Powerless (The Girl in the Box Book 40), page 25
“Wait, Ariadne had guns?” I blinked back my surprise. But I shouldn't have been surprised. And I should have asked. Because those would have been real handy if she'd lent me one.
“Also, a small quantity of marijuana.”
“Ariadne had weed?” My head snapped back again, and then I sagged. “Wait, you're not going to charge me for–”
She shook her head. “It won't be part of the grand jury case, the quantity is too small.” Her eyes glinted. “Besides, we have larger issues at play here.”
Lucky me. Usually possession was the hammer that prosecutors used to plead a suspect down. Charge large with robbery, assault, vehicular mayhem or manslaughter, plea to possession of a controlled substance, do a year or so. The prosecutor got saved having to go to trial, the defendant got some time, and they call it justice and everybody goes home. You know, after the jail time. I couldn't remember if Minnesota had decriminalized pot while I'd been gone. Not that it mattered much to me either way, since I'd never been in a position where I could have been charged for possession. Until now, apparently. Thanks, Ariadne.
“You'll be hearing from us again,” she said. “If you change your mind and decide to talk–”
“I have literally nothing to say to you people that won't be delivered through my attorney,” I said, and wiped some more blood on my sleeve. “I hope you're ready for an endless fusillade of subpoenas about your buddy's police brutality case, because it's coming.”
Mann cringed slightly, but tried to play it off with indifference. “You do what you have to. I will, too.”
I shook my head. “You'd think sifting through my shit, you'd realize I'm not engaging in criminal behavior. But I suppose you're more of a Beriya type: 'Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.'”
“Not sure who that is,” Mann said, shrugging it off.
I looked past her for Aniya, figuring she'd be out in the bullpen. “Of course you don't. You probably don't know who Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is, either.” I could tell by the blank look that she didn't. “Where are my colleagues?”
“The only person here is the lady who was with you when we arrived,” Mann said with another shrug. “The Russian woman. The buried prisoner one.”
So she knew who Aniya was, at least. “Olivia's probably hanging out in the parking lot, trying to avoid getting darted,” I mumbled under my breath. “Smart. I–”
Whatever I was going to say was interrupted by Lt. Mann. “I wouldn't say that. Avoiding us is only going to make things wor–”
The office door rattled on its broken hinges, audible even to my (now) non-meta ears. I had barely gotten my face into a scowl of concentration, trying to work out what the hell was happening when a powerful WHUMP reached my ears, a sound like a human being getting hit by a car, emanated from the bullpen.
Then it happened again. Several times, in quick succession.
Screams of pain followed, as did the crack of bones, and I heard Aniya cry out in surprise. Guess she was still out there, hanging out in a corner or whatever, privy to the show.
I leapt over the desk and shoved past Mann, who was standing there gawking, not even going for her weapon. She'd seen something happening out there but was too stunned to react.
Not me, though. Powerless and in pain, and 99 percent sure I knew what I was facing, I still shoved past her, unarmed, to go deal with the bullshit that was going down.
“All right, knock it off!” I shouted as a figure blurred past me. “Unless you want to play slip and slide out my office window.” I gestured to the far end of the bullpen with a wave of my broken hand.
The blur stopped, resolving into Squirrel, at the farthest point from me in the bullpen he could stand and not be outside. “Hi,” he said with a near-psychotic grin that split his small face...and a pile of broken and injured cops at his feet.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“Can't you see we're CLOSED?” I threw an arm in the direction of the door.
“You're kinda bleeding,” he said, and for the first time, I realized he was speaking so fast he was almost chittering. Like...yes, a squirrel.
“It's been a rough day.” I waved my hand again. “Traverton isn't here, all right? I parted ways with his dumb ass. Not protecting him anymore. You find him, you can kill him for all I care.”
Mann harrumphed behind me.
I spun on her. “What? I'm not doing the killing. I was trying to protect him from the killing – or knee breaking, or whatever he had coming his way, but you – you coffee-swilling, donut-scarfing asshats have basically put me out of business. So this shit?” I waved a hand at Squirrel. “It's on you.” I turned back to the speedster. “So, go. Vaya con Dios, and leave me out of your quarrel with Traverton. Because I am out, and you really don't want to drag me back in.”
“Not getting off that easy,” came a loud, strident, Jersey-infused voice from the reception hallway. Moose came striding in, practically going sideways to fit his bulk into the space. “You've a real pain in the neck, missy.”
“And behold, they have been revisited upon me manyfold.” I waved a hand in front of my bloody face. “Now leave or I'll take my frustration out on your obtuse ass and kick you down every single one of those stairs. Hell, I'll drag you to the roof and add even more.” Of course I was bluffing. In my current condition, I wasn't able to go two rounds with a fruit fly, let alone toe-to-toe with both Moose and Squirrel.
Moose kept his distance, though, the sign of a good bluff at work. “We ain't fighting right now. Out of respect for your current legal troubles.” He looked at the wrecked pile of cops on my floor and smiled. “We have a different proposition to present. One which begs your cooperation.”
I rolled my eyes. “Look, I'm not looking to actively hamper you anymore, but I'm not cooperating with you, either. You want Traverton, go hunting him down like the weasel he is and stomp a mudhole in his ass the way God intended.”
“Oh, it's not gonna be that easy,” Moose said. He flashed a business card, one of the ones Reed had set out in a holder on the receptionists' desk. “We'll be in touch.” Then he disappeared back down the hallway.
“Why?” I asked, but his footsteps receded out of earshot, so I turned my attention to Squirrel. “Look, understand this: I'm done dancing with you clowns.” I looked at the pile of wounded cops on my floor. “You're someone else's problem now.” Mann, behind me, was now quietly calling for backup.
Squirrel just grinned. “No, we still have a problem with you. You've stuck your nose in our business a time too many.”
“Believe me, if I could go back and not do it, I would,” I said, setting my jaw. “If I have to do it again...well, let's just say you really don't want me to, given how the last couple times turned out.”
“Mmmm,” Squirrel said, still grinning psychotically, “but what if we do? Like, really, really do?”
“Then you're as crazy as your facial expression would indicate.”
He nodded, grin widening. “Exactly. So...see you tomorrow.”
“Not if I see you first,” I said.
“Oh, you'll come when we call,” he said. “We've got the blond girl.”
My blood temperature dropped twenty degrees in a second. “...Excuse me?”
“The blond girl,” Squirrel chittered happily. “Moose scooped her up before she could bounce. At her apartment last night. And in case that's not enough...” He smiled, then–
In a flash, he was behind Aniya, who stood in the corner by herself. Lingering over her shoulder for just a second, long enough for her to register him–
“You will always be at the mercy of those who have power over you,” Aniya said, eyes sliding sideways. “If you play by their rules. Better to make yourself more powerful, so you can make the rules. So they will be at your mercy.”
Squirrel furrowed his brow, listening, then shrugged. “Good advice.” Then he flashed a grin at me. “Tomorrow.”
And with a blast of wind, he – and Aniya – were gone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
“I need backup, ambulances, everything you've got – NOW!” Lt. Mann yelled into her radio. Squirrel had vanished out the door, holding Aniya, after dropping that little nugget about how they'd kidnapped Olivia. That had left me feeling like he'd kicked out the supports holding up my stomach, because that sucker had plummeted, and still felt like it was in freefall.
“Did you hear him?” I asked quietly.
“I'm a little busy here!” Mann shouted as she strode past me, dropping to one knee next to a fallen cop. “I've got – one, two, five – shit, send every ambulance you've got! We have officers down! Move!” She threw the radio aside and started probing the fallen cop for wounds, tossing me a look straight out of hell. “They need medical attention!”
“I can't touch any–” I started to say, then remembered that, indeed, I could touch people right now. Wiping some of the blood off my face, I skidded to my knees near the closest officer, starting by checking for a pulse. It was there, and steady. “Loss of consciousness, regular pulse.” I didn't dare move him, for fear of a spinal injury. “No open wounds, nothing to be done here. Moving to the next.” I hurdled him carefully, and headed for another downed officer. “Did you hear what those lunkheads said?”
“No, and I don't care,” Lt. Mann said. She was clearly on her last nerve with everyone at the moment. “Who were they?”
“Mobsters of the metahuman variety,” I said, checking the next cop's pulse. A little faint, so I jammed my fingers in the neck a bit deeper. No open wounds here, either. Was it possible Squirrel had just knocked them all out? I scanned the room; there was more blood on me by far than on any of them. “They never formally introduced themselves, though. Like I told you before, they were after that scrawny, weird, animorph guy I had with me the last couple times we've crossed paths.”
“I don't care what they're after,” Mann said, “what they're going to get is the full weight of justice.” She sounded serious enough and harried enough that it came off angry and threatening instead of corny. Or maybe all the above.
“Awesome, let me know how that works out for you,” I said acidly, moving to the next cop. Big bruise on his head, but not bad enough to qualify as serious skull trauma. He moaned as I moved him to check his pulse. “Because he just kidnapped one of my colleagues and that Russian that's been hanging around.”
“Don't care,” Mann said, frantically tearing off a piece of her shirt to staunch a scratch on a fallen officer's brow. His eyes were fluttering as she struggled to wrap a bandage, but it looked like a pretty superficial scalp laceration. Those always bled like crazy, though. Too many capillaries in that area.
“I'm reporting a kidnapping,” I said, checking the next officer's vitals and finding them more or less normal. Another tragic victim of a run-by thumping courtesy of Squirrel. “And you're refusing to take it down?”
“Yep,” Mann said, all emotion shut down, no shits given about anything I was saying. “Not my problem. Not something I witnessed.”
“Huh,” I said, standing up and leaving the last officer untended to. I could see his chest rising and falling from where I stood, and it was clear to me now that Squirrel had just thumped them when he'd come in, he hadn't killed or maimed or seriously injured anyone. “Guessing I'm going to get a similar answer when it comes time for you to swear under oath what you saw when Bennett smashed my face into a desk.”
Mann kept her head down, tying off the bandage. “I didn't see anything.”
“That your final answer?”
“That's my final answer,” she said, skidding on her knees over to the cop I'd declined to treat. She started fretting over him, and the wail of sirens started up in the distance.
“That answers that,” I whispered quietly. “Where's my phone?”
“Seized as evidence,” she said without looking up. “And this office? Is now a crime scene. All of it.”
What could I say to that? “The landlord is going to be thrilled to hear that,” I muttered.
Bennett came charging in through the hallway, a couple more BCA guys on his tail. He took one look at the pile of officers that were starting to moan and come to, and his eyes flared hot. They locked on me and he came my way–
“Stop,” Mann said, barely looking up.
He did stop. Stopped about five feet from me, eyes in a cold fury, angrier than I'd seen him yet. If I was being totally honest, my heart was beating a little faster just seeing him looking at me like that, and me without a damned thing to defend myself with. There wasn't even a stapler in arm's reach. Presumably because they'd taken them as evidence.
“She didn't do this,” Mann said, very grudgingly.
“Yeah, I don't even have my powers,” I said, louder and angrier than it was probably safe to be at the moment.
“Don't care if you did,” Bennett said. “I'd take you down anyway.”
I squeezed my hand into a fist, and it hurt like screaming hell because of the broken fingers. The hell you would, I didn't say. Because it was a lie, he'd wipe the floor with me right now, and there was very little I could do to stop him. The best I could hope for was to score a hard hit to the groin, instep, nose, or solar plexus, but that'd be a resisting arrest charge or somesuch bullshit, and the end of any chance I had to get Olivia and Aniya back from Moose, Squirrel, and Snake.
The sirens stopped outside our window, and Bennett just glared at me. Heavy footsteps came from the hallway a few moments later, and then the first of the EMTs came charging in just as the office phone started to ring.
I took advantage of the sudden bustle and distraction to slip into Reed's office and answer it. I didn't bother shutting the door, but the sirens weren't so loud in here I couldn't hear. “What?” I answered, because it was simple and felt right.
“It's me,” Reed said tightly. “Got a problem.”
“Don't we all.”
“Yeah, mine's pretty big,” Reed said. “Remember that case in Ohio?”
“Yes.” I was trying to keep my answers simple, to keep from melting down on any given answer. I didn't want to give Bennett the satisfaction of hearing me lose it, in case he was listening.
“We finished it last night. Got the perv.”
“Good for you,” I said, glancing at the door. “When are you coming home?”
“That's the problem,” Reed said, sounding pained. “We came home this morning. First flight.”
I waited for the punchline. “That doesn't sound like a problem.”
“It is,” Reed said. “Because they stopped us at the Minneapolis airport and turned us around.”
I blinked. Tried to process this, in spite of all the shit I'd taken in this morning. Failed. “Beg pardon?”
“They stopped us at the gate, Sienna,” Reed said, tightness in his voice betraying, at last, how pissed off he was. “Minnesota BCA. They wouldn't even let us off the plane under threat of arrest.” There was an air of defeat in my brother's tone that I was just now hearing over the sirens and the EMTs arriving in the bullpen. “They're sending us back to Ohio. I'm sorry.” Now his voice dropped. “Looks like we're not coming home anytime soon.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
I was escorted off the premises of my own office shortly after the ambulances arrived. I lingered long enough to have my first aid impressions confirmed; none of the cops was seriously injured, and they were all coming to by the time Bennett seized me by the arm and started to drag me from the building.
“Take it easy on her,” Lt. Mann called after us.
But Bennett did not take it easy on me. Not remotely.
“Bet you think you got away with it,” he said, prodding me hard in the kidney as we reached the staircase. I stumbled and almost fell, but caught myself on a handrail.
With my broken-fingered hand.
I damned near tumbled again as the pain flashed in front of my eyes, along with – possibly – my life. But I recovered and steered my clumsy, human feet down the stairs with Bennett breathing down my neck, his stinking breath like decaying corpses. If he felt like I wasn't moving fast enough, he'd give me a gentle (for him, presumably) push. I didn't fall down the stairs, so maybe he had taken Mann's advice after all, in his own special, ox-like way.
When I reached the bottom, I debated responding to his taunting bullshit. After a little back and forth with the quiet in my head, I decided to respond, because why not? I was only completely depowered and already on thin ice with the cops. “I didn't get away with anything. But the bad guys got away with my colleagues as hostages, so thanks for that. You're a real impressive serve-and-protector.”
In a war between being amused by me and infuriated, somehow the ape landed on amused this time. Probably because the wanton cruelty part of his personality sensed my abject misery. “I'm doing what I can to protect the state from shitstains like you.”
“Funny.” I stepped off the curb outside my office and looked around. Red and white lights flashed under the hot, midday sun from all the ambulances parked out here. The landlord was definitely going to love this. “That's what I thought I was doing.”
“You're doing a bang-up job,” Bennett said with a toothy grin. “People are terrified. Of you.”
“Life is scary, I just live in it.”
“For now.” He flashed that grin. “Get lost. This is a crime scene.”
“Until when?” I looked around; they already had police tape up around the parking lot, a cordon that was keeping a light crowd at bay. No sign of the press, thankfully, just a few civilians and denizens of other offices in the building that had probably been expelled by the cops before the search commenced. I caught a few angry glares, but mostly indifference from the folks beyond the yellow tape.
“Who knows?” Bennett probably did, but had decided to be as prickish as possible, presumably because he hated me. That was fine. It was a two-way street. “Oh, and Nealon?” He took two fingers to point to his eyes, then pointed at me. “I'll be watching you.”
