading to Disney World.

  She drove, because Ell had wordlessly dragged himself to the car, still suffering from the grief hangover he seemed determined to put himself through. She’d had no time for that, though, and burbled happily as she followed his directions to the front gates of the place she’d wanted to visit all her life.

  The signs were clear enough that she could have told him to put away his phone after they crossed under the yellow sign that stretched over the road proclaiming “Walt Disney World” in that distinctive script. Cinderella’s castle was worked into the apex of the arced sign, and it gave her a thrill. She saw the purple overhead lane signs for the Magic Kingdom, and steered the car accordingly.

  Just past that overhanging entry sign, she noticed the first cop car. Then, a few seconds later, another. They didn’t have their lights flashing, but there they were, like guards at the gates. They didn’t do anything, didn’t pull anyone over. The cops were out of their cars, just watching, chatting. But there were four or five of them now, in quick succession, and she took notice.

  Ell saw it, too. “Wonder if they’re always here in force.”

  “It’s a terrorist target,” June said with a shrug. The mere sight of cops wasn’t going to trample her mood. Not today.

  She kept steering on, and glanced in the rearview. The road was now three lanes across, and pretty damned busy. Still, behind her, she saw a steady line of cars following, including—

  What the hell?

  There was an unmarked police car a few back from her, the profile of the lights on the roof absent, but an antenna still obvious as well as mounted lights on the front dashboard that showed in silhouette. She stared back at the cop car as the traffic slowed, thickening like rush hour in a major city.

  What the hell was going on here? Had they picked them up again, here?

  Was it luck?

  How could they have known they’d come here?

  “This has gotta be just a precaution,” June said, her breath catching in her throat. “They were trolling, looking for something else, and—” She didn’t want to give voice to her thought, which was that no matter how it had come about …

  The cops were on their trail, now. She cursed, low, then louder, an earsplitting scream of profanity causing Ell to shrink away from her in fear. “We should have stolen a different car,” she said, in her anger blind to the problems that would have
brought about.

  “Maybe they haven’t seen us,” Ell said, looking in his own sideview mirror.

  “He’s like, three cars back,” June said, declaring Ell an idiot by the tone of her reply if not her actual words.

  “There aren’t really that many cop cars here,” Ell said, blushing at her rebuke.

  “You’re right, sort of,” she fumed. There weren’t enough that a law-abiding citizen would take much notice of them.

  But a wanted fugitive like her, like him?

  How could she not notice? How could her heart not skip a couple beats seeing an unmarked car sitting behind her?

  “What do we do?” Ell asked, starting to sweat visibly.

  “We’re in the center lane, surrounded by cars on both side,” June said, her own palms feeling slick on the wheel. “I can’t turn around yet.” Traffic had slowed to a creep, the road widening and splitting for a checkpoint ahead like a big toll booth that stretched across sixteen lanes.

  “What do we do, what do we do?” Ell asked, now going full Chicken Little on her, looking around frantically, as though he could find some easy exit.

  “Shut up and calm down, you little bitch,” she snapped. “This isn’t a big deal.”

  “It’s a pretty big deal,” Ell said, his voice calming a couple notches. “We’re surrounded. They must have known we were coming.”

  “Why, did you tell them?” June’s voice rose almost of its own accord. She was staring hotly at him now; had he made a call while she was sleeping? She kept both hands on the wheel for fear of lashing out at him if she took even one off. “Did you call the police?”

  “No!” Ell said, outraged enough that she almost totally believed him. There was still a sliver of doubt, but it was small enough that she shut up, letting her mind race in search of what they needed to do next. “What do we do?” Now he sounded very small.

  “We keep going,” June decided. “What are they going to do to us?”

  Ell went bug-eyed. “Kill us. They’ll kill us, June. After what we did yesterday?”

  June just shook her head in disgust. “They can’t.”

  “Yes, they can,” Ell said. “Boom boom. Two bullets, we both die.” He tugged at his collar, sweat already visibly turning his t-shirt damp.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s just that easy,” he said, breathless, his fear peaking now. He slumped against the window, sweaty and defeated. “How can you not see it?”

  “Because I’m not a scaredy chicken-shit,” she said, not even bothering to hold back. Stress had her now, panic too, but she wouldn’t show it like he did, by giving up. Her panic made her want to lash out, not quit. She would have preferred to leave a pile of dead cops in the road right now than give up on this.

  Ell started to speak, but she cut him off before he got a word out. “Don’t you dare,” she said, strangled. “This is my dream.”

  Ell collapsed back against the window, quiet misery seeping out of him with all the life. “This is turning into a nightmare.”

  June grabbed at the Pepsi bottle in the center console and heaved it at him. Ell screamed and ducked it by a centimeter. It shattered the passenger window in a spider web of cracks as it came bouncing off. She struck out and hit him in the arm, unable to contain her fury, and he cried out. That didn’t make her feel any better, so she struck out at him again, and he squealed in pain, scrambling to try and get hold of the door handle, to open the door and perhaps step out in traffic.

  “You suck!” June screamed. “You suck, you suck, you suck! You’re such an asshole! You don’t have any spine, any dreams of your own, so you try and shit on mine all the time!”

  Ell was crying, unable to even open the door though he fumbled with it, casting pitiful looks back at her. By now her own cheeks were damp with tears of rage, and she kept up the onslaught. “You’re such a little wuss! You don’t have the guts to do what it takes, even if it means saving your own life, and even when you do, you cry about it like your poor little baby feelings got hurt.” Ell finally managed to get hold of the car door handle and threw it open, starting to get out.

  “If you get out of this car now,” June screamed at him, “I’m driving off without you!” That was an empty threat; the traffic was barely moving.

  Ell stared back at her, stooped over, quivering, and she knew in that moment she was about to lose him. Pride and fury were mingled together, though, and she couldn’t bring herself to say she was sorry, because in the moment she wasn’t sorry for anything she’d done or said; she was only sorry he was such a damned baby.

  Before he could answer, the whoop of a siren cut the air from the unmarked cop car, and they both turned, the unspoken danger given form once more. And all the rage, all the anger she’d felt only a moment earlier toward Ell turned in another, more familiar, more manageable direction.

  20.

  Sienna

  I was pretty antsy, standing around not too far from the main gate to Disney. Scott was hobnobbing with the local cops, who’d said they’d done this kind of thing before at times of heightened terror alerts. There was a mobile command center set up about thirty feet behind us, and Scott was anchored by the door talking to the guys who ran it. They’d been really friendly, eager to help, basically valuing doing the job of keeping people safe above playing politics or arguing over jurisdiction. It was beautiful, in a way.

  Of course, I was sitting on the outside of the whole thing, because the last thing we needed right now was for me to be recognized for who I was.

  I was surprised exactly how many non-palm trees there were in the area. There were actually vast swaths of forest all around the Disney property, including lining the roads all around the parks. Right now I was wishing I was here for my own enjoyment rather than because I was lurking to prevent a dangerous couple of crazy metas from causing havoc, but alas. I’d had my vacation these last few months on St. Thomas, and it was over now.

  Which was just as well. I hadn’t even eaten anything other than a banana the night before, when I was alone in my hotel room, and I felt surprisingly better for it, though the hunger pangs were working their way through me now. There were donuts set up on a table outside the command center, boxes closed against the bugs, and I was considering hitting one of those up while I waited. The better angels of my nature had allowed me to resist so far, though, and without too much difficulty. It was a such a marked contrast to how I’d felt back on St. Thomas; it was as though temptation was at bay now that I was in the middle of the action again.

  You’re addicted to the action, Wolfe said. It satisfies your cravings.

  I ignored him and sighed, wishing I could go talk to the cops instead of standing on the sidelines being introspective. Being antisocial wasn’t much fun, but hopefully it would pay dividends in the form of not resulting in a full-on freak-out by the local cops followed by my immediate capture. Because that would be bad. Or worse. I guess it would be taking the situation from bad to worse. Yeah.

  Kicking a little stick across the parking lot pavement near where the grass began, I stared into the densely packed woods that started beyond. If shit hit the fan, I could dodge inside, ditch the wig, maybe shed a layer of clothing, and BOOM! Sienna Nealon would be ready for action.

  The question I had was … did Sienna Nealon really need to see action here? Or would our criminals just turn around and head down the road, allowing us to confront them somewhere that would put fewer innocent lives at risk? The part of me not jonesing for a hit of violence kinda hoped for the latter, but I’d run across too many pride- and anger-filled metas not to steel myself for the former.

  “What’s that?” one of the cops in the trailer asked, loud enough I could hear him clearly without straining. “We’ve got an issue here.”

  “What kind of issue?” Scott asked, bounding into the trailer.

  I lurked outside, shifting a little closer to the woods; I could hear them fairly clearly even at this range. “One of our unmarked cars h
as eyes on them. They’re at the parking booth just outside the Magic Kingdom.”

  “You make people pay for parking here?” Scott asked. “Really?”

  There was no answer to that one. “Sir, the officer is reporting some kind of argument in the car. License plate confirms it’s them.”

  “Tell the officer to stay in his car and not to interfere,” Scott said. “Let’s not light a fuse on this if we don’t have to.”

  “Understood.” There was a pause for a few seconds. “Sir, the officer is requesting backup. He says they’re escalating.”

  “Escalating how?” Scott asked, voice filled with tension. I had a feeling I knew how, having been in a few romance-based arguments in my day. With Scott himself, in fact, though he wouldn’t remember them.

  “They’re yelling. The female suspect has thrown something and cracked the passenger window. Now she’s striking the male suspect.”

  “Their names are June and Elliot, okay? Just call them that.”

  “Yes, sir. The male sus—err, Elliot—is trying to leave the vehicle. They’re still yelling at each other.”

  “Damn,” Scott said. “Give them room. Let them settle this and get the hell out of—”

  “They’re stuck in traffic, sir,” the cop said.

  “Stuck in—what?”

  “They’re backed up at the booths. This time of day, it’s probably ten cars deep across twelve or more lanes.”

  “What the hell?” Scott asked. “Is there any way we can—”

  “Sir, the officer has had to turn on his lights.”

  “The hell he did,” Scott said.

  “This domestic is escalating, sir, and the officer on the scene had full discretion to—”

  “Are you joking?” Scott asked, stomping out the door. “I need a guide to take me there before this gets absolutely out of control—”