Masks (Out of the Box Book 9)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I don’t think I have anything to say to you,” Nadine said, sprinkling a little sugar into her words.

  “Then let me do the talking,” Sienna said, pushing past her. Nadine stepped aside; there was no winning a physical confrontation with this woman, not without resorting to shooting her in the back of the head unobserved, and Nadine was under no illusions about how that would play out in court. “Nice place.”

  “Won’t you come in?” Nadine asked, letting the sarcasm drip as she shut the door behind her. In truth, once she got past the initial surprise, she didn’t mind having Sienna Nealon in to talk. The very fact that the woman had turned up on her doorstep suggested nothing good, but a mysterious sort of nothing good. Nadine needed an answer to how she’d gotten here, why she was here, and slamming the door in her face wasn’t going to leave anything but a hanging question mark that she would obsess over for the next few hours. Letting her in, however, especially when it seemed against her will … that gave her the opportunity to find out what the little bitch was up to. All Nadine had to do in return was make sure that she kept her emotions tightly in check, unable to escape and betray her, and Nealon would walk out of this encounter all the poorer while Nadine would have all or almost all of the woman’s secrets—if she played things right.

  “I like your decorating scheme,” Sienna said, looking at an antique grandfather clock that hadn’t been wound since she’d had to fire the servants. It looked nice in the hallway, but winding it took valuable seconds out of her life that Nadine didn’t care to part with. Also, the ticking noise was enough to drive her batty. “It screams, ‘I’ve got too much money, help me part with it.’”

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Nadine said dryly, “since you’re not with the government anymore, but … they seized all my assets except the house. So, like a fool, I pretty well am parted from my money.” She watched Nealon stroll into the front room, looking around. “Not that I expect you’d care. Nobody else does.” She tried to put a little hurt self-pity into it; she didn’t consider it likely that the famed Sienna Nealon would pick up the victim card from her with any kind of sympathy, but it was a decent opening gambit.

  “Boo hoo,” Sienna said, grabbing the card and tossing it back at her with a mock-baby face. She brought up a finger and pretended to wipe a tear from beneath her eye.

  “Like I said,” Nadine threw out, more bitterly than she actually felt, “nobody cares.” She looked away as she delivered this.

  “Do you know why I’m here?” Sienna asked.

  “I’m a convenient local target for your bullying?” Nadine said, shrugging her shoulders in soft resignation. “I really don’t know.”

  “FBI headquarters in Manhattan got blown up today,” Sienna said, her eyes latched on Nadine like a squealing, hungry infant when a bare breast was in sight. Nadine felt a shudder of revulsion at the image of babies and shunted the thought away. “Did you know that?” Nealon went on.

  “I saw it on the news while I was at the office, yes,” Nadine said, shrugging. “It’s why I came home early.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “Because rush hour tonight is going to be a miserable hell,” Nadine said flatly. “And it’s not like I have anything to do at work, anyway,” she added with unfeigned resentment. Work was boring now that she was shut off from the game.

  “You’re a pragmatist,” Sienna said, assessing her, as though she could ever hope to penetrate the mask Nadine was wearing right now. The very thought gave Nadine a sense of warm amusement. Sienna Nealon was a petty thug, who—from what Nadine had seen and read—had to resort to violence because she couldn’t manage to get her way through any other means. Nadine operated under no such restrictions; she’d never had to use violence until today, because brains, money, seduction, or outright theft all worked more effectively than violence, and left fewer unpleasant traces behind. “A realist.”

  “Sweetheart,” Nadine said, with weariness and condescension in equal measure, to patronize and piss her off so she could get this unthinking brute to honesty as swiftly as possible, “you don’t get to be the Queen of Wall Street by living with your head up your snatch.”

  There was a flicker of irritation in Nealon’s eyes, and Nadine could feel the annoyance bubbling beneath the surface, though her reply came back coolly sarcastic, at least at first. “And here I thought it just took lying, cheating, and stealing.”

  “That’s always the image you people off the Street have of those of us working on it,” Nadine said, smiling faintly and uncrossing her arms, as if she’d truly open her heart to this vulgar psychopath. “Did you ever consider that maybe we just work smarter? That we provide an actual service to people, that they’re willing to pay for? That we add value, that we can move money to help build successful companies, that we—”

  “I believe that others on Wall Street do that,” Sienna said, cutting her right off, “but I think that you are probably just in it to turn other peoples’ lives to shit while making yourself a buck and also looking awesome because you’re a woman and a winner making it in a man’s world.” She shrugged. “But I might know a thing or two about that.”

  “You don’t look like much of a winner lately,” Nadine said.

  “Neither does Wall Street,” Sienna said. “Maybe it’s a branding issue. That’s how you guys talk about it, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe it’s envy,” Nadine said. “People tend to get jealous of those with more than them, after all.”

  “They also get mad at charlatans and liars who steal their money,” Sienna said. “Maybe it’s a little of column A, a little of column B?”

  “See, I knew you were here because you were looking for someone to bully,” Nadine said, crossing her arms again. This was easier than she’d thought; Nealon was a little flushed, plainly riled, and probably not that far from unloading on her.

  “I’m looking for the person who helped mastermind an attack on FBI headquarters,” Nealon said, looking at her with cold eyes, blue as ice, “the US Attorney’s office, and a bank. This person is wealthy, and would have a personal stake in seeing those first two targets brought down. Say, someone with a lot of money to spread around, and an ongoing case against them wherein the evidence and the people arrayed against them might be found in those two buildings.” She took a step closer to Nadine. “This is what we call, ‘means, motive and opportunity,’” she said condescendingly.

  “I’ve heard of that,” Nadine said, offering a choice smirk designed to antagonize her opponent further. “So let me help you with your investigation—the government seized pretty much every dollar I have.” She ticked off a finger. “My means are no longer my own. Trust me, I’m noticing—”

  “Yeah, I can see this place has really suffered from your loss of a gardener,” Nealon sniped, and then ran a finger over an exquisite table that some decorator had brought in from Europe or Asia or somewhere; Nadine couldn’t remember. “And lack of a maid.”

  “I don’t do dusting,” Nadine said. “I also don’t do—heists or murder or whatever it is you’re accusing me of—”

  “But we’ve still got motive and opportunity,” Sienna said, clearly moving gears out of rage. Too bad. Nadine kind of wanted to see her do some damage, provided it wasn’t to Nadine’s head. She had a feeling if she got Nealon close, that restraint she’d been hearing about would kick in, and suddenly—even if she took a low-powered punch to the face—she’d be toxic to Sienna. The law would be involved, and on Nadine’s side.

  But she couldn’t let that happen before she’d wrung every drop of info out of the woman. And she couldn’t push her too far, either, lest she become a smear on the wall. That was a very real danger, though she rated it much less likely than she would have before. Nearly sincere pleading of the sort she’d been loathe to unleash upon Joseph Tannen would probably save her life. Sienna Nealon didn’t kill the defenseless, after all, which made her easy to manipulate. More fun, too, with the element of danger, like the time
she’d slept with the CEO of a company she’d invested in who had a famously mercurial wife working a floor down from his office. They’d done the deed right on his desk, with his secretary just outside the door, and Nadine hadn’t bothered to control the volume of her voice. It all added to the thrill in her mind.

  “Well, I was in my office all morning, which is when this happened, yes?” Nadine smiled sweetly herself. “So … since I can’t pay anyone to do it, and I have witnesses who watched me through my lovely new office window all during these … assaults or terrorist events or whatever you’re calling them … I think that rules out opportunity and means.” She put a hand on her chest. “Now, I’ll be the first to admit that if you’re right, and whatever evidence the FBI and US Attorneys thought they were collecting against me has gone up in smoke, I’m not going to cry about it. So I guess that’s motive to you, since I maybe get back to living my life a little sooner than if I’d had to go through the pain of a trial? Though I think once upon a time you had a little run-in with the law yourself, so … maybe you can understand why I’d rather avoid all that if possible.”

  Nealon’s eyes burned. “Nice touch, going there. You may know my past, but if you think it’s going to distract me from the fact that you look like the most likely person to have the means and the motive to pull this off … it ain’t happening.”

  “I’m not trying to distract you,” Nadine said. “Just bringing up the fact that … you’ve done a lot worse than I have.” She pressed on that point, watched Sienna blink just slightly. “And you got away with it. You may think terrible things of me right now, but only one of us in this room is a murderer.”

  “Throwing that in my face doesn’t the change the fact that you’re hiding something,” Sienna said, her voice low and rough, like she had sandpaper in her throat. “Oh yes. I can see through that mask you’ve constructed.”

  “We all wear masks,” Nadine said. “We all have something to hide, or else we’d just … ooze our hearts all over each other.” That slipped out, because it was proving far too easy to goad this woman into giving away everything.

  “I don’t wear a mask,” Sienna said.

  “Sure you do,” Nadine said. “There’s a face you put on for the world, anger you’re trying to keep back. Even now as you’re standing here in front of me, you want to skip over this talk and get right to doing what you do best—threatening me. You want to punch me in the face until I confess to whatever you want me to say—”

  “Much like you with the disappearing evidence, I wouldn’t mind if you cared to spill your guilty guts.”

  “Well, you can beat on me until I start making finely crafted stories of the sort you want to hear,” Nadine said, her mouth a thin line, her smile losing its arrogance as she switched to being forlorn as easily as changing a costume. “It’s not going to change the truth.”

  Sienna stared at her levelly. “I agree. You’ll still have done this, even if you don’t admit it.”

  “And there’s nothing I can do to convince you otherwise,” Nadine said sadly. “So …” She held her arms wide. “Are you going to hit me or what?”

  She stood there and waited, and Sienna inched up to her, putting her nose almost directly to Nadine’s. “I don’t have to hit you,” Sienna said, smiling menacingly, “to get the truth.” And she raised a hand, palm and fingers spread wide, as Nadine’s eyes went wide, the metahuman bringing down her fingers onto Nadine’s face—

  The doorbell rang, jingling wildly, and Sienna paused, her fingers less than an inch from Nadine’s cheek. “Expecting company?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t answering the door thinking it was you,” Nadine said, feeling a very real lightheadedness that she could not control. She’d miscalculated, badly, had utterly forgotten about this woman’s soul-stealing ability. Could she really do it? Draw out something from Nadine to make her look guilty against all evidence—or lack thereof—to the contrary?

  “Sienna!” A hand hammered at the door as a male voice shouted loud enough to be heard through the wood. “I know you’re in there.”

  “Sonofa,” Sienna muttered, “he really is stalking me.”

  Nadine swallowed heavily, readying herself. If Sienna so much as twitched toward her, she’d scream. It might be better to just do it now, but she didn’t want to escalate this, not when it looked like reason might be prevailing as emotions warred over her face. There was both a lack of control and discipline there, it was naked and frightening, and Nadine felt sick at how close she was. She barely dared to breathe for fear that Sienna would remember she was here and turn those eyes on her once more, dark and predatory beneath the icy irises.

  “Sienna!” the shout came again.

  “Oh, hold your watery horses,” Sienna said, and turned back to Nadine, the humanity alive within her once again. “Well? Aren’t you going to answer your door?”

  Nadine stumbled away from her, not bothering to compose herself; on the way, she did her best to make herself look more frightened and disheveled. Whoever was behind it, they couldn’t be worse than the monster she’d let in already. What she’d seen in those eyes—

  Well, she wouldn’t be making the mistake of letting herself be alone in a room with Sienna Nealon again.

  She threw the door open and found a man in a dark suit on the other side. He had on black glasses that made him look like a Fed, and she couldn’t recall ever being so relieved to see the law before. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she whispered as he stepped over the threshold, his sandy blond hair thick with perspiration. Nerves? Or something else? Nadine wondered. Either way, she knew who this was, and his arrival was like the ringing of church bells heralding something good—if Nadine had believed in those silly things.

  “Sienna,” Scott Byerly said. “You need to leave.”

  Sienna Nealon just stared at him, all cold fury, her control still slipping in her grasp. Nadine had wanted to drive her to the edge, and Sienna was certainly there, though she was speaking so calmly that Nadine was almost positive she had no idea exactly how much furious emotion she was radiating. “Do I?” It was like the sound of cracking ice beneath one’s feet.

  “You do,” Byerly said, resolute as he removed his sunglasses and put them in the front pocket of his suit jacket.

  Sienna did not waver, just stood there, staring right at him, as though Nadine were not even there. Then the metahuman woman laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles, loud. “I’d like to see you try and make me,” she said, and the sound of her voice, the edges of anger seeping through it, were enough to make Nadine wish she were somewhere else—anywhere else, really—but here, as Scott Byerly tensed, his hands up in front of his face, these two former lovers with super powers about to throw down right here in her living room.

  56.

  Jamie

  After Penny had left, Jamie had gone looking for Clarice, to little avail. She’d nodded to the workers down on the floor, smiled numbly at them. She didn’t want to say anything to them, not yet, so she just nodded politely as she passed, walking with a purpose as people tried to show her what they’d done.

  She didn’t have it in her to tell them that it looked like it was all for naught.

  She couldn’t find Clarice anywhere. Not on the floor, not in the parking lot, and there was no sign of her car. She gave up after a few minutes of scouring, looking for the old Honda, and then, with a sort of deep resignation of her own, Jamie decided it was fruitless. Pointless.

  That there was nothing left for her here, at least at the moment.

  “Might as well go home,” she said to herself, feeling, truly, for the first time, as though she’d been defeated.

  There was only one problem, and it took her a few minutes to realize what it was.

  Her car was not in its space. It was gone.

  She went back inside, ignoring everyone once again as she hurried up to her office. She’d been in such a rush to find Clarice, to talk over the terrible news with her, figuring tha
t even their rift could be postponed given this horrible turn of events, that she’d left her cell phone and keys behind. She went back and fetched them from her office now, then hurried back to the parking lot and pressed the panic button on her car keys. Maybe she’d parked somewhere else in her haste to get in this morning, maybe she’d forgotten …

  Silence dwelled in the parking lot, not a sound of a horn anywhere. She pressed the panic button again, and once more, silence reigned.

  “This is not my day,” she said under her breath as she unlocked her phone. There was a voicemail waiting, and she hit the button for it by habit, forgetting she’d intended to call the police to report her car stolen.

  “Ms. Barton, this is Rhonda from Everstar Finance Company, the holder of your car loan,” said a voice that didn’t sound like it ought to belong to anyone named Rhonda. “I’m afraid your car has been repossessed due to nonpayment. We have made every effort to get you to pay what is owed—”

  “What the …?” Jamie asked, hanging up on the voicemail. Was this a joke? She’d made her car payment just the other day. And even if she hadn’t, didn’t they wait ninety days before repossessing a car? She’d certainly made last month’s payment, and the one before, hadn’t she?

  She looked at the clock on the cell phone. It was Thursday, the day Kyra didn’t ride the bus home because she had drama club. Jamie would have to go to Curtis High and pick her up, except …

  She didn’t have a car.

  Jamie felt a bead of sweat drift down her back, beneath her costume, which was hidden under her blouse. “What …” she muttered, still stunned, face burning with humiliation. She’d never missed a payment on anything before, even when it had meant she barely had money left in her account to feed Kyra and herself. “… What am I supposed to do now?”