Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38)

by Robert J. Crane

  No time at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Phinneus

  “How's it going over there, Phinneus?” Veronika asked.

  “Range to target?” Phinneus asked. He knew. He just wanted her to shut up while he did the work of pockmarking the hell out of her little trench. It wasn't deep, and he was putting his shots as close to the edge as he could.

  The dirt was already showing signs of collapse. He was going to get one in on her pretty quick, if he hadn't already.

  “1,280 meters,” Veronika said.

  “And the other agent?”

  A pause. “Down behind the car, on the phone. Calling in backup like a good girl. 1,981 meters.”

  Phinneus smiled as he chambered another bullet. 700 meters to the nearest cover. No one to save Nealon's ass this time. He smiled and prepared to deliver another bullet. Just a few more and he'd end this particular problem for good.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Sienna

  Being pinned down under unrelenting enemy fire is one of the key causes of post-traumatic stress disorder. It's not being shot at, necessarily, that gets to you.

  It's being shot and not being able to do a damned thing about it that destroys the mind. To be rained upon with fire, with anger, and to have no recourse. It's like watching a fork of lightning curl out of the sky and streak down toward you. Maybe you see it, but it's the anger of an unflinching god come to wipe you from the earth, and you are powerless against it.

  Sitting in my mini trench, I was powerless against Phinneus's onslaught. He was taking his time – or operating a bolt action rifle – and putting round after round into the dirt in front of my face. The sound of the bullets thumping into the earth was sick, reminded me a little of rounds hitting flesh. Which they'd be doing soon enough.

  I tried to distance myself from my predicament. Harry had come here, had dug me a hole in the earth because he'd known I'd need it. Now I was cowering in it, but I couldn't be helpless here. He wouldn't have just dug it for me to die in.

  A long breath. A round hit the dirt ahead of me, and I tensed involuntarily. There was no way to entirely disassociate from the situation with bullets landing this close to me.

  But I needed to try. Another breath.

  Think.

  Pistol won't reach to that treeline.

  Thank you, yes, I know this. I patted the gun on my belt anyway. No, it wouldn't reach the treeline. I could lay down suppressing fire in the general direction of Phinneus, but that'd be about it. It'd maybe make him duck for a few seconds.

  But it'd also likely result in me losing use of that hand, because his next shot would target it.

  Let's call that Plan B.

  Agreed.

  I shifted slightly. That same root was digging into my hip, and resting on it wasn't doing any favors for my nerves.

  Run?

  Get gunned down like a dog in the middle of these fields. It's a kill zone. Flat ground all the way to the edges.

  After experiencing just that yesterday at Andrews, with cover much more readily at hand, I had to agree. Running would be death. The only cover between me and the car – which was at least a third of a mile away – was the indent that I was currently in. The nearest segment of treeline had to be even farther, probably a half mile or greater.

  “Unh,” I grunted, thrusting a hand down to try and work that root out of my hip. My thumb made rough contact with smooth wood, and I froze–

  That's no root.

  Pulling it slowly toward me, I curled my head down as another bullet thudded into the dirt just above my head. I flinched involuntarily, and when I opened my eyes I saw–

  It definitely wasn't a root in my hand.

  It was a rifle.

  I smiled.

  Game on, shitbag.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Phinneus

  “Before you even ask again, yes, I've just about got her,” Phinneus said.

  And he did. The ground in front of the little hidey hole was churned up like gophers had been at it. He'd stacked the last five shots in on the same point. One of the next few would go punch through and into Nealon's damned skull.

  Phinneus took a long breath and slowly moved the knob to zoom the scope in closer. He could hit a tick off a dog's back at five hundred yards; this was going to be easy by comparison, but he needed to see to do it, so he slowly adjusted it down until the entire view was the dirt in front of her little hidey hole, and then he took a slow breath, exhaling...

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  Sienna

  “One shot,” I said. “Maybe two.” That's what I'd have.

  I closed my eyes. Pictured the scene before I'd gone for a dive into my trench.

  I listened to the crack of the bullet. Triangulated with my ears, as best I could over the ringing.

  “Target is straight ahead,” I whispered. “Woodline where the fire is coming from is over a thousand meters away.”

  The better part of a mile.

  I took another breath, trying to calm down.

  I'd practiced at the FBI Academy with the equipment of snipers. They'd wanted to test my aptitude. See what a metahuman could do.

  We'd found the answer – a little more than a normal human, but nothing spectacular. Not at those ranges.

  Not at this range.

  Which, if Phinneus was working with Chalke – which seemed probable – he'd know for a fact...

  Sienna Nealon could not make this shot.

  Not on her best day of shooting.

  And certainly not with bullets flying at her, life on the line.

  Luckily...

  ...I didn't have to.

  Slow exhale.

  Finger along the trigger.

  One shot.

  I opened my eyes, but I could still see the ghostly smile of the woman in my head who had been helping me review my options.

  No, Sienna Nealon couldn't make this shot, and wasn't going to.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  Yeah, Brianna Glover said. Let's ice this motherfucker.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Seven Months Earlier

  “Don’t do this,” I said.

  Brianna Glover turned to me, her brow deep and furrowed. “What?” Couldn't blame her for not hearing. She clearly had other things on her mind.

  We stood in a hotel room in New Orleans atop the Hotel Fantaisie, ice on the windows, blotting out the city view, and Governor Ivan Warrington of Louisiana cowering at Brianna's feet.

  She had her hand pointed at him, her ice powers surely brewing right below the surface, ready to impale him with an icicle, or freeze him into a block of statuary. Whatever lethal ice-based method she'd use for her revenge, she had him dead to rights.

  I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. “I said don’t do it.” My Glock was aimed squarely at Brianna’s back, finger gently resting upon the trigger. All it would take was the slightest pressure.

  Brianna's hair obscured her eyes, but I could see the fierce ice-blue in them. “What are you talking about?”

  “Warrington is scum,” I said. “Listen to me, because I know this—killing him isn’t going to solve anything. It won’t bring back Emily. It won’t even bring her justice. And what it’s going to do to you…it’s not worth it.”

  Brianna laughed under her breath. I detected a hint of mania there, of a woman who was standing right at the precipice of something big, ready to jump off. “How can you say that?”

  “Because I know,” I whispered. Warrington had raped her sister, Emily, when the girl was a mere teenager and a babysitter for the governor's family. It had sent her on a downward spiral of addiction and torment that had ended with her body floating in a spillway in Plaquemines Parish. “This isn’t the way. Listen, he’s guilty of other things. Guilty as sin. Help me. Help me bring him to justice.”

  “There is no justice for him,” Brianna whispered back. “Not for a man like him. He�
�s too powerful, too slippery. No one wants to go after him, not that way.” There was a flash in her eyes. She'd just decided to do it. “This is the only way.”

  “Please don’t do this.” I kept my weapon pointed, trying to steel myself to shoot a woman who was about to do something I wasn't even sure was wrong. “If you do this, I have to stop you.” It pained me, almost physically, as I said that.

  “Why?”

  “Because there are laws for a reason,” I said. “And they’re not just to protect him. We ignore them at our peril. If we just let everyone get their own justice…it starts a spiral where nobody trusts the system, and that way? Chaos lies at the bottom of that ladder. So…please. Don’t. Do. This.”

  Her hand wavered just long enough to give me a second's hope before it steadied on his head. “I can’t do that,” she said, and tensed–

  I squeezed the trigger, ripping ten bullets into her back. She dropped swiftly, thumping to the hotel room floor.

  “Thank God,” Ivan Warrington said over the ringing in my ears from all those gunshots in a confined space.

  I knelt next to Brianna and rolled her over, knowing already that she was on her way out. The rattling gasps spoke of lungs perforated beyond the ability to hold oxygen, and her metahuman power level was not high enough to allow her to heal back from this.

  She had seconds to live.

  Her eyes found mine as I held her there. I didn’t say anything, because...

  Because I had my hand along the back of her neck, skin to skin.

  She looked into my eyes, and whispered, “I just did it the way you would have.”

  The gut punch of her words hit me just as my powers started to work, and I found myself sucked into a mental white space, staring at a visual representation of Brianna Glover, who stared back at me. It was like a dreamwalk, except we were both awake, and isolated from the world around us, the chaos of the hotel room.

  “Where is this?” Brianna asked, looking around. “Am I...?” Her voice dropped. “Am I dead?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But...soon.”

  There was a flicker of understanding in those icy eyes, then a nod. “I wanted him paid back for Emily. And I tried – I tried.” She hung her head. “Why'd you have to stop me?”

  “Because it's my job,” I said, feeling the slight burn of guilt. “Because it's the law. But...it doesn't have to be over like this.”

  She looked up at me. “What do you mean? I'm dying, aren't I?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But this doesn't have to be...the end. And he doesn't have to escape justice.” I took a step closer. “I want Warrington to pay for what he's done, too. I want Emily to have justice.”

  “But you can't take the hit to your precious order?” Brianna asked with acidic sarcasm.

  “Not this way,” I said. “There's more happening here than you could believe.”

  “You don't think I understand power protecting power?” Brianna asked. “Emily and I grew up rich, Sienna; I've had very good lessons in that subject all my life.”

  “I know.” I nodded reluctantly. The world started to darken around us. “You don't have much time left.”

  “Why bring me here?” Brianna asked, looking around at the encroaching darkness. “This is torturous. It's taking forever.”

  I was silent for a long moment. “What if you could still get what you wanted? Justice on Warrington–”

  “Revenge on Warrington.” Her voice was like the ice she made.

  “Fine,” I said quietly. “Revenge on Warrington. What if you could have that?”

  She stared at me. “But I'm about to die. How?”

  I looked right at her. “You could come with me. Help me...and I'll help you.”

  She looked down, shoulders slumping, as the world darkened a few more degrees around us.

  But only a moment.

  Then the steely hard determination returned to Brianna Glover's eyes, fire melted the ice in them, and she looked at me with newly forged determination. “If it ends with that asshole in a casket, you can count me in for whatever you need.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Phinneus

  “She's moving around in there,” Veronika announced.

  Phinneus fired another shot, jacking the bolt back to chamber another. Shit, magazine was out. Time to reload. He did so speedily, slamming the magazine home, using muscle memory to aid him. He jacked the bolt back, ready to put his next round down field. With care, he settled back into place, and sighted on the dirt in front of Nealon.

  “Phinneus!” Veronika called, alarm plain in her voice, “Nealon's up – and she's got a rifle!”

  That took a quarter second for him to process, and he started to raise his own weapon as he did, settling it on her. Sure enough, there she was, with a rifle of her own, sticking her head up just far enough to be peering at him. “Doesn't matter,” he said, putting the crosshairs on her. “She doesn't have the skill to make–”

  The crack of her rifle firing was followed a breath later by sudden, sharp, striking pressure on Phinneus's eye. Something struck him, struck him hard, and then blasted back through his head like he'd been punched–

  He slumped forward, muscle control gone. Veronika made a noise, but he couldn't tell what. Hard to think, suddenly. Couldn't...concentrate. Couldn't–

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  Sienna

  I watched through the scope as Phinneus's head exploded into pink mist, then took a breath once it was done. I could see motion next to him, a figure spurred to run, a flash of reddish hair disappearing behind a tree before I could draw a bead.

  That was fine. Veronika could run; I'd taken out the sniper.

  I drew another breath, trying to soothe myself as my heart raced. I slid back into my trench for a second, letting the sun shine down on me as I felt the rush start to fade, the peril over – for now.

  “Thank you, Brianna,” I whispered.

  Always nice to be needed.

  “I couldn't have made it through this year without you,” I said.

  Speaking of – what now?

  I tightened my grip on the rifle, my eyes slitting suspiciously. “Now?” I felt my lips turn to a stiff line, then purse as I contemplated the next course of action. It seemed obvious to me, but probably wasn't obvious to anyone else.

  Yeah...I knew exactly what I was going to do next.

  CHAPTER NINETY

  Chapman

  “She just killed Phinneus,” Veronika said over the open line. Brush was crashing in the background, presumably as she ran. “With a rifle. Not sure how she got it.”

  “Wait, what?” Chapman was still suffering from the East Coast-West Coast time change, and boy was he feeling it now. He'd stayed up late, glorying in the planning of this ambush. The downside to the plan was that he wasn't going to be able to watch any of it. The place it was happening was so secluded, so distant from any cameras, that unless he wanted to wire the field for sound – which would be a nice trail of evidence straight to him in addition to being prohibitively difficult on such short notice – he was going to have to go dark for this one. To trust the people he hired to do the job.

  Obviously, that had been a mistake.

  “Phinneus is dead,” Veronika said.

  “I thought this ambush was supposed to be perfect,” Chapman said, sitting bolt upright. “You were going to catch her in the middle of a field. An 'easy shot' Phinneus called it. So much distance between you and her that she'd be helpless.”

  “Well, she wasn't helpless,” Veronika said over the crashing of brush and panting as she ran, audibly. “Nealon had a rifle somehow. And a little trench. In the middle of the field.”

  Chapman put a hand on his face. “That...that doesn't make any sense. I thought you scoured the field. Set the ambush.”

  “Phinneus did – I thought. I looked, too.” She panted. “Apparently we missed something.”

  “How could you miss – ungh!” Chapman made a noise of supreme frustratio
n. They'd had one job, a single job, and couldn't even fulfill it. Why? Who knew. It seemed to be a pattern in his life, though. “This should have been perfect. On paper, it was perfect.”

  “Well, as tends to happen in the real world, perfect is a theory that never comes into being.”

  “Fine,” Chapman said, though it was most clearly not. “What are you doing now?”

  “Getting the hell away from Nealon and trying not to get shot dead like Phinneus, that's what!”

  “Go back to a neutral location when you're done,” Chapman said. “I'll call you later.” And he hung up, nothing more to say to her now – or maybe ever.

  He started to throw his phone – but wait, he needed it. He hit the button for Escapade, and started to type.

  CHAPMAN: Nealon escaped our perfect trap.

  KORY: What?! How?!

  CHALKE: I just got the call on that, too. Hilton said she came up with a rifle out of nowhere.

  Chapman's mind raced furiously. An obvious idea came to him.

  CHAPMAN: Any chance you want to pull a plan B here, Chalke?

  BYRD: lol whats plan b

  KORY: You mean...?

  CHALKE: Kind of an obvious move. Maybe a little too bold. And the failure potential is huge if it goes wrong. Lots of exposure. Maybe even if it goes right.

  CHAPMAN: What, you think *this* move was understated? We just tried to sniper her to death and failed because - I honestly don't know how we failed. I assume betrayal, though.

  Which...that got his mind racing. If they were betrayed, how did it happen?

  And was it happening again, right now?

  If so, who was responsible for selling them out? It seemed hard to believe that Nealon herself would have walked into that trap if she'd known it was coming.

  CHALKE: Having some thoughts about how this fell apart.