Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven (35 page)

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I was drunk. That sounds like something I would have said, yeah.”

“Well, we’re doing it. We’re putting together something to stop this extinction.” I looked at him with all the strength I had in me. “I could sure use your help.”

“Who, me?” He pointed at himself and spoke in a voice laced with irony. “I am become Moist, the wetter of envelopes and henchman to greater powers than myself.” He was subdued for a moment then I saw a little twinge at the corner of his eye, a little emotion. “But whatever help I can offer, you’ll damned sure have it.”

“Thank you, Scott,” I said and ran a hand along his cheek before I snapped back to wakefulness. It occurred to me in the moment I awoke what effect my touch would have given him, and I felt a hint of flaming embarrassment for just a moment. But only a moment. I looked around me, around the plane. Once more I was in a middle seat, surrounded by people. This time, though, the armrests were mine. I hadn’t even been nice about it. I just took them.

I stared down at the folders in front of me. One of them held a single printout from Karthik, only a paragraph long, the only record of a man named Simon Nealon that they could find in their entire database—which, Karthik privately confided in me, probably meant that there were other things in there that he was simply unable to access. Things that no one could probably access, save for Janus, who had still not woken up even as I left. I had visited him on the day I took off, but he looked so small, so shriveled, just a shell of the man I’d known. It didn’t even look like him. He had been a titan of the old world, a god who had lived for thousands of years. Century had destroyed him—him and nearly all of his kind. And they were just warming up.

It’ll be okay, babe,
I heard Zack’s voice in my head.

“I know it will,” I said, just a whisper, as I opened the second folder I had brought with me, the one with the file marked
Agency
.

I could almost see his smile.
Because I’m with you?
he asked, hopeful.

“No,” I replied, with just a tinge of regret at disappointing him but with hope of my own because of the true answer. “Because
I
am.”

I stepped to the front of the customs line hours later in the Minneapolis airport. The direct flight was a pleasant bonus, even if the reading material hadn’t quite been what I had expected. I fingered the strap of my bag as I thought about the folder within it, the one marked “Agency.” I hadn’t quite known how to process what I’d read from it, and it had been all I could do to keep from expressing my surprise in a way that would disturb my fellow passengers.

The synthetic smell of airport air and travelers who had been cooped up in a plane for far too long hit my nose as I broke away from the strangled mass of humanity that had snaked its way through metal posts bound together by straps to form the line. The man behind the customs desk waved me forward and I walked up to him, handing him my passport.

“Anything to declare?” he asked as he took it from me and scanned it like it was a can of beans at the supermarket. It even made a little beep.

“England is a lovely country filled with lovely people,” I said.

He gave me a half nod, a grudging concession as he stared down at the computer screen he had just below my eye level. “Any fruits or vegetables?”

“No.”

“Did you stay in England during your entire trip?” His voice was almost mechanical, as if he’d asked these questions a time or two before. He looked up at me on this one, and I thought I sensed just the faintest amount of stress in his expression as he looked back at me expectantly.

“Yes.”

With a final nod, he handed my passport back to me. “You’ll need to submit to luggage inspection to make sure you’re not bringing any fruits and vegetables in—”

“My word’s not good enough?” I asked with faint amusement.

He smiled tightly. “Random inspections, you understand. Just the luck of the draw that your number came up.” He pointed to a door beyond the luggage carousels, just to the left of the Customs exit. “Go through there, they’ll be expecting you, Ms. Clarke.”

“Thanks,” I said, remembering Clarke was the name on my passport. I gave him a phony smile in return and headed off across the customs area. At least I knew I wasn’t going to have to worry about getting caught with any fruits or vegetables.

The air was stale and the lines had stopped moving. I glanced back at the kiosks set up for travelers, but every single one of them was on a kind of hold, shuffling papers, not calling anyone else forward. I wondered if they were in the process of doing some sort of shift change but didn’t give it another thought as I approached the men standing next to the door beneath the sign that declared, “INSPECTIONS,” in bold letters.

They were shuffling quietly, having something that almost seemed like a casual conversation but wasn’t. I could read the tension in their bodies, as if they weren’t quite comfortable with each other. I wondered which of them had slept with the other’s wife, but I realized that wouldn’t account for the tension in both. I took a breath and smelled the same cologne on both of them, then wondered if maybe they’d slept with each other and were embarrassed by it. I chucked that distraction aside as I passed between the two of them with a weak smile at each that wasn’t returned.

I entered the customs inspection room to find one man waiting for me about twenty feet away, dressed singularly unlike the rest of the customs employees. He was waiting behind a table, in a suit that was far cheaper than most of the ones I’d seen in my life, and had his shoes sticking out beyond the edge of the table in front of me. His hands were back behind his head, and he watched me with almond eyes, his Asian heritage obvious as he stared me down.

The sound of a door slamming behind me was the signal that finally drove home to me that I had landed in some form of trouble. As I turned from the man at the table to the door at his left, that route evaporated as well as eight men in tactical vests with submachine guns stormed through and lined up behind him, their weapons trained on me.

They had me. There was no way I could take them all out before they riddled me with bullets. I gave them the once-over, looking for weaknesses but seeing none that were obvious. When enough time had passed that it had been made plain to me exactly what my situation was, the Asian man finally spoke, sliding his chair back and standing, straightening his suit.

“Sienna Nealon,” he said, in a deep, smooth, serious timbre, “my name is Special Agent Li. I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m going to ask you to lie flat on your stomach and place your hands behind you. If you do not comply with my command, I will order my men to open fire and put you down.” There was a subtle shift in his demeanor. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want to have to give that order. Do you understand me?”

I watched him without blinking, my head reeling as I realized he’d used my real name, not the one on my passport. “I understand.” My mind raced, and I tried to find a way out of the situation. I had taken a whole line of the old gods, beaten a man who was one of the strongest warriors on the planet only a day earlier. Now I was staring down a firing line, and I realized that something Old Man Winter had told me when I’d first entered the meta world was true—the new world had changed. One man with a well-aimed gun could end me. Eight of them was almost overkill.

Also, they were cops—really, government guys—probably honest citizens trying to do their job. Almost certainly not with Century. Even if I could cross the distance between us, I had a hard time imagining myself killing them. They were innocent, in my view.

“All right, then,” Li said, and extended an open palm, face down, and pushed it toward the floor. “Get down, and put your hands behind your back.”

I realized it might be technically possible for me to escape. I could roll forward, and if I was lucky, only one or two of the guys would have reacquired me as a target before I was in grabbing distance of Li. As long as none of their bullets hit me in the head, I could use him as a human shield to beat the holy hell out of them one by one. It was a long roll, though, and as fast as I was, I had my doubts that I could make it.

Even if I did, people would die. These agents would die. I was used to fighting metas, people who could take a fractured skull and walk away from it no worse for the wear within a day or two. These were men, and some of them would get killed in my escape attempt. I thought back to Rick’s office, of beating him down with the chair, and all the tension fled from my body. Never again. Not like that. I unclenched my fists.

The sterile air of the airport closed in on me, felt stagnant, trapped. Like me. I gave Li one last tense look and dropped my bag off to my side, then went down on my knees, then to my belly. I folded my hands behind my back and extended them, palms up.

I felt heavy cuffs click on my wrists, heavier than any standard handcuff. A moment later, Agent Li placed a leather glove on each of my hands without any resistance from me. I looked back at him with my cheek buried in the carpet, and he watched me. He was unflinching, unexpressive, totally focused on what he was doing. He slapped another pair of heavy duty cuffs around my ankles, then another. I was trussed like a hog. “All right, stand up,” he said.

I felt his hand on my shoulder as I got to my feet, a little unsteadily. I tugged at the handcuffs behind my back and then the ones on my ankles and found them strong, far stronger than standard police issue. They were some other metal and extra thick. I didn’t know if I could break them but if I could, it sure as hell wouldn’t be easy. Damn.

“Care to tell me what this is all about?” I asked. “Because I don’t remember packing any tomatoes in my carry-on. And if I did, I hope this isn’t how you’d handle it.”

“Funny,” he said, but he didn’t show even a trace of amusement.

“Seriously,” I said, tugging at the chains around my ankles. “Is this really necessary?”

He put a hand on my shoulder and aimed me toward the door that his SWAT team had entered through. “For a succubus? I think we can afford to be a little overcautious.” I felt my stomach sink when I heard him say it, heard him acknowledge who I was—what I was.

“Sienna Nealon,” he continued, “you are under arrest for the murders of Glen Parks, Clyde Clary, Eve Kappler, Roberto Bastian and Zachary Davis.”

“I …” I felt my mouth go dry, wondering what kind of trouble I was into. “I … want a lawyer.”

It seemed like the room was smaller now, like the walls had closed in, like things paused. I looked at the men surrounding me, all clad in black, their faces covered by ski masks to hide their identities. My mind rocketed at a thousand miles per second with fear, with frustration. I had a duty. I had a purpose. They bunched in tighter, ready to walk me along, but my hands and legs were bound so close that I couldn’t move them more than inches in any direction. I was at their mercy.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Li said as the world resumed its steady march. He took a firm hold of my upper arm and guided me toward the exit, the men in tactical vests lined up on either side of us like a formation. “Where you’re going, a lawyer is going to be the least of your concerns.”

I felt my head spin, and I didn’t resist as he and the SWAT Team led me on a slow walk out the door into a long, dark corridor—and whatever fate they had planned for me.

So, I promised a longer book this time, and BAM! I deliver. I appreciate the faith of all of you who (how do I put this delicately?) didn't automatically assume I was trying to rip the hard-earned money out of your hands by selling you progressively smaller books for the same prices after Broken. Book Eight should be longer still (preview in the next couple pages).

If you want to know as soon as the next volumes are released (because I don't do release dates – there's a good reason, I swear),
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Thanks for your support and thanks for reading!

Robert J. Crane

These people are not my enemies.

Kea Grace – Beta reader extraordinaire, this time around she scared the hell out of me by helping to put threats into the bad guy's mouth. Really, hanging someone from a meat hook? And they call me imaginative.

Carien Keevey – Kept a weather eye on my grammar, spelling, and other assorted parts of speech. Also gave some great story notes and feedback that helped me keep my eye on what I was trying to accomplish this round.

Julia Corrigan – Helped put the final polish on the work, keeping me out of the grammatical ditch, as it were. Many thanks.

Heather Rodefer – Fought me tooth and nail about the ending and ultimately helped me make it even better, in my opinion. Also helped put the polish on the manuscript and helped turn it into one of my best.

Karri Klawiter – Took the phrases, "Black and white," "Silhouette of a girl," and "London" and made a cover from them. Now that's talent.

Sarah Barbour – Edited, vetted, and generally made the whole book stick together. As usual. Also, she knew what kind of cat Ernst Stavro Blofeld had, so she is uber cool in my book (which is this one).

Nicholas J. Ambrose – Took the file and turned it into a book. Like magic. I'd say
Voila!
But he's English, not French.

The City of London, England – I started writing this book while I was there, and many of the experiences Sienna had were in fact my own experiences as an American traveling abroad for the first time. Though I didn't get my pocket picked by a handsy Irishman on the tube. Luckily.

My family – Constantly supported me, kept me sane, and occasionally reminded me to take a day off. Love you all.