When she came back around, Sienna had Edward Cavanagh in her grasp, his head lolling back and his body limp.
“Is he …?” I asked, pointing. The night was quiet save for the sound of sirens coming from somewhere in the distance.
“He’ll live to stand trial,” she said and dumped him in a pile at our feet. “Won’t he, Jamal?” She looked at my brother, and he turned his head to avoid my gaze.
“Guess we’ll see,” Jamal said, but he couldn’t hide the little bolt of electricity that ran down his arm as he said it. “But I won’t be doing it here.” He locked eyes with me. “Got to go, brother.”
The words, “You don’t have to,” died on my lips. There was pain in his eyes, and I knew he didn’t regret Roscoe or Kennith or Joaquin. “Where are you going to go?” I asked instead.
“I’d like to go anywhere but here,” he said and turned his attention to Sienna. “What about you? You going to stop me?”
She took a long breath and sighed. “You going to kill anyone else?”
Jamal’s lips pressed together tight for a minute before he answered. “I don’t know. I don’t aim to.”
“That’s a start,” she said and lowered her head. “Go on. Get out of here. Don’t let me catch you breaking the law again.”
My brother stood there in silence for a moment and gave me one last look before he ran off into the night. I listened to his footsteps disappear into the dark, and I wondered if I’d ever see him again.
52.
Sienna
Detective Marcus Calderon made my life easier, thankfully. He could have been a real prick about the whole incident, could have doubted every word I said, but instead he listened with guarded skepticism while Augustus, Taneshia and I told the whole story.
“So … Cavanagh kidnapped people through this unauthorized lab and experimented on them to create powers?” Calderon asked, looking about as long suffering as any guy I’d ever seen.
“With the aid of Cordell Weldon and all his organizations,” Augustus said, the red and blue police lights flashing across his face.
Calderon leaned back against the police car he’d been standing next to. “I’m going to need so much antacid to make it through this night. I’m going to need to drink the whole bottle and then chew the little pills like they’re breath mints.” He shook his head.
I was almost afraid to ask the follow-up question. “So … do you believe me?”
He looked at me, once again, like I was an idiot. “It’s an insane story, accusing two of the most powerful men in the area of absolute corruption and greed in the course of attempting a Nazi-like genetics experiment that nobody noticed.” He sighed. “Of course I believe you.”
“Well, okay then,” I said and felt a small sense of relief. “What do we do?”
“How do we contain Cavanagh if he’s got these powers?” Calderon asked. “Seems to me that if the man can affect gravity, we’re not going to be able to put him in a conventional cell.”
“I’ve already called for transport,” I said, “but … this one’s unique. I’ve already got a call in for an injectable version of suppressant, because I’m not sure our standard containment unit will be able to hold him.”
“When does that show up?” Calderon asked, looking at Cavanagh’s limp and unconscious form.
“I don’t know,” I said and felt a nervous rumble in my stomach. “I think my agency is still deciding whether or not to fulfill the request.”
Calderon gave me the eye. “You really did step in it, didn’t you?”
“All the way up to the knee, at least,” I said. “Maybe even to the hip, this time.”
“Mmhmm,” Calderon said, shaking his head. “Cordell Weldon and Edward Cavanagh. You don’t aim small.”
“Heroes don’t punch down,” I said and felt Augustus’s very uncomfortable gaze settle on me. “At least not very hard. Or something. I heard that once. Probably while I was punching someone on the ground.”
Calderon put a hand around my upper arm and gently led me away from Taneshia and Augustus, who were watching every word between us like they were expecting something. I let him because it was kind of cute. “Let me handle the press?” Calderon asked, eyeing me. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that expression.
“They’re all yours,” I said. “How are your superiors going to take this?”
“The governor has directed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to lend a hand,” Calderon said. “Which of course pissed off the mayor and the council, including Weldon. No one quite predicted that. I hear the feds are going to land on Atlanta’s side, but it’s becoming quite the jurisdictional fight. Until that settles out, though, the governor is in charge and seems to be more on … your side, let’s say.”
“How do we go after Weldon?” I asked, throwing a mental thanks to Senator Robb Foreman for keeping his word to me.
Calderon shook his head. “Won’t be easy. Any chance your boy here would like to confess?” He bumped Cavanagh with the toe of his wingtip, nudging him as if he were testing to see if he was still alive.
Cavanagh stirred, rolling his head back, his hands cuffed eight times behind him. His drowsy eyes found Calderon’s and blinked sleepily. “I’d like to make a full confession. If I’m going down for this … that bastard Weldon is coming with me.”
I stared at Cavanagh for a full five seconds before looking to Calderon, whose jaw was down. “Let me, uh … read you your rights, and then we can get this show on the road, if that’s all right …?” He glanced at me and then ran for his car, waving at every cop he could find in a close radius, trying to get as many witnesses as he could for this.
I just stood back and listened as Edward Cavanagh spun a story I’d already heard in front of about thirty cell phone cameras while I let my eyes drift over the cars parked nearby. I eventually found the one I was looking for, a black sedan with North Carolina tags, but I didn’t approach it or say anything. Why would I? Cavanagh was talking, he wasn’t resisting, and everything was coming up roses.
Fifteen minutes later, we were ready to arrest Cordell Weldon.
53.
Augustus
You ever have a hero? Someone you watched from a distance do incredible things, things that made you admire them? Maybe it was taking a principled stand under pressure. Maybe it was stepping in front of a punch meant for the little guy. Maybe it was just calling someone powerful out on a wrong they’d done.
I thought I’d seen Cordell Weldon do those things. But what’d I’d really seen was Cordell Weldon doing what he thought people wanted to see.
I’d gone by his office building before, just to see it from the outside. Nice three-story brick building not far from home, with Atlanta’s skyline as a backdrop. The whole city was lit up when we came to Cordell Weldon’s office, because it was the middle of the night.
And Weldon’s lights were on.
This was only our first stop, though. Detective Calderon had already pulled up Weldon’s home address, because we figured he wasn’t going to be at work at this hour.
His home address wasn’t anywhere near my home address, that was for certain. Dude lived in the burbs, far from the neighborhood. I had no idea. No one I knew had ever mentioned that.
At that point, I wondered if I’d ever known anything about Cordell Weldon at all, really.
Taneshia and I went in through the front door while Sienna took the back stairs, cops with us every step of the way. They took us along because while Cavanagh claimed Weldon hadn’t ever taken any of the meta serum that would give him powers, none of us fully believed him. And I sensed that once they’d heard the story, most of the cops were all too happy to drag Cordell Weldon out into the street with a particular glee. He hadn’t always been the kindest to them, after all.
Weldon’s assistant wasn’t at her desk, and when I busted open his doors we found her under his. Heard a thump under the desk, that’s how we knew. When the cops shouted, “Police!” she came scrambling out with
her hands up. Sienna and her crew of cops came in through the side door, filing in through the shattered frame.
We had actually caught Cordell Weldon with his pants down in every sense of the phrase, and I wasn’t too proud to be amused by it, though Taneshia looked a little embarrassed. Sienna just looked tickled pink. No, really, her cheeks were pink, and there was laughter in her eyes. Rare thing for her, I think.
Weldon looked at us, pure fury embodied in that wiry frame. His eyes, always all business, now were calculating where to direct the lash. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked, keeping one hand below his desk as a couple detectives pulled his secretary out of the room.
I felt a little bad for him, then I saw the picture of him with his wife and five kids, and I didn’t feel that bad anymore. “Cordell Weldon,” Detective Calderon said, “you’re under arrest.”
“For what?” Weldon said, standing up as he zipped his pants.
“Conspiracy to commit murder is a good start,” Calderon said. “I’ll let one of these officers read you your rights, though I’m sure you’re familiar with them by now.”
“What I’m familiar with,” Weldon said, seething, “is a police department that’s so petty that they’ll take the word of a proven liar like Ms. Nealon here—”
“We have a full confession from Edward Cavanagh,” Calderon said.
Weldon paused, appropriately stunned. I gave him about five seconds before he came up with a reply to that.
It only took four. I counted. “If you think I’m going to just stand idly by while that man—”
“A.k.a one of your biggest donors and a close personal friend,” Sienna interjected.
“—smears my reputation in the community,” Weldon said, “you’re fooling yourselves. This is not going to end well for you. You’re making enemies here. Powerful enemies.”
“I’ve had some of those,” Sienna said loudly. “Of course, mine were the sort that could actually throw fire at you, whereas yours were the sort that could maybe toss a political favor your way, but … hey, we come from different worlds.”
The lines around Weldon’s eyes grew taut. “You haven’t heard the last of me, Ms. Nealon, and you’re a fool if you think any of this will stick.”
“I dunno,” she said and sort of gestured at his pants, “you look like you might be sticky.” I blanched and looked away. “Take him away,” she said, and I heard a few laughs as they did so, along with an officer reading Weldon’s rights to him as the cuffs clicked on. “Hey, Weldon,” she said, and he turned in the grasp of the cops. “Remember how you said it doesn’t matter what you do, it matters what you’re seen doing?” She clucked at him. “You might want to rethink that philosophy, because nowadays … someone’s always watching.”
“‘Someone’s always watching’?” I asked her after they’d led him away. I stood next to Taneshia, admiring Cordell Weldon’s leather couch in the corner of his office. I was tempted to just throw myself upon it since I didn’t exactly have a home anymore, but considering how we’d just found him, I decided against it.
“What’s that old Ben Franklin quote?” she asked, thinking about it.
“‘Three men may keep a secret if two are dead,’” Taneshia said in a low voice.
“Seems like however many men were involved in this, they kept the secret pretty well for a good long time,” I said. “Years.”
“It always comes back sooner or later,” Sienna said, and the look on her face went resolute, traced with sadness. “Can’t outrun the past forever. It’s part of you.”
“That’s grim,” I said.
“It’s truth.”
“I don’t know if I agree with that,” I said. “What’s the point of life if you can’t change? Life is change. Otherwise we’d just be hitting the same notes day after day. No,” I shook my head, “I don’t believe that. I think people can change—if they want to. But,” I shrugged, “that’s coming from a guy who two days ago was just a normal dude who was going to have his college paid for by an employer that’s now probably going to … collapse under the weight of more indictments than the Capone organization.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it, kid,” Sienna said, a little too smug. She was in her patronizing mode again, and she only seemed to pull that out when she was being defensive. But I was onto that game now.
“Hey,” I said, catching her before she turned away. The cops were clearing out, heading downstairs, probably radioing for backup for their backup, ready to throw up a cordon and watch the place ’til sunrise so they could soak up some more overtime. “You may fool everyone else,” I said, so low that no one else could hear me but her and Taneshia, “but Cavanagh, when he thought he had us over a barrel—he never had you over a barrel. You could have dodged that fool Laverne’s bullet at any time and just let the lab blow up around you.”
Her smug smile vanished. “I—that would have—”
I stepped closer. “The press may not acknowledge it, the newspapers may not print it, hell, maybe no one will ever know but Taneshia and me, but … you saved our lives tonight. You may be too hard sometimes, but you’re still a hero.”
“I don’t …” she let her head sink, unable to meet my eyes, “I …”
“Maybe you ought to let someone save you sometime,” I said and squeezed her shoulder. She looked at my hand like I’d imagine a white blood cell looked at a virus: foreign invader! Destroy! Destroy! But she didn’t act on that, and a moment later, her expression softened.
“You can’t save me from the choices I’ve made,” she said, and there was a dark undercurrent beneath the soft voice. “They’re like a wedge that I’ve driven between me and everyone I know.”
What do you even say to something like that? I thought about trying to be serious, but she cleared her expression a moment later, went back to neutral, and I knew the discussion was over. “You know what else comes in a wedge? Pizza and pie, and I want both,” I said.
She nodded. “I could eat.” She looked at Taneshia.
Taneshia rolled her shoulder, testing out her back like it still hurt. “I’m starving. And I know this great place just down the road from Georgia Tech. They’re open all night.”
“I’m in on that,” I said, following them to the door. I felt a little tweak of regret thinking about Cavanagh Tech and my lost opportunity. That stung. Two years of work for nothing. I sighed and followed them out, though. The sun would come up tomorrow, after all, and there’d almost certainly be some other opportunity that would come along for a man in my situation. A man of my means? No, that wasn’t right. Whatever the case …
Something would come along for this somebody.
54.
Sienna
I found the black sedan with the North Carolina plates later, after both pizza and pie, about a mile from the precinct. I had a feeling that I was supposed to, because when I was flying over, it was right there, parked down an alley that was blind on two sides.
I descended in a flash, trying to remain unseen. It was unlikely, given the dim lighting in this area, that anyone would be seeing me, but I took precautions nonetheless. A moment after I landed, noiseless, the night air washing against my warm skin, the car door opened and Agent Faraday of the United States Secret Service stepped out.
“You armed?” he asked.
“Always,” I said. “You don’t even need to ask from now on, just assume I am.”
He gave me that wary look, then shook his head and got back in the car. The back passenger side door opened on its own and Senator Robb Foreman of Tennessee stepped out, buttoning up the bottom two buttons of his suit as he did so. Classic gentleman, that one.
“Good evening, sir,” I said, carefully walking the line between respect and contempt. Foreman should have been honored; I usually didn’t come anywhere close to that line. I was firmly on one side for 95% of my life, so this was a concession.
“Hello, Sienna,” he said, not making much in the way of concessions himself. But that w
as a politician for you; they never wanted to make a concession, especially in speech form. “I know it’s summer out, but it sure does feel a lot like Christmas.”
“I didn’t know you were planning to use your powers to pound on them while they were down,” I said, crossing my arms. “I just figured you’d use your influence.”
He looked amused. “I don’t know how much influence you think I have as a junior senator, but it’s less than you think.”
“What about as a presidential candidate who just watched the other party take a direct hit to the nuts?” I asked.
“Small-time scandal,” Foreman said. “The press won’t make too much hay out of this one. Blogs and news media will have a field day, and it’ll make enough of an impact to cause a stir around here, but don’t anticipate Cavanagh or Weldon’s departures to be nationally significant except for the sudden lack of PAC donations Cavanagh will be making. Still and all, I have no complaints.”
“Did you …” I wanted to be careful here in what I suggested.
“You know I can’t force a thought into someone’s mind, Sienna,” Foreman said, and I felt heat in my cheeks from the chastening. “I can, however, pull on a very narrow emotional thread—say, someone like Edward Cavanagh’s deep-seated feelings of guilt, inadequacy and mommy issues—and make them want to do the right thing by confessing all their sins in the heat of the moment.”
“That would explain a few of the curiouser things he confessed,” I said.
“That man was a little damaged,” Foreman said. “Or so I assume from the state of his emotions.”
“Did you know what he created in that lab?” I asked. Foreman shook his head. “Metahuman abilities in a bottle. A serum that unlocks the powers hidden in our genetic code.”
Foreman had a slightly stricken look on his face at that, and he looked aside while mopping his brow where sweat was starting to pop up. “Well, that’s a genie that’s going to be hella-hard to squeeze back into a bottle.”
Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) Page 27
