Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  “That’s a chilling thought,” I said. It wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate the repercussions of. I stared at him, shuffling, and just asked. “What’s on your mind?”

  He didn’t answer at first, and it gave me time to wonder if this was going to be one of those conversations where I just let him think he was right to shut him up for a while. I saw him mentally shift gears, and then we were off to the races. “There’s a part of you that really thrives on the righteous kill, doesn’t it?”

  I stared at him, then blinked. Twice. “I do what I have to,” I said.

  “No,” he said and wandered past the painting I had on the wall outside the kitchen. He acted like he was going to inspect it, like he hadn’t seen it a million times. “You like the fury that comes when someone deserves it. That fills you up, doesn’t it?”

  “Are you asking me if I like killing people?” I asked, still feeling tired. “Are you asking me if I’m a psychopath or—”

  “No,” he said, and his eyes fell on me. “But I am asking you why you don’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  “Why I don’t have a problem with … what?” I asked, staring back at him dully. I was so tired. “Doing … what I just did tonight?”

  “What you just did tonight …” He chuckled, but it was mirthless, more of an expression of astonishment than humor. “Sienna, you killed twenty? Thirty? I don’t even know how many people you killed tonight. I killed one, and I feel like I’m about to shake apart. Ariadne killed someone tonight and she looked like she was ready to break down and cry.” He looked me up and down. “You look like you’re ready for a nap, one that’ll be filled with peaceful dreams instead of the screams of the dead.”

  I just stared back at him. “Fun fact: the dead don’t scream. Only the living can do that.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed.

  “Let me spin a little story for you,” I said, getting to my feet, slowly. “You walk into that prison tonight. Warden Reed. Man in charge.” I head for the fridge, but I swivel my head to look at him the whole time. “You’re out front, you’re the big man on campus, and you have to get those assholes back in their cells without a gust of wind at your command.” I opened the fridge and found it pretty much empty, apparently still lacking the ability to spontaneously fill itself. Thwarted again. Where could I get a miniature quiche at this hour, I wondered? I shut it and stared back at him. “Can you do it?”

  I saw the resistance, the desire to change the subject, the urge to lie, all pass across his face in a second. “No,” he finally said.

  “No,” I said quietly. “You can’t. They’d have charged you. They’d have killed you. Torn you up like a wet tissue in the wind.” I opened a cabinet, even though I knew already what I’d find. Empty. “I’m a hard person because I have to be. Anyone else couldn’t have walked into that prison and bluffed those guys back into their cells.”

  Reed stared at me flatly. “I doubt Crow Vincent considered you blowing his head off a bluff.”

  “It was a promise,” I said. “One I couldn’t keep.” But not for lack of wanting, I didn’t say. I didn’t need to. It was implied, because I’m me. “These prisoners … they’re animals. Animals who prey on a system that’s not equipped to deal with them. They deserve to live in the jungle, not in civilization with the rest of humanity.”

  I could see the questions brewing behind his eyes. “How does that … what you do … make you any better than them? Any more deserving of … living with humanity?”

  I felt a cold chill run over me. “Reed … I don’t.” I felt the gulf between us. “I don’t live with humanity.” I felt my eyes settle lower, on the floor. “I wasn’t raised to live with humanity. I was raised apart. And I’ll always be apart.”

  I don’t know how he would have reacted to that, and as it happened, I didn’t get the chance to find out because the phone rang. Long, urgent tones, filling the air with that irritating sound. I needed an excuse to stop talking anyway, so I answered it. “Hel—”

  I didn’t even get it out before J.J. started talking. “So, uhm, yeah, there’s a problem. Again.”

  I stared at Reed, newly emboldened by the interruption to make eye contact again. “Of course there is. What, specifically, is this particular problem?”

  “We’ve got all these emergency crews wandering around here, and they’re picking things over,” J.J. said. “They got to the hostage place on the fourth floor, trying to figure out what happened there to reconstruct it for forensics and all that fun stuff—”

  I put him on speakerphone so Reed could share the verbal diarrhea. He gave me a pitying look.

  “—so anyway, I came out of the closet to walk them through it all—literally, no jokes here, guys, I’m not—you know, not that there’s anything wrong with, you know, what with Ariadne and all—”

  “J.J.,” I said. I would liked to have been sleeping already.

  “Anyhoo,” he got back to it, “I came up to the fourth floor to look it over with them, and you remember that melted heap of slag where you set infinite fire to Anselmo?”

  I stared at Reed. He stared at me, brow puckered with curiosity. “Vaguely,” I said, prompting my brother to give me a disappointed look.

  “Yeah, well,” J.J. said, “there’s nothing left.”

  “Of Anselmo?” I asked. “Good. I’m sure he’ll be mourned by—oh, right, not a damned soul on the planet.”

  “No, I’m saying there’s not much left,” J.J. said. “Like, if he had melted to slag, there should have been tons of organic material, but as it is—”

  “J.J.! The point, please. Before I fall asleep right here on the phone.” I hoped this story had a happy ending, but my stomach was warning me it might not.

  “I rewound the security footage,” J.J. said, “to when he got burned, and, uh … well, guys … it looks like Eric Simmons came and carried him to the helicopter. Took him along on their flight into adventure.”

  Reed looked at me, and he was cool on the outside. I could tell he was in low-grade panic on the inside, though. “Did you see anything at the crash site that could be—”

  “No,” I said, playing it back in my mind. “No. I didn’t.” I looked Reed straight in the eye. “He wasn’t there.”

  And I felt my empty, acid-riddled stomach drop.

  That meant Anselmo Serafini and Eric Simmons were both still out there, along with the brains of this whole operation … and probably mad as hell at me.

  59.

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Simmons

  The trip from Minneapolis to Omaha took the better part of the day, because the driver stuck to back roads and avoided the interstates. “Better to avoid the government eye,” he said, in an accent right out of Simmons’s vision of every hillbilly movie ever. But he kept the pickup moving fast over those back roads, all the way to the farm outside of town.

  They pulled up as the sun was setting, Simmons feeling like his ass was gonna fall off and not sorry to have seen the last of that drive. He’d stuck his head out the window every now and again, to make sure someone wasn’t flying over him. He’d talked to Cassidy on the way. She was keeping an eye on them, mostly. Whenever the satellites she had a backdoor into passed overhead, anyway. She said it was clear.

  Twelve hours and hell if he knew how many miles later, they were there. It wasn’t so bad on him; he was just glad to get out of the prison. It had to be hell on Anselmo, though. That poor guy.

  The driver threw the pickup into park and just got out. Left Simmons sitting there, Anselmo leaning over on his shoulder. Anselmo had been leaning on his shoulder the whole trip. It felt a little gross, given how the dude looked at this point, but when Eric lifted the Italian’s face off his shirt at that first diner where they’d stopped for lunch, it hadn’t left anything liquid behind, so it was all good.

  “Dude,” Eric said as the driver walked away, “a little help here?” The driver just kept on walking, heading for the main house, pulled open an old, wo
oden screen door and stepped inside, letting it shut behind him with a clatter. He’d kinda given the impression throughout the ride that he was a dick. His name was even Richard, though he didn’t go by it or Dick. He’d shown up when Eric and Anselmo had fallen out of the helicopter, driving the pickup with an RPG tube still smoking in the back, and he’d introduced himself as Clyde, Jr.

  “Damn, Anselmo,” Eric said, and the Italian stirred a little at his side. He still smelled like burned pizza or something, just awful. They’d bought him some cheap clothes at a gas station, but they were sticking to him. He had no hair, either, but that was the least of his problems. “I guess we’re gonna have to do this ourselves.”

  Anselmo made a weak, gurgling noise. That was about all he’d been capable of the whole trip.

  Eric opened the passenger door of the pickup and stepped out, propping Anselmo against the seat, holding him up with one hand. The air was filled with a dry, dusty aroma. There was no snow on the ground here, which felt weird after driving through the blizzard-drenched states of Minnesota and then Iowa. Nice change, though.

  “Dude, Anselmo,” Eric said, looking in at him, “can you walk?” He looked at the man, and faint slits of eyelids opened enough for him to see someone staring back at him. “Can you hear me, man?”

  “I … can hear you,” Anselmo said. Those were the first words he’d spoken all day.

  “Whew,” Eric said, and made a show of mopping his brow. He looked out across the flat horizon at the empty fields and took it all in. It damned sure wasn’t L.A. “We’re here, man. We gotta go inside. Do a meet and greet with our new friends.”

  Anselmo barely registered that. “Friends …?”

  “Yeah, man, Cassidy found us some …” Eric waved his hands at him. “Forget it, just—let’s go in. I’ll explain when we get there.”

  “All right,” Anselmo said, and he spoke with a rasp of his own. Sounded a little like Cassidy that way, actually. Weird. Probably inhaled some of that fire stuff that bitch had used on him, burned his airways. Eric took him in hand and started carrying him, helping him walk. His skin felt funny, all ridged and knobby, scarred all over.

  “Hello?” Eric asked as he opened the screen door. The inner door was open and something smelled like it was frying inside. Kinda made Eric feel a little sick, that smell. He didn’t do fried stuff; it messed with his stomach. “Anybody here?”

  A woman appeared at the edge of the porch. She was a pretty big lady, apron hanging off her neck and covering her front as best it could. It missed a lot of ground, but he could see a polka-dotted shirt beneath it, and she wore a pair of brown pants that looked ill-fitting to say the least. “Well, come on in,” she said. Her face was dowdy, with a pinched line for a mouth. She looked at him, half-carrying Anselmo, and disapproval showed instantly. “Gawd, he looks like the devil himself did a number on him.”

  “He kinda got burned,” Eric said, dragging Anselmo in past her. She moved to let him through, but she didn’t offer any help.

  “Well, that much is obvious even to the unpracticed eye,” she said with a drawling accent. “Is he pussing?”

  Simmons blinked. “What?”

  “Is he dripping puss?” she asked again, taking him for a moron. “Clearly he’s had some injuries. I just don’t want him dripping anything foul on my upholstery.”

  Now that he was inside, he got a look at her living room and wasn’t sure why she was worrying. The couch was ripped in at least twenty places and looked like it might have been old when the seventies were just starting. “Ummm … just set him over here?”

  She chewed on that for a minute. “All right,” she finally conceded, like it was a major imposition.

  Eric set him down carefully. There wasn’t an inch of Anselmo that wasn’t scarred. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before on a meta, like his skin had tried to regrow itself where it had been lost, but stretched over boiling metal or something. He had ripples everywhere, like stuff was still under his skin, and none of it was smooth. The man was a freak-show attraction, and if his body hadn’t healed it by now, Simmons kinda doubted it would ever heal.

  Simmons looked back at the dowdy woman, but she was already on her way back to the kitchen. “Can I … get something to drink?”

  “There’s beer in the fridge,” the woman answered, disappearing into a side room. He stood there in the room for a moment, looking around at ratty decorations—a couple of dusty deer heads on the wall, a mirror with a beer brand on it, an old box TV, not a flatscreen, and decaying furniture.

  What the hell was Cassidy thinking, dragging him to a place like this?

  He heard talk coming from where the woman had gone, so he followed. Nothing to do here but listen to Anselmo moan in his state of semi-consciousness anyway.

  Eric passed into a goldenrod kitchen that hadn’t been painted in a few decades. He was starting to see a theme in this place. There was another woman waiting in there, features similar enough to the woman he’d met before to mark her as a daughter. Had to be a daughter. “Hi,” Eric said, smiling tightly at his hosts.

  There had been some talk going on, but it shushed the minute he entered the kitchen. The daughter was sitting in a chair at the table and stared at him, taking stock. She finally just nodded her head toward an archway over her shoulder. “She’s through there, in the parlor.” Like there was no other reason he was talking to her. He had to admit, if he hadn’t been in her home … he wouldn’t have.

  Her blessing given, Eric went on through. The room beyond had old floorboards darkened with age, no carpet to hide them. Here he was greeted with furniture that was maybe a little newer. Leatherbound sofas sat side by side, and the driver was on one of them, attention transfixed on a TV in front of him. This was a flatscreen. The place looked like a den, whereas the other room beyond the kitchen looked like someone’s grandma’s sitting room, from the days when they had sitting rooms.

  “GO GO GO GO!” the driver shouted, so loudly and suddenly that Eric jumped back. The driver—Clyde Jr.—had his attention focused on the screen in front of him, hadn’t even noticed Eric in the room.

  Eric watched for a minute; it was a football game on. “Who’s playing?”

  “OSU, of course,” the driver said, like he was stupid for even asking.

  Eric did feel stupid. Felt stupid for coming here, stupid for staying. But he had business to attend to. He needed to find Cassidy. Couldn’t leave without her. “Where’s—” he started to ask.

  “GO GO GO, you stupid bastard, RUN!” Clyde Jr. yelled, like that would somehow influence the events unfolding before him. Hell of a cheerleader, that guy.

  Eric started to leave, caught a whiff of something familiar—maybe a little pot in the air, maybe a little something else—and stayed a second longer. He couldn’t smoke around Cassidy. This smelled like it had been in the air a while, just traces, something that had happened a long time ago and was still lingering.

  “She’s over there, man,” Clyde Jr. said, pointing to the corner. The place was so overstuffed with crap that Eric hadn’t even noticed it there, hiding behind a quilt rack. He’d just taken it as part of the decor.

  The chamber.

  He walked over and tapped on the lid with one finger, a little message in Morse code. She liked it when he played cool, acted a little smart, did the slightly unexpected. It was all she could hope for, really. She had a brain unlike any other person on the planet, and surprising her was … well, on the big things, it was nearly impossible.

  Sometimes, on the small things, though … it was all the fun in the world.

  The lid cracked immediately, and smell of salty water from inside the chamber came rushing out. It was pretty reasonably sized, the sensory deprivation tank. The lid lifted end up, and the three different computer screens Cassidy had in front of her swung with the lid, safely clutched by their reticulating arms from falling into the saltwater solution that kept her afloat when she was inside. He caught the first glimpse of her pale
face, heard the first gasp and wheeze as she tried to sit up. She fumbled for the inhaler that she kept in a waterproof pocket near the lid and forced it into her mouth, forming her lips from the smile of greeting into a closed O as she inhaled. Her eyes fluttered, and then she slipped the inhaler away and started to get up, reaching for him.

  He pulled her out of the chamber and hugged her tight. It had been days, a week—he didn’t even know. “Oh, baby,” he lied, “I missed you so much.”

  “I missed you too,” she said, slow and breathy. Her wet hair fell across his shoulder, she planted her cold lips to his neck and he shuddered. He hated the feel of her when she was just getting out of the tank. Her body was thin, skeletal; it felt weird compared to the other girls he’d been with. Being with Cassidy had pushed him in the opposite direction; when he was away from her now, he automatically went for the bigger girls. Like a reaction.

  She pulled herself off of him, leaning against the chamber. He felt his wet clothes and ignored it; he’d had to make a lot of compromises to keep Cassidy in his life. But it was all worth it, having the biggest brain on the planet at your disposal. “You don’t like our new hideout,” she said, like it took all her genius to figure that out.

  He took the den in with a sweeping look once more, and saw the older woman, the mother, standing in the archway to the kitchen. Just watching. “I, uh …” Eric started, trying to be diplomatic, “… I’m just trying to figure out why we’re in Nebraska, baby.”

  “There’s a real good reason,” Cassidy said. “Because we needed help.”

  Eric looked it over again, expecting the place to change somehow. It didn’t. “Well, now we have had the help, and we can go to … L.A., maybe? San Fran?” Even Denver would be a nice change from this. Or Aspen. He could do some snowboarding. It was close, wasn’t it?

  “Y’all gonna stay right here until I get what I was promised,” the woman said from the archway. Eric turned to see her, arms folded over her apron.