Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  Scott almost cursed out loud at the frustration on that one. “Traffic cams until we can’t keep an eye on them anymore.”

  “And after that? What if they slip loose?”

  “Then they slip loose,” Scott said. “For now. This isn’t worth killing over yet, and that’s the only easy way to bring them down. I need time—time and space to get a chance to work on these two.”

  “Up ahead,” Nunez said, driving the car at high speed over the shoulder. There were woods to their right, and people were starting to pop their heads out, refugees from the traffic jam who had left their cars when things had gone bad. Scott couldn’t blame them. He would have run, too. “I don’t see anyone, do you?”

  “Not a soul,” Scott said. Where was Sienna? Had she run when she heard the sirens? Because if so, maybe the downed fugitives were just hanging out over there, wrapped in a light net or something, waiting to be cuffed and led away. In June’s case, she’d need some serum to counteract her powers. Only in his nightmares could Scott imagine letting a woman who could produce toxic clouds walk around with that power in jail.

  They skirted the shoulder and rolled to a stop about two hundred feet from the massive line of toll booths that barred entry to the park without paying. Scott eyed them warily, wondering if something would come popping out from between the massed cars, but all seemed silent. He pulled his gun and lifted his hand as he stepped out of the car, taking a running leap and springing atop a Ford Taurus for a better look.

  The sunlit Florida day didn’t allow for much concealment. Sure, they could be hiding behind one of the cars, but they weren’t obviously here, and neither was Sienna. Other cop cars were squealing up now, police officers streaming out. “Search the scene,” Scott said, hesitant to let them go into a potential clash with two metas, but also sure that he wouldn’t be able to search this entire area himself. “Help the victims,” he said, as more families starting streaming out of the woods where they’d taken cover on either side of the road.

  “Where’s your partner?” Nunez asked as Scott dismounted the Ford’s roof, leaving a couple good footprints behind from his meta strength.

  “Right here.” Sienna angled her way up to them, looking only slightly disheveled. Her red wig was on right, at least, and the glasses really did change the look of her. “I think they got away.”

  Nunez raised an eyebrow. “No shit.”

  Sienna just shrugged, lapsing back to silence. He wouldn’t have wanted to know what she was thinking right now, though he suspected whatever it was, it was more toxic than anything June Randall typically came up with. “Any idea where they’ve gone?” he asked her. Nunez frowned, and Scott said, “Her power is prediction and tracking, okay? She can trace a weak trail sometimes.”

  Nunez seemed to take that at face value. “That could be useful.”

  “They took hostages, but left them behind,” Sienna said, now freed from having to maintain the illusion she had no clue what had happened here. “Then they ran. Got spooked by something. Something scary.” She put a finger on her chin, feigning contemplation. “But also smart. And sexy, I think … ?”

  Scott barely kept from burying his face in his hands. “Are they clear of the parks?”

  “I think so,” Sienna said. “Their old car is over there.” She waved toward the abandoned Pontiac that June and Elliot had been driving all this time, trapped in the middle of all that traffic, boxed into the makeshift parking lot. “Their new one is white, a Dodge SUV, tag number …” She concentrated, then rattled something off that Nunez scrambled to write down.

  “Damn,” Nunez said, “that is slick. I’ll get this radioed in right away.”

  “Make sure when you issue the BOLO you tag it—” Sienna started.

  “Yeah, I know,” Nunez said. “Do not approach. The metahuman warning.” And he headed away from them toward his car.

  “Fight didn’t go so well?” Scott asked, metahuman low, so that only Sienna could hear him, as soon as Nunez was well out of possible earshot. Of course, he could have been standing right there and would only have heard a very odd sound, but he might have noticed the very slight movement of their mouths.

  “She got desperate,” Sienna said. “Took a family hostage. I got her clear of it by promising to let them go. Figure we’ll confront them again when there’s less on the line.”

  “Yeah,” Scott said. “Catch them on some two-lane road somewhere, clear of people.”

  “Especially now that we’ve got their license plate again,” Sienna said, chewing her lip. “I’d expect them to change cars again. They’ve gotta know by now that it’s how we caught them this time.”

  “Then they’ll be ditching that as soon as it’s convenient,” Scott said. “How do you figure they’ll get a new car?”

  Sienna made a face that evinced discomfort. “Brute force. I don’t think they know how to properly hotwire a car, and it’s not as easy with newer models, so … carjacking, home invasion … something like that. If they’re smart, and I’m not sure they are, maybe they’ll try and pilfer a set of keys and waltz off with a vehicle hoping that it’ll just get added to the background noise and not attributed to them, but … brute force, if I had to guess. So far that’s their MO.”

  “Agreed,” Scott said, with more than a little discomfort of his own. He hesitated, then let loose with the question that was on his mind. “Now that you’ve met them, face to face … what’s your assessment?”

  Sienna thought about it for a little bit before she answered, and when she did, her words came out halting, like she wasn’t sure of anything. “This isn’t just a simple ego spiral. Most of the time, those are solo, so it’s just one person getting higher and higher on themselves as they go, that sense of invulnerability growing unchecked by another person, by their conscience and doubts.”

  “But there’s two of them,” Scott said, “so that’s changing the equation?”

  “Somehow, yeah, I think,” Sienna said. “The love connection … the sense I get, she’s the backbone, he’s the accomplice. She rolls him like she did Grandma, without even thinking about it. However she has to.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. This is a mess. I’ve never quite run across one like this before.”

  “What do you think they’re capable of?” Scott asked. “If we push them.”

  “Nothing good,” she answered promptly. “If they’re pushed? I think they’ll go as far as they have to in order to stay free.” She swallowed visibly. “And given what I just saw from her as she was trying to wriggle out of our grasp … if she’s willing to actually carry through on her threats … they’re going to be a real danger to whoever gets in their way.”

  26.

  June

  They drove until they hit freeway, then headed north on Interstate 75. Ell kept his hands on the wheel, eyes nervously shifting to the rearview mirror every few seconds, checking for cops. June knew what he was doing because she was doing the same, studiously watching for any sign of pursuit. Any second, she expected to see light flare in the rearview, a siren issue that stomach-wrenching squeal, but so far they were clear.

  And somehow, that didn’t make her feel any better.

  “Mannnnnnn,” Ell said, letting out a sigh that sounded like relief, “I can’t believe we got away.”

  “We haven’t, yet.”

  He looked in the rearview again. “Uh, I think we did. We lost them. Or they never came after us in the first place. We’re clear, at least for now.” He leaned across the new console that divided them in a way the bench seat in the old Pontiac never had. The seats weren’t as plush, either. “Come on. We just beat Sienna Nealon. Fought her and walked away. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not even sore. We didn’t even get hurt, you know?”

  June worked her ankle gently, the one she’d twisted when she’d blown the landing as she was trying to come down on Sienna. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Well, you’re not hurt bad, right?” He spoke with the same nervous energy
as always, but instead of despondently hangdog, somehow, now Ell seemed to be experiencing the reverse, a kind of joyful enthusiasm at surviving the encounter at the gates of Disney.

  That insensitive ass. Didn’t he know Sienna Nealon had just crushed her dream?

  Of course not. Because Ell only cared about his own feelings, not hers.

  “She let us get away,” June said, changing the subject before she ended up slapping him down and causing a fight. She didn’t have the energy for one right now, anyway. She felt so drawn out, so tired from producing and expelling all that toxin, she might have fallen asleep right there in the seat if she wasn’t feeling petrified, sorrowful, and furious all at once. “She’ll be back, too. You watch. She’s not done with us.”

  “What’s she even doing here?” Ell asked, turning his focus back to driving. He wasn’t even doing one mile above the speed limit. Normally she would have chastised him for that, but now? It was probably smart. It’d keep them out of the cops’ eyes.

  “You heard her.” June let her head loll away to look out the passenger-side window. “She came for us.”

  “Yeah, but she’s wanted,” Ell said. “Like, we’re in trouble, but she’s really in deep. She’s probably the reason you never even see us on the news. How many breaking reports a day do they issue on rumors of where she’s gone?”

  That was true. June had long since grown bored of watching panel discussions speculating on where exactly Sienna Nealon had gone. It had gotten real bad in the wake of the thing in New York where she’d clashed with Captain Frost and partially wrecked the conference center up there a couple months back, but fortunately had died down some in the intervening time to make room for tireless discussions about the new president, Gondry, and his boring-ass agenda. What a clown. At least Harmon had called the fools out when they crossed him. Gondry was just a snooze.

  “You think she’ll come back at us again?” Ell asked after a brief silence.

  “Probably,” June said. “She was more scared of the cops catching up to her than she was scared of us.”

  “Aw, man,” Ell said. “That’s … that sucks.”

  “Yep,” June said, and for the first time since this had all begun, she knew a little of what Ell had felt all along. That crushing weight that something was after them, something ominous, something circling closer and closer, like a shark in calm waters.

  And it scared the hell out of her.

  27.

  Sienna

  “We have no idea where they’ve gone,” Nunez said with a shake of his head. “Traffic cams lost them here.” He pointed at the map somewhere north of the Disney property. “Not sure if they were aware of their presence, but they turned on a side road, drove for a while, and by the time they came out—and there’s like, forty exit points for this section of roads, not all of them even covered by cams—rush hour was in full swing.”

  “And they picked a common car to steal,” I said, nodding along.

  “If you could try and give us some insight,” Nunez said, fixing me with his gaze. “That might help.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “can’t do it if I’m not in a place where they’ve been recently.”

  “So you’re like a bloodhound?” Nunez said. “But for past activity?”

  “Yeah, like that,” I lied glibly, staring at the map. “I don’t think they’re going to stay in the Orlando area.”

  “We’re pulling the camera footage of the confrontation,” Nunez said, “but we’re having some trouble with it. Someone showed up, but their face is all … I don’t even know. The techs are going over it, but whatever it is, it looks like a corrupted file.”

  “The hell?” Scott muttered. He didn’t know about the program that ArcheGrey had crafted to fool facial recognition programs, or how it was now running 24/7 to eliminate me from easy identification anytime I got caught on a grid-connected security camera. Wheeee. I didn’t really condone working with borderline psychos like ArcheGrey, but occasionally it did produce certain advantages.

  Hear, hear, Wolfe said, proving my point.

  A toast to those of us Sienna disdains and scorns, Bjorn agreed. Long may we be proven useful.

  Even I would drink to that, Harmon said, causing me to roll my eyes and offend Nunez for no good reason.

  “Well, that’s an interesting quirk,” I said, “but kind of irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is our two fugitives.”

  “You don’t think someone confronting them is kind of important?” Nunez asked. “This person flew. Like—”

  “A bird?” I asked. “A plane? Like—”

  “What my colleague means to say,” Scott said with his most ingratiating smile, and a warning look at me to back the hell off before I exposed myself, “is that given our small manpower numbers, we try and focus on one thing at a time.”

  “Huh,” Nunez said, shaking his head. “You know your job better than I do,” he said, in a tone that clearly indicated he thought we were government idiots. “Anyway … I think these two have probably passed out of our jurisdiction. You don’t think they’d be crazy enough to come back, do you?”

  “No,” I said, thinking it through. “I think they’re spooked. They’ll run a ways before they raise their heads again.”

  Scott nodded. “I think you’re right. I’d like to be a hundred percent sure, though.”

  Hell, so would I, I didn’t say. But one hundred percent certainty and crazy people on the run were improbable bedfellows. And I would know, being a crazy person on the run myself.

  “So … we done here?” Nunez asked.

  “I think so,” Scott said, blotting at his bleary eyes. “Let us know if you come up with anything else?”

  “Will do,” Nunez said with utmost professionalism, especially considering he now thought we were morons.

  “Let’s hit the hotel,” Scott said, and I followed him out of the command center.

  He waited to speak again until we were in the car. “You got pretty close to the line back there,” he said as he started up our borrowed car.

  “Sometimes I forget myself.”

  “Don’t do that,” Scott said, turning us around in the parking lot, the waning light of day hiding behind the forests that surrounded us. “It won’t end in anything good.”

  “I agree,” I said, leaning against the head rest. “I’m just not used to these long days at this point.”

  “It’s late afternoon.”

  “And I haven’t eaten much today.” Come on, Scott. I had endless excuses for my crankiness.

  “You think they’ll head north or south?”

  “North,” I said. “Trapped animals want space, and south doesn’t provide space, running to the end of the peninsula only corners them worse.” I paused. “I ever tell you about the time I faced off with a rogue Poseidon down in Key West?”

  He looked up, like he was trying to recall. “If you did, it’s gone now.” He sounded accusing, but at least he didn’t look at me.

  I searched my own memory, and those of his I was carrying. “I think it happened after we broke up,” I said. “But this guy—he had nothing on you. He would have been better off getting a job at a bar watering drinks, but instead he decided to become a confidence man—”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, even before he manifested, I think. But once he had his powers, he switched it up and started to try and bully his victims once he got caught. Turned kinda ugly, ended in a homicide by drowning several hundred yards from the sea. They couldn’t detect any sign the body had been moved, and there was a steady trail of ocean water between the shore and the corpse, so—”

  Scott laughed. “Why didn’t he just write a confession, sign it, and leave it there for them to find?”

  “He was surprisingly tough to track down, given how idiotically he’d left the scene,” I said. “Turns out a witness actually had seen his car there the night of the killing, so we knew what to look for. Local PD pulled him over on one of the bridges, and I had to
fly in when he dragged their cruiser into the water.”

  “Huh,” Scott said. “How long did it take to—”

  “Not very long. He lacked your finesse, and thanks to you, I knew all his tricks before he pulled any of them.”

  Scott smiled, but it faded quickly. “How long were we together after …”

  I waited for him to finish his sentence. “After what?”

  “After Sovereign,” he said. “After that last battle over Minneapolis.”

  “Hummmm,” I said, buying time because this was not a subject I was keen to discuss. “Not too long.”

  “It was after I went to work for my dad?”

  “A little after that, yeah.”

  “How long?” He pushed, but politely.

  It still made me squirm. “I don’t know off the top of my head—”

  “You said months after Sovereign. How much longer was I with you before—”

  “It’s not a simple—”

  “It ought to be,” Scott said, and now the politeness was starting to fade. “Something like, ‘We were together two months, eight days, six hours’—”

  “Thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds? Sorry, I didn’t keep track of it like that.”

  “But it shouldn’t be that hard to—” he pressed.

  I blew up. “We broke up like three, four times, okay? We’d break up for a night, then get back together. Then break up for five minutes, and get back together. Then we broke up for … ten days? Twelve? I don’t even know, because I was working like a dog, and I’d come back from an assignment, and you’d be all, ‘I just can’t live without you,’ and I’d be tired, and exhausted, and heartbroken from the—the damned withdrawals feeling of you being gone, and we’d get right back together again—”

  “Withdrawals?” Scott made a scoffing noise. “Like what? I was some kind of drug you couldn’t quit?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said, trying to get him to stop talking about this awful, uncomfortable, horrible period that I wished I could forget as effectively as he had. “It was what it was.”