“Are you okay?” I asked, taking a couple steps toward her.
“I oughta be asking you that,” she said, and then she coughed, a long, hacking cough that belched out black smoke from her mouth.
“I’m not the one who just inhaled a whole house full of carcinogens,” I said.
“I did not,” she said, trying to get back to her feet.
“You realize that the fire was burning like—the cleaning fluid under the sink, the insulation in the walls, the treatment on the wood they built the house with? So … yeah, you kinda did.”
She coughed again. “Should have just used the hands, I guess. Felt like breathing in the fire would dispel it faster.” She looked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot. “What about your mom?”
“I’m over here,” came Momma’s voice from behind me. I spun and she was there, a blanket around her even though it was ninety degrees outside. “I’m fine.”
I felt a quick rush of relief that was replaced by panic. “Where’s Jamal?”
“Wasn’t home,” she said, shaking her head. “I checked his room before I got out.”
“Where is he?” I asked, taking a few steps closer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But he’s not here.”
I felt my legs give out, and I sagged to the lawn, felt the strange embrace of the dirt as I touched down. I could feel it, could feel it from inside as well as against my legs. My butt hit the ground hard, but the ground pushed back, cushioning my fall.
The firefighters and the crowd kept their distance, that same chatter rising now. No one could ignore it as it was, but when I looked at Sienna, she wore an expression of strange indifference. “Now are you all right?”
I put my head in my hands, in exhaustion and relief. “Man. Yesterday was the best day of my life. This one … it’s the worst.”
She ambled over and wearily sat down beside me. “Yeah. This …” she waved a hand to encompass the wreckage of my house. “It’s … terrible.”
“I don’t think terrible quite covers it,” I said, looking at the wreckage of my house. “We’ve lived in this house my whole life. This was …” I felt a prevailing sense of emptiness, a sick feeling in my stomach, as I stared at the smoking wreckage, “… this was my home.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s tough.”
“How would you know?” I snapped.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “You know when the press first filmed me? At my house, where I’d just had a climactic battle with Sovereign that ended in a gigantic hole in my childhood home from basement to roof?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a little deflated. “Yeah. Maybe you do know.” I put my head down. “Is that even covered by insurance?”
She sounded pained when she answered. “Meta damage is currently being argued as ‘act of god’—little g—and headed toward the Supreme Court next year, probably.”
“Worst day,” I said, moaning. “Worst. Day. Ever.”
“You’re alive,” she said, still sitting next to me. “Your family is alive. And if you were looking to prove yourself a hero, you’re certainly being given ample chance, and so far you’ve come up aces.”
“Aces?” I raised my head to look at her with incredulity. “I just killed people!”
“You did what?!” Momma called from behind me.
“Nothing!” I shouted back.
“Faceless flunkies,” she said, dismissively. “They always get killed. It’s a rule, hard and fast, and I didn’t make it up. Watch any action movie.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“All right, fine,” she said. “Look … here’s the thing about heroes and what you’ve got here … they’re self-sacrificing.”
“You say that like you know it from experience.” I was about two steps from just curling up on the lawn in a fetal position and calling it a day. Let the earth wrap me in its tender embrace and rock me to sleep.
She seemed a little more reserved when she spoke again. “Look, I know who I am, and I know who you thought I was before you met me …” she sighed. “I’m not a hero. But I have worked with people who have those qualities. My brother. A guy named Breandan who died …” she got quiet, “… to protect others. And … my mom.” She almost sounded like she choked a little on that bit. “Sometimes being a hero means giving of yourself in ways that you don’t want to give. Your time. Your relationships.” All that snark and irony she usually spit out with every word was gone right now. “Maybe even, someday, your life.
“See,” she went on, “for most people, heroes are an empty vessel. You pour your highest hopes into your heroes. You carve the virtues in their soul that you wish were in your own. Which is why, when they fail to live up to those … it’s easy to hate them.” I could tell she was aiming for cool indifference, but failing. Her voice was thick with emotion.
“Not everyone hates you,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m not a hero. That ship sailed long ago, and I chose to be a … I don’t even know anymore. Not a hero. But you … you could be one.”
I blinked. “Yeah?”
“You certainly have more of the go-to qualities than I do,” she said. “You were actually trying not to hurt people, but you failed because of lack of control of your powers. Well, you can learn control. And if you accidentally kill a few people who are actively trying to kill you, that doesn’t make you … whatever I am. You just need to work harder to be able to live up to your ideals.”
I nodded slowly. She spoke an odd brand of sense. “So,” I said, “what do you think you are?”
“Question for another day,” she said, “because right now I’m just a superior troublemaker and a piss-poor detective, in that order, and neither one of those is going to help us get to the bottom of this.”
“Seems like we have a cast of suspicious characters,” I said. “Cavanagh. Weldon—”
She smiled lightly but didn’t look at me. “So you believe me on that one now?”
“Man, I don’t know what to believe,” I said. “Heroes are villains, villains are heroes. Down is up, up is down. This world has gone crazy.”
“Same old world,” she said. “Now you’re just seeing it the way it is, maybe.”
“Don’t give me that depressing crap,” I said. “You really are secretly a crabby old white man, aren’t you, Obi-Wan?”
“Alec Guinness didn’t seem too crabby,” she said. “Ewan McGregor kind of did at times, though. And Yoda was like the quintessence of cranky, so … I’ll take it, I suppose.”
“So you’re not a good detective,” I said. “What do we do?”
“Hell if I know,” she said. “The problem with having all this power is that I thrive on a clear enemy. Mysteries suck because they always deprive me of an obvious face to punch. You can’t punch the face of an enemy you can’t see.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t go punching Cordell Weldon or Edward Cavanagh unless you have some compelling evidence,” I said, cringing at the mere thought. “And how does lightning man tie into all this? And what are those guys up to?”
“This is why I don’t function well under the same rules as the rest of you,” she said, pushing her hair back. “It’s just so much easier to start breaking random legs until someone cops to doing bad things.” She paused. “And kinda more fun, too.”
“Let’s start with some questions, detective,” I said, trying to steer her away from that course. “Momma!” I called, and she wandered over, still with the blanket around her shoulders. “What happened here?”
She stared at me like I’d gotten hit upside the head. “The house burned down, you fool boy. What does it look like?”
“How’d the fire start?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know, exactly. I was watching TV, and I thought I heard someone yelling outside. When I went to look out the window, there was someone in a hood that shot lightning out of their hands and onto
the roof. It happened so fast.” She shook her head.
“Lightning man burned my house down,” I said. “He is definitely on my shit list now.”
“Watch your mouth,” Momma said.
“I feel like you’re a little late to the game,” Sienna said. “He’s been on my shit list from the beginning.”
Momma scowled at her. “If I had my soap, I’d be washing both your foul mouths out with it right now.”
“Like you never swear,” I said, drawing a spiteful look from her. My house just burned down. I was emotional.
“We’ve got Cavanagh and Weldon,” Sienna said.
“Best buddies, I might add,” I said. “Weldon convinced Cavanagh to build his factory here.”
“Weldon repays the favor by giving Cavanagh access to test subjects from his homeless shelter?” she asked.
“That’s real dirty,” I said, “but plausible, maybe.”
“What did you just say?” Momma asked. “Did you just accuse Mr. Cavanagh and Mr. Weldon of something? Boy, did you not ever learn not to shit where you eat?”
“Language, Momma,” I said with a grin that I could see just burned her up. She fumed. Momma did not believe that what was good for the goose was good for the gander.
“So how are Roscoe Marion and Kennith Coy connected to Flora Romero and Joaquin Pollard?” Sienna asked.
The smoke got in my eyes, making me rub them while I thought. “Flora Romero finds out what Weldon’s doing, and threatens to blow the whistle. Cavanagh and Weldon send Pollard, a criminal on their payroll, to kill her, then cover the killing by killing the killer.” I paused. “I feel tongue-tied after saying killer that many times in a row.”
“Oh, Lord,” Momma said. “I’m not hearing any of this.”
“Reasonable supposition,” Sienna said. “So how are Coy and Marion related?”
“Marion worked for Cavanagh at this new lab,” I said, brainstorming. “Maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.”
“And Coy?” she asked.
“Ex-criminal, like Pollard,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know. We’re missing something.”
“We’re missing a lot of somethings,” she said. “Like motive for Weldon and Cavanagh to experiment on those homeless guys. I mean, I know in the movies it’s cool to just target the nearest rich guy or politician in a massive conspiracy, but here in the real world we need a stronger through-line for them to act like assholes if we’re going to prove they’re committing murder.”
“Prove what?” I turned to see that detective, Calderon, standing there behind us. He just looked jaded as hell, shaking his head. “Some wild-ass conspiracy linking two of the most powerful men in the city?”
“We were just spitballing,” Sienna said, suddenly sitting up a lot more attentively now that Calderon was here.
“I heard,” Calderon said, shaking his head. “I heard it all, and I have to tell you … at least you’ve got a good grasp of how gaping the holes in that fantastical plot are.”
“They are gaping,” she admitted, “but since it’s not you investigating them, I guess it doesn’t really matter, because you’re not the one who has to find the evidence to fill them.”
He just looked tired and shook his head. “There is no evidence to fill a hole that big, and you’re not going to have a chance to look for it in any case.”
“You planning to obstruct my search for justice, detective?” Sienna asked, staring him down.
“I’m not going to do anything,” Calderon said. “Except warn you that the mayor of Atlanta is having a press conference in an hour to announce that you’re being asked to leave the city. The White House is going to have one of their regularly scheduled briefings about thirty minutes later, and when the question comes up, it’ll be mentioned that you’ve just decided to not follow any orders sent your way by your head of agency.” He turned his head, shaking it all the while. “Go home, Sienna. Go home before you get yourself fired. Or worse … before they get the governor to call the National Guard out to go head-to-head with you.”
She was on her feet in a hot second. “This isn’t right, Calderon, and you know it. Something’s going on here, and Weldon is pulling every string he has a grip on to shut us down.”
When Calderon turned around, he had the look of a man who’d just given up. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he is. But you’ve gone and stirred up such a hornet’s nest that if there ever was proof for what you’re accusing the man of, you’ll never find it before it gets destroyed.” He shook his head. “Good luck, Sienna.”
“Good luck?” she snorted. “That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s all I’ve got to give you,” he said and started away again. “And if you keep doing the same crazy-ass crap you’ve been doing … you’re damned sure going to need it.”
33.
Sienna
Calderon’s words burned like the fire I’d absorbed earlier, took the feelings I’d been harboring inside—all the insecurity about not being a hero, about not being good enough to figure this out—and dumped gasoline all over it. I’ve been accused of being stubborn—an accusation which I’ve never denied—but in that moment, my motivation cranked from “I need to solve this mystery because it’s important to maintain order and justice,” to “Fuck you all, I’m going to expose this travesty and then cram it all down your throats like bad sushi just to watch you choke on it while it’s going down and vomit it up later.”
It might also have activated this tiny little part of me that thrived on spite, but we’ll talk about that later. (It’s not that tiny.)
“Darrick Cary,” I said, and Augustus turned his head to look at me.
“What about him?” he asked.
“I had a conversation with him earlier,” I said. “He seemed to indicate there was something about Cordell Weldon that I wouldn’t believe if he told me.”
Augustus eyed me. “And?”
“And like the Ghostbusters motto says, ‘We’re ready to believe you,’” I said. “I want to find him, and I want him to talk, and I want to take his words and parlay them into a spear with which I can gut Cordell Weldon and Edward Cavanagh in a public forum.”
Momma’s eyes got wide with panic, and I’ll admit I’d forgotten she was there for a minute. “Oh, Lord, please tell me you’re not being literal.”
“She’s not being literal, Momma,” Augustus rushed to assure her. His eyes ticked back and forth in thought. “Probably. Probably not being literal.”
“Oh, Lord,” Momma said, and I worried for a second that she was going to collapse on the lawn. “Oh, sweet Jesus, deliver me from this, my hour of trouble.”
“Problem is now,” Augustus said, “how do we get to Darrick? Because I’m guessing after your conversation with him—if it went anything like the ones I saw you have with people—he’ll be about halfway to Memphis by now.”
“Hah,” I said as I pulled out my phone, “you underestimate my skill with people.”
Augustus just gave me a look. “I thought I was being fairly generous, to be honest. I know he drives a Corvette. He’s probably actually halfway to California by now.”
“Oh, shush,” I said as the phone rang. I had to hope that my persona non grata-ness had not been fully communicated to my own organization yet.
“Hey, Sienna,” J.J. said in that high voice as he picked up, “I heard you’re, like, on the lam or something.”
“Yes, I’m a veritable tzatziki sauce,” I said, getting a weird look from Augustus. “I need your help, J.J.”
“Of course you do,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Thing is, I’m not supposed to help you. I’m supposed to transfer your call straight to Director Phillips.”
I stood there in the middle of Augustus’s lawn with the scorched-out remains of his house in front of me, stink of smoke heavy in the air. “And are you going to do that, J.J.?”
“Hellz to the no,” J.J. said. “As we speak I’m erasing all trac
e of this phone call from your records and mine, though, just to be safe. I don’t really want to lose this job, but if I get caught by the brainless trust around here, I so deserve it and have like, five way better offers lined up out in the private sector doing soulless work anyway.”
I thought about that for a second and just went ahead and bit. “So, why do you stay with the agency then?”
“Because sometimes I get to do really awesome things that aren’t really in the bounds of what is, strictly speaking, ‘legal.’ And my anus is just too tender and virginal to chance prison. So,” he said, “what exciting bit of almost or complete illegality am I performing today?”
“I need to find a guy,” I said. “His name’s Darrick Cary, and he drives a brand new red Corvette.”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” he said, and I could hear him pecking away at the keys. “Is Mr. Cary going to come to a black-licorice-bitter end?”
I frowned. “Black licorice isn’t really bitter. It just tastes like—I dunno, probably like your tender and virginal anus.” That one earned me another “WTF,” look from Augustus.
“I’m just asking,” J.J. said, “because if he’s driving a Corvette, they’ve got this security vulnerability that I can hack, and it could totally look like an accident when he plows into a telephone pole at sixty. Sometimes air bags just don’t deploy. It happens.”
“No!” I said, a little too fervently. “Ah … no, J.J. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t …” I lowered my voice. “Did you just offer to kill someone for me? Because that’s worrisome.” Worrisome? There might have been a time when I considered it awesome, actually. What was wrong with me?
“Technically, the velocity would kill him,” J.J. said, a little too breezy for even my taste, “but no, I wouldn’t do it myself. I’d basically send you an app that would let you do it with the press of a few buttons, thus keeping my hands mostly clean of human deaths. I kinda prefer to empower others rather than do it all for them. Teach a man to fish and all that.”
My head was spinning from the whole conversation and its implications. “Can you locate this guy for me or what?”
Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) Page 18
