Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yeah, it really went downhill after you left and they folded it into the FBI,” he said, treading the line between well-delivered sarcasm and stock seriousness so effectively I couldn’t tell which he was being.

  I put down my eyeliner, because this was about as good as it was going to get. It was heavy black, made me look kind of old-school Goth … which I wasn’t actually sure was a thing anymore. The black wig waiting in my bag would help sell the look, though, and probably give people the illusion that I was searching for myself or something.

  Hahahahahaha. As if … could have … lost … myself.

  You are lost, Harmon said quietly.

  “I’m sorry, Scott,” I said again, drawing a look of surprise from him.

  He tried to wave it off. “You already said—”

  “No,” I shook my head. “What I did to you … was so grossly wrong. I made the unilateral decision to spare you the pain of our relationship, to try and cut the cord, and I told myself for months … years… afterward that I was doing it because you told me you wished you could just forget me and move on.

  “But I did it to spare myself the pain of not being able to just say … ‘We’re not right for each other. We’ve grown apart. It’s over.’ Because I was more afraid of coming home from long trips and finding myself alone than—I don’t even know.”

  He stayed silent for a little while, mulling over what I’d said. “I’m not going to say it’s okay, because … obviously it’s not. It’s enough not okay that Harmon was able to use it to twist me against you, but … I will say that you do seem genuinely sorry, which is not something I’ve always felt from you, so … thank you.”

  You’re welcome seemed a dumb thing to say, so I didn’t say it to him. You’re right, Harmon said, that would be dumb.

  “I don’t hear you coming up with any better suggestions,” I said, tossing my eyeliner into my bag. Swish! Dexterity won that one.

  I do have one thing I could say that might make you feel better, Harmon said.

  “It creeps me out when he does that,” Scott said, frowning.

  Well, would it creep you out more or less if I showed Sienna here how to use my power in order to move these stolen memories of yours into that water-swollen gourd you call a head?

  I blinked. “You can do that?”

  My business is the mind, Harmon said. This is as easy as downloading porn from the internet.

  “Why that analogy?” Scott asked, pursing his lips in distaste.

  Just buckle your safety belt, fool, and soon you’ll be experiencing the complete and total lack of joy that will come from those missing memories, Harmon snarked.

  “Thank you,” I said to him as Scott settled in a nearby chair. “To … both of you, I guess.”

  “This doesn’t settle everything,” Scott said, sounding a little more guarded. “But … it’s a start, I guess.”

  “I’ll take a start,” I said, taking a seat of my own on the bed. “I just hope … that now I have enough time to see it through to whatever end it takes.”

  “Amen to that,” Scott said, and closed his eyes. The memories started to flash in front of mine as they left my head … and went home to his.

  74.

  Scott

  He lay on the bed for a while after Sienna left, going through those old memories—new again, now—like he was taking his time going through one of his mom’s photo albums. It felt weird, those unrecalled things, like holes in his mind had been filled, colored in, bright and vivid where before only grey nothingness had been.

  The knock at the door surprised him; she’d been gone for quite a while and he doubted she’d returned. He padded over to the peephole in bare feet, cold against the tile, and peered out.

  A second later he unlocked the door and greeted his guest with a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Reed.”

  Reed Treston came in, his long hair back in a tight ponytail, but that perpetually windblown look still about him. He lacked the beard he’d sported in the shots Scott had seen of him online, since he’d re-emerged from the skies or whatever he’d done after South Dakota. “I was in Daytona to consult and figured I ought to stop by.”

  “Consult, huh?”

  “Well, I figured I’d drop by and twist Andrew Phillips’s tail until he went red with apoplexy,” Reed said with a muted grin. “He’s inscrutable at first, but once you get to know him, it is really damned fun to push his buttons.”

  “How’d you find me?” Scott asked, shuffling his way back toward the bed. His head still felt stuffy, swollen, from the memories returning. In a way, it was like rediscovering himself, and it felt … weird.

  “Well, I run a kind of detective agency now,” Reed said with a faint smile. “It’s sort of our job.”

  “I heard about that,” Scott said with a smile of his own, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Did you get a P.I. license? A for real one?”

  “I did,” Reed said. “I’m a bounty hunter, a private investigator … the whole nine yards.”

  “Twelve-year-old me would be very impressed.”

  “How’s it strike twentysomething-year-old you?”

  Scott froze. “You heard, didn’t you?”

  “Why, whatever do you mean?” Reed asked innocently.

  “You know I left the FBI … don’t you?”

  “I’d be a pretty lousy detective if I missed something as big as that, don’t you think?” Reed asked. “It’s sorta what I’m here about.”

  Scott stayed in place, almost afraid to move. He knew what was coming next, like a train coming toward him, but he felt stuck in place. “Is that so?”

  “Come on, Scott,” Reed said. “You’re not going to go back to work for your dad now, are you?”

  “It’s the family business,” Scott said with quiet gravity. “There are certain expectations—”

  “You have the power to control the waters of the world,” Reed said. “And not only that, you’re a more powerful Poseidon than has walked the earth since … I dunno, maybe the original, based on what Hera told me. If you go back to Minnesota and just move money around for your dad … that sounds like a real waste of talent to me.”

  There was some tender thread in Scott’s mind that resonated to that. Why had he left the government? And why had he come back? Even with his memory restored, some parts of that were fuzzy. Something about the idea of the life he would have had drove him away from it in the first place, and some push from a mind-manipulating schemer had brought him back. Trying to do the right thing had kept him there a little longer, though.

  And it had felt good.

  “We’ve got a pretty big team growing,” Reed said, with obvious enthusiasm. “If you join, we’ll have eight metas on staff full time. Good people, with experience. You know most of them. And since you’ve been with the FBI … you know the need is not getting smaller for what we do.”

  “No, there seem to be more metas out there today than there were yesterday,” Scott agreed. “A suspicious mind might wonder why that is.”

  “Trust me,” Reed said, turning serious, “we’re suspicious. We’re wondering. And we’re working on it. If you join us … you could be working on it, too.”

  What do I want out of life? Scott wondered, staring at Reed, earnest, the offer before him.

  I came to the Directorate, youthful, naïve, wanting to do good.

  I left the agency, burned out, tired, jaded, wanting to be free.

  I came back to the government without a mind of my own, wanting to crush Sienna.

  I stayed because I wanted to help Sienna, to do what was … right.

  And now …

  Now …

  “We could really use you, Scott,” Reed said. “And this thing we’re doing—we make a difference. We genuinely help people. You know that if you’ve seen the aftermath of some of the things we’ve been on, like Orlando.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Scott said, nodding along. “You’re righteous.”

  And maybe I
want to do what’s right for a while longer.

  “What do you say?” Reed asked. “We have donuts in the break room.”

  “Well, hell,” Scott said, his decision made before that even came in, “if there are donuts …” And he extended his hand to take Reed’s, giving it a solid pump. “You can count me in.”

  75.

  Sienna

  The phone rang in my ear as I waited for the person I’d dialed to pick up. It rang once, twice, three times, and then a female voice on the other end—staid and reserved—answered.

  “Hello?” Curious, because she didn’t recognize my burner phone’s number.

  “Oh, hi,” I said, probably sounding excessively breezy, “is, uhm … Steve there?” I made up a name out of thin air.

  “There’s no Steve here,” she said, her voice laced with amusement.

  “Oh, well, thanks,” I said.

  “Have a good one,” Ariadne Fraser said, and hung up.

  I could tell she didn’t recognize my voice at all.

  “Part of me thought you might have lied about what you did to her mind,” I said aloud, looking around the darkened room. I was in one of my safe houses, a one-bedroom apartment in Hutchinson, Kansas, that had absolutely no décor and only a thin, single-width mattress on the floor for furnishings.

  No, Harmon said simply. I had a feeling it was as close as I’d get to an apology from him. I didn’t have any more venom in me to be angry with him, especially after all that had happened this last day. I was alive, after all, and I’d made it through another ordeal.

  My phone buzzed in the darkness with a text message from Miranda Estevez. Mission accomplished, it read, Poseidon has signed on.

  It hadn’t even required much of a push, I suspected, on either end. Scott may not have wanted to admit it when we were dating, but he’d always gotten a righteous rush out of the police work we did. He never felt it as much as I did, and he took some hits along the way that threw him out of it. But given a few years for the world to knock him around … yeah, he was tough enough inside to do the job now.

  In fact … I didn’t know if I could see him doing anything else.

  I have a question I think we all need an answer to, Zack said, uneasily. What now?

  “Now … I think I need to sleep for a little while,” I said, punting on truly answering it.

  You sure about that? Bastian asked. He sounded awfully uneasy for a man who couldn’t actually die.

  We worry about you, Wolfe said.

  “Been talking to Harmon?” I asked.

  There’s very little else to do in here besides talk, Harmon said.

  “I’m fine, guys,” I said. “Or … I will be. Promise.”

  It is not good to go through life keeping at a distance all those who care for you, Gavrikov said. I should know. We could feel it—that warmth you had when you knew Klementina had come to help you.

  “I know,” I said, nodding in the darkness, where no one could see it. “It was … a good feeling.”

  It would be a true shame if you didn’t feel it again for a long time, Gavrikov said.

  “Guys … let’s talk about it tomorrow,” I said, and lay my head back on a pillow that was so thin it could have been measured in micrometers, and closed my eyes, fixing my mind on one very particular person in the moments before I drifted off.

  When the darkness claimed me, and I felt myself slide into sleep, it came with a warmth that I’d almost forgotten, outside of the moment when I’d known that Kat had come to save me. It was an almost unfamiliar sensation in a world gone cold, a world I pushed away from myself, kept at arms’ length.

  For their safety, I said.

  But that wasn’t true.

  “Hello, Sienna,” Doctor Zollers said as he stepped into the light of my dreamwalk, his old office represented around us in this fictional world, complete with the fish tank that used to rest in the corner of his waiting room. He looked out at it curiously, then smiled at me. “I’ve been a little worried about you lately. How are you feeling?”

  I tried to keep a stiff upper lip, but … it was so damned hard. “I think …” I struggled with the words. What the hell was it about my pride that made it so difficult for me to just say it?

  I’m lonely.

  I’m scared.

  I’ve lost all my hope.

  He waited patiently, not speaking, the silence between us an untrimmed thread he left for me to cut.

  And finally I did: “I think you were right. I can’t do this alone anymore … can’t … carry the weight alone anymore.

  “I think … I might need some help.”

  Sienna Nealon Will Return in

  Small Things

  Out of the Box, Book 14

  Coming May 16, 2017!

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  Author's Note

  Thanks for reading! If you want to know immediately when future books become available, take sixty seconds and sign up for my NEW RELEASE EMAIL ALERTS by CLICKING HERE. I don't sell your information and I only send out emails when I have a new book out. The reason you should sign up for this is because I don't always set release dates, and even if you're following me on Facebook (robertJcrane (Author)) or Twitter (@robertJcrane), it's easy to miss my book announcements because...well, because social media is an imprecise thing.

  Come join the discussion on my website: http://www.robertjcrane.com!

  Cheers,

  Robert J. Crane

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Editorial/Literary Janitorial duties performed by Sarah Barbour and Jeffrey Bryan. Final proofing was once more handled by the illustrious Jo Evans. Any errors you see in the text, however, are the result of me rejecting changes.

  The cover was once more designed with exceeding skill by Karri Klawiter of Artbykarri.com.

  The formatting was provided by nickbowmanediting.com.

  Once more, thanks to my parents, my in-laws, my kids and my wife, for helping me keep things together.

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  World of Sanctuary

  Epic Fantasy

  Defender: The Sanctuary Series, Volume One

  Avenger: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Two

  Champion: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Three

  Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four

  Sanctuary Tales, Volume One - A Short Story Collection

  Thy Father's Shadow: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 4.5

  Master: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Five

  Fated in Darkness: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 5.5

  Warlord: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Six

  Heretic: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Seven

  Legend: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Eight

  Ghosts of Sanctuary: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Nine* (Coming 2018, at earliest.)

  The Girl in the Box

  and

  Out of the Box

  Contemporary Urban Fantasy

  Alone: The Girl in the Box, Book 1

  Untouched: The Girl in the Box, Book 2

  Soulless: The Girl in the Box, Book 3

  Family: The Girl in the Box, Book 4

  Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5

  Broken: The Girl in the Box, Book 6

  Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book 7

  Legacy: The Girl in the Box, Book 8

  Destiny: The Girl in the Box, Book 9

  Power: The Girl in the Box, Book 10

  Limitless: Out of the Box, Book 1

  In the Wind: O
ut of the Box, Book 2

  Ruthless: Out of the Box, Book 3

  Grounded: Out of the Box, Book 4

  Tormented: Out of the Box, Book 5

  Vengeful: Out of the Box, Book 6

  Sea Change: Out of the Box, Book 7

  Painkiller: Out of the Box, Book 8

  Masks: Out of the Box, Book 9

  Prisoners: Out of the Box, Book 10

  Unyielding: Out of the Box, Book 11

  Hollow: Out of the Box, Book 12

  Toxicity: Out of the Box, Book 13

  Small Things: Out of the Box, Book 14* (Coming May 16, 2017!)

  Hunters: Out of the Box, Book 15* (Coming July 2017!)

  Badder: Out of the Box, Book 16* (Coming September 2017!)

  Southern Watch

  Contemporary Urban Fantasy

  Called: Southern Watch, Book 1

  Depths: Southern Watch, Book 2

  Corrupted: Southern Watch, Book 3

  Unearthed: Southern Watch, Book 4

  Legion: Southern Watch, Book 5

  Starling: Southern Watch, Book 6* (Coming June 2017 – Tentatively)

  The Shattered Dome Series

  (with Nicholas J. Ambrose)

  Sci-Fi

  Voiceless: The Shattered Dome, Book 1

  Unspeakable: The Shattered Dome, Book 2* (Coming 2017 – Tentatively)

  The Mira Brand Adventures

  (with a Co-Author to be named later)

  Contemporary Urban Fantasy

  Mira Brand and the World Beneath: Mira Brand Adventures, Book 1* (Coming April 2017!)

  Mira Brand and the Tide of Ages: Mira Brand Adventures, Book 2* (Coming April 2017 - Tentatively)

  *Forthcoming, Subject to Change

  Table of Contents

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