Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9

by Crane, Robert J.

  He was being gentle. He was trying not to hurt people. It was a mark in the column for him, as far as I was concerned.

  “Antonio!” I shouted. “I need to talk to you!”

  This time he actually answered. “I won’t let you kill me!”

  “If I was trying to kill you, I would shot your ass blocks ago!”

  “I’m not gonna let you take me!” Well, that answer wasn’t much better.

  “Don’t be an idiot!” I shouted. I was close to the ten-foot mark, but I honestly wondered if a flying tackle would be a great idea at this distance. Waiting would be preferable. The hot wind whipped over my face, and the smell of coffee from a Starbucks ahead filled the air. “I just want to talk!”

  That time he didn’t say anything. I could see the corner of another street ahead of us. We’d already crossed two major roads without using the overpasses. I couldn’t chance another, not the least of which was because of the traffic streaming across the intersection at high speed.

  If Antonio didn’t leap, he’d have to be hella lucky not to end up splattered on some cabby’s bumper.

  I was only six or so feet behind him now. I leapt and hit him in mid-back, sending him tumbling to the ground.

  The world whirled around me. I hit my shoulder on the sidewalk and rolled out of it. I heard Antonio face-plant and roll then hit a trashcan. I felt a little bad about that.

  I sprang back to my feet, feeling the shock of the jump run through my knees. There were aches and pains all over me—some from what I’d just done, some from what had happened in the casino fight earlier. The air smelled of car exhaust as I stood on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and stared at Antonio Morales as he pulled himself off the ground.

  He looked younger than he had in the memory I’d pulled from Samuel. And taller. He unfolded himself, bracing against the trashcan, and stared at me with hard eyes. He stood there, slumped, for just a minute, breathing hard.

  And then he pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it directly at me.

  Chapter 21

  I didn’t hesitate before rolling to the right. It was pure instinct, a flashy move designed to disrupt his aim. I’d seen him stick an un-safetied gun in the front waistband of his pants; this was not a man used to handling firearms.

  My suspicion paid off, apparently, and no gunshot rang out. I lost sight of him for a moment as I rolled, faster than any human could have. I angled myself toward him. Still no shot rang out and when I came out of my roll he was adjusting his aim toward me, a second behind.

  Like an amateur.

  I’d put myself close enough to be within leg’s reach of him. For most people, this wouldn’t have done them any good. Close for most meant point-blank range. An easy shot, easy kill.

  For me, point-blank range meant I was close enough to sweep his leg.

  And that’s just what I did, kicking them from underneath him with only a little thought to mercy. I didn’t break his ankles, though—and I could have—so mercy wasn’t totally off the table.

  He hit the ground and I rolled on top of him, getting a hand on the gun and twisting it to trap his finger in the trigger guard. It was a nice little Sig Sauer. The safety was still off, though, so I fixed that problem immediately.

  “Ahhhhh,” he said, making little noises of pain. His finger was at a very uncomfortable angle. “Please—!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, using the gun’s grip on his finger to twist his arm and turn him face down on the pavement. “But I’m not going to let you shoot me, either, Antonio.”

  “I know who you are,” he said, and his words came out with more than a few grunts of pain interspersed between them. If he tried to resist me, he’d lose a finger. Even for a meta, that’d ruin your day.

  “You have no idea who I am,” I said, and pushed him over. He didn’t fight, to his credit. Probably out of fear for that finger. Pain is a powerful motivator. “I’m with the—well, with the government agency responsible for policing metas.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He was face down on the sidewalk now, and I was trying to decide whether to cuff him or not. If I did, it was only because I feared his belligerence, not because I really wanted to arrest him. He’d capped a Century operative in the head; while that may have been against the laws of the city of Las Vegas, it had looked like self-defense to my eyes.

  “Yeah, but don’t test me,” I said, “you go into Treebeard mode and you’ll need to regrow some limbs—litera—”

  “Oh, ha ha,” he said, face muffled against the pavement. “Like I’ve never heard that one before.”

  I cuffed him. I didn’t really want to, but it was as much for his safety as mine. If he tried to run again, I’d have to chase him, and by this point I was tired and fed up enough to shoot him just to get it over with. I pulled the gun off his finger when I was done, but none of his tension dissolved as I finished.

  The crowds surged around us. A few lookie loos stopped, taking cell phone videos of us. I flashed my badge. “FBI. I’m going to have to ask you all to step back, please.” Most of them cooperated, save for a drunken guy with a beer flask that was almost as tall as me. I thought about pushing it, but I didn’t need trouble right now. “Let’s go talk over here,” I said to Antonio, lowering my voice. I helped him to his feet and steered him toward the footbridge ahead.

  I sighed. I’d recognized where we were but hadn’t given it much thought. We were standing on the corner of Treasure Island’s block, just across from the mall. I pushed Antonio gently along, his gun in my hand, and under the footbridge, I saw him glance at the broken concrete wall where Charlie had died. “Your handiwork?” he asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. “Someone killed my aunt right there.”

  I felt him tense. “It wasn’t me—”

  “I know it wasn’t you,” I said and leaned him against the wall a few feet from the place where it had happened. The heat was getting to me again, and I wished I could strip off my suit jacket. “It was Century, I think. The same people that came after you in the pawnshop.”

  “I know who they are,” Antonio said with a slow nod and more than a little resentment.

  “How?”

  “They tried to recruit me,” he said, dark eyes focused on the road ahead. The sounds of traffic seemed especially loud here under the pedestrian footbridge, and the shade provided did little to diminish the Vegas heat. All around us, the sun-lit streets were bright enough that I felt like I needed sunglasses, even here in the shade. “I declined.”

  “I don’t know anyone else who’s declined and lived to tell the tale,” I said, keeping my hand fastened around his upper arm. “They’re pretty persuasive.”

  “They have this woman,” he said. “Short, kind of … well, chubby. She’s a mind-reader. But she can’t do anything to me when I’m even partially in tree form, because I’m not human, see?”

  “You mean the one that was outside the pawnshop when the big guy came at you?”

  “Yeah, her,” Antonio said. “Claire or something.”

  “I met her yesterday,” I said.

  “How’d that go?” he asked, voice laced with irony.

  “She’s not going to be dancing anytime soon,” I said. “I sent her off to our prison in the Arizona desert. Unconscious, so she couldn’t cause anyone any problems.” I glanced at him, and he seemed to be looking at me with guarded disbelief. “Listen, these guys—Century—they’re killing everyone. All our people.”

  “I know,” he said, nodding slowly. He looked away. “They came to me wanting help with that. Said if I killed for them, I could live, could be part of this … new order they were building. A new world.” He looked back at me and the fear in his eyes was tangible. “Every word they said scared the shit out of me.”

  “How’d you get away?” I asked.

  “That woman—Claire. Mind-reader? She was there, and she was supposed to tell the guy who came to talk to me what I was thinking.” Antonio’s shoulders were slumped.
“When they confronted me, I went to tree form. You could see the panic in her face. She was whispering to the guy, telling him how she couldn’t do a damned thing, couldn’t read me. She was talking loud, her eyes all wide. You could see she was just … she didn’t know what to do. I don’t think she’d ever run across someone she couldn’t … dominate before.”

  “What did they tell you?” I asked. “About what they were gonna do?”

  “Take over the world,” Antonio said, and now his eyes were mournful. “Kill a lot of people to make it happen. Build it better. Make sure they were unopposed. I got the feeling … that whatever they told me, it wasn’t the same thing they told everyone. They guy doing the talking … Griswold, I think his name was? He seemed kind of stuttery. Like he didn’t know what to say. Contradicted himself a few times, like he was telling me what I wanted to hear.” Antonio shrugged, as much as a person in handcuffs could shrug. “I don’t know. It all sounded like … like Nazi-concentration-camp stuff to me. Scary.”

  “Gah, there you are!” Scott’s voice reached me. I looked toward the corner and saw him striding toward us. A few of the lookie loos who had filmed and watched us were still standing near the entrance to the footbridge, cell phone cameras still going. Probably hoping I’d deal Antonio a beating they could put on YouTube. “I’ve been—” He brushed against the guy with the huge beer flask. “Get lost, will you?” He flashed his badge. “Unless you want me to take you in for a toxicology screening.” Beer flask took off. Scott made his way over to us. “He tell you anything?”

  “A lot,” I said, glancing at Antonio. “Not much we didn’t already know.” I reached down in my pocket and pulled my handcuff keys. “All right, Antonio, this is where we part ways.”

  I could feel the tension in his arms. “Part ways? Part ways how?”

  “Wait, you’re gonna let him go?” Scott asked me in near-disbelief. “He killed a guy!”

  “A Century operative who had come to kill him,” I said. “Sounds like a pretty clear-cut case of self-defense to me. What else should I do? Lock him in a cell in Arizona until Century comes for him there? Turn him over to the Vegas PD so he can cool his heels in a cell there until they come for him? Or he breaks out? Could be either.” I stuck the key in his handcuffs. “I don’t have the inclination to sentence him to death, Scott. Out here in the world, he’s maybe got a chance. If he finds a new place to hide.”

  “You kinda blew my old place to hide,” Antonio said with more than a little reproach. “I had it good down there.”

  “Claire was combing the hotels on the strip yesterday,” I said. “I think she was sensing you, and she ended up running into us by mistake.”

  “Wait, what?” Scott’s face was crumpled. “I thought Century sent that team after us!”

  “I don’t think so,” I said with a shake of the head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think she got a read on Antonio and was trying to track him down. It just never occurred to her he was under the strip instead of in a hotel overlooking it. Then, when she caught a whiff of us, she tried to take you out. I mean, if they’re out to kill all the metas, knocking one of the only ones still protecting them out of the game is a pretty good day’s work, right?”

  “They’re not gonna stop,” Antonio said as I let him loose from the cuffs. He rubbed his wrists, and I could see a little line where they’d rested. “They’re gonna keep coming for me.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But their net is getting more holes in it by the day. We’ve taken over half their telepaths—mind readers—out of circulation. We’ve killed about a tenth of their operatives, total. We get a few more, it’s going to put a hell of a dent in their ability to track people down. I’m pretty sure it already has.”

  Antonio looked at me with shadowed eyes. “You’re really serious, aren’t you? You’re … actually fighting them.”

  “I’ve gone toe to toe with them more times than I can count lately,” I said with a sigh. “And I’ll keep going until either they get knocked down for the last time or I do.”

  Antonio nodded, just barely, like he was still considering something. “You’re really gonna let me go?”

  I waved my hand toward the street. “Go plant yourself somewhere safe, but don’t put down roots.” All that was pure smartassery. I softened my tone. “And I wish you the best of luck.”

  He took a couple steps away, like he was testing to see if I was lying. I watched Scott. His face was red, like he couldn’t believe I would let Antonio walk. But I did.

  And he made it all the way to the corner before he turned back around.

  “4627 Eagle Hill Terrace out in Henderson,” Antonio said. He stood at the corner, a little standoffish. He was almost merged into a crowd. As if it gave him a feeling of security.

  “What’s that?” I asked, a little confused.

  “It’s where they talked to me about joining them,” he said. “It’s where I fought my way out. I think it’s their base or whatever here in town.” People were passing in front of him now. “Good luck to you, too,” he called, and I saw him turn, heading south along the strip. I watched him disappear from where I stood under the footbridge, and he vanished into the wash of tourists.

  Chapter 22

  “We clear on what’s going to happen here?” I asked Scott as he parked the car two doors down from 4627 Eagle Hill Terrace. The brakes squeaked and the car shuddered as he slid it into park before it was fully stopped. The AC was blasting full in my face until he killed the ignition, at which point silence filled the cabin.

  “Yeah,” Scott said, voice filled with tension. I could almost hear it quiver. “We’re going to roll up into this place like gangsters and gun down anything that moves.”

  I frowned at him. I wasn't sure if he was joking, but I let it slide and threw open my door. A wave of Vegas heat hit me in the face. “Such a smartass.” He didn’t sound happy, but then, who would be given what we were about to do?

  “I know, we’re well matched.” There was a hint of tension in his voice that was different than I’d heard before from him. I would have asked him about it, but this wasn’t really the time.

  I opened the back door of the car and reached down into the floorboard. We’d made a quick stop-off after we’d gotten the tip from Antonio. I was impressed with how helpful and friendly the manager of a Vegas gun store had been when we’d shown him our FBI badges and mentioned we were heading into a raid on a house where they were suspected to stock heavy firepower.

  Really heavy firepower. It was the honest truth.

  He hadn’t even asked us why we didn’t call in a SWAT team. He’d just showed us the weapons that weren’t available to the general public and made sure to check our credentials with the local field office before we’d walked out the door with a couple of choice weapons. We paid, of course, which might have been the wellspring of his generosity of spirit, but I had no complaints. Money greased wheels. I had money, and I had wheels that needed greasing.

  And as I placed the stock of the AA-12 fully automatic shotgun against my shoulder, I had a suspicion it was more than wheels that were about to get greased.

  Scott matched me on the other side of the car, an AA-12 of his own against his shoulder. I nodded to him and we shut the doors quietly. I’d already made a call to the Henderson PD informing them that we had probable cause to search the house, and they had been polite enough to offer to send a couple units out as backup. Which I’d accepted, but told them to wait ten minutes. Not sure quite what the dispatcher thought of that, but hey, she wasn’t paid to think.

  We walked side by side down the boiling sidewalk, and I wondered if anyone was calling the police on us right now. That was the whole reason I’d called the Henderson PD, as a hedge against that sort of trouble. Now I had ten uninterrupted minutes to sweep through this house of Century’s before I had to deal with backup, and I planned to use my time wisely.

  “You sure we should be doing this?” Scott asked as we made our way up the walk. His v
oice betrayed him, all shot through with uncertainty.

  “Wiping out our astounding number of enemies? Yes.” I ignored the fact that Scott’s objection might be moral in nature and focused solely on the immediate problem at hand.

  “Okay,” Scott said with a cringe that hinted he might not share my confidence. “You want me on the back door or front?”

  “Front,” I said, and my feet clacked against the rocky lawn as I stepped off the path. “Give me thirty seconds and then kick down the door.”

  “Shame we don’t have any breaching rounds,” he murmured and braced himself just outside the front door.

  “Like you need a shotgun to open a door,” I muttered as I turned the corner of the house. I wasn’t being as quiet as I wanted to be because I was hunched over and moving quickly to get into position. I knew that any meta worth their salt would hear me outside the window, but because I was hunched over, they wouldn’t be able to see me even if they looked out.

  Part of that was strategic, too. If they heard someone moving toward the back door, they’d be paying attention to it when the front door got kicked in. That should allow me to take the focus off Scott and put it on me.

  Which meant—lucky me—I’d have the highest probability of dying during this raid. But that’s the way it should have been, in my view. I wanted to be the lightning rod. I’d seen too many people who deserved to live die instead of me. Andromeda. Zack. Breandan.

  I crouched outside the back door, my back against the hard, puckered stucco wall. The ridges were poking me, little lines etching into my skin. I was doing a mental countdown in my head, and I only had five seconds to go.

  Five …

  Four …

  Three …

  At two, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Even though I knew I was the lightning rod, even though I wanted to draw the attention of everyone in the house to me, I was still scared.

  I got to my feet and faced the back door. It looked like a hollow-core, like something you’d use to seal off a bedroom rather than protect the exterior of your house, and I started to wonder if Century gave even half a damn about their own security.