Painkiller (31 page)

“The thing you realize about life after you see all the possibilities for a while,” Harry said, waxing rhapsodic, his words starting to slur just slightly, “is that really, almost nothing is impossible. I mean, right now, there’s a half a percent chance that a segment of roof comes crashing down in the corner of the bar in about five minutes.” He threw up his hands like that illustrated his point. “And you know that fighter plane they’ve got hanging up in the walkway to the terminal?” His eyes twinkled. “It’s not likely, but I’d walk around it if I were you.”

“Harry,” I said, and he turned to look at me, eyes partially glazed. “You can’t just go around doing whatever you want.”

“Knew you were gonna say that,” Harry muttered, then raised his voice for the benefit of the table. “In case you missed it, I just bypassed security without having so much as a plane ticket or subjecting myself to a body scan. So tell me, darling,” his eyes flashed and he grinned at me in a very charming way, “why not?”

“
They’ll
come after you,” I said, feeling pretty certain about it, even if I didn’t fully know who the
they
were going to be as of next week. “And when they do … I can promise they’re not going to be as flexible about the concept of justice as I am.”

“It’s funny you say that.” He looked down at the table, composing his thoughts. “See … if I’d been thinking ahead, I wouldn’t have hit Dr. Jacobs as hard as I did. But if I hadn’t—” He lifted a finger and pointed it at me, “You wouldn’t have come to town, and I might not have realized all metahumanity was about to die.” He looked amused at the twisting sequence of events he’d just laid out. “Now, I don’t believe in destiny, because I’ve seen the most probable outcome get thwarted on any number of occasions in favor of one that had like a .0000001% chance of happening, but—”

“Wouldn’t that kind of prove the destiny theory?” Kat murmured softly.

“—but that’s pretty damned close to destiny in my book, our meeting here,” Harry finished, looking at Kat and giving her a wink.

“I just wish my destiny hadn’t included giving DNA to a man who tried to use it to kill all our kind,” Veronika said with her head down. She’d stopped off at her hotel and picked up clothes before joining us, and was now properly coiffed and in a pantsuit again. It was flattering on her, but I had to admit, that flaming tank top and yoga pants idea was a style I was stealing the next time I lost my clothes in a ’splodey accident. Hell, given how many magazines already criticized my fashion sense, maybe I’d be better off being the girl on fire all the time.

“I can’t believe I ran headlong into a barrier of ground glass,” Fannon said, looking at Augustus uncomfortably. “No one’s ever hurt me like you guys have hurt me.” He cast a look my way.

“Way to show weakness,” Veronika said in a disapproving fashion. “Rookie.”

Reed looked at me, still unamused. “I can’t believe your strategy with her was to pound her in the face with hard objects.”

Veronika and I exchanged a look, that grudging respect again. “Honestly, that’s my strategy with almost everyone.” It wasn’t, but I wasn’t telling Veronika that in case she and I ever ended up on opposite sides of the battlefield again. I feared the day she came after me with her body full-plasma like Gustafson’s, because no bullet was going to stop her and I had a feeling she wouldn’t allow herself to flicker back to skin for any little emotional bump the way he had.

She stared back at me and brought her drink to her lips, leaving it there for a second while she spoke. “It almost worked.”

“Whoa, I gotta go,” Augustus said, first to leave. He shot me a look. “I’m heading to Atlanta for the week … sounds like you need me back on Monday, though?”

“Don’t you have class?” I teased.

“And work, right?” he fished again.

“And work,” I agreed, and Reed made a sound of disapproval next to me. “I hope Chang allows me a big training budget. I want to put you guys through your paces in a way that Phillips hasn’t allowed me to lately. Maybe some live artillery fire?”

“Well,” Fannon said, standing up, looking perhaps uneasy at my suggestion of firing artillery at my own co-workers, or perhaps just because he realized he was sitting with a bunch of non-assassins, “this has been fun. I hope I never run into the wrong side of you people again.” He looked down at his stained, seeping shirt. “What the …” He looked up at us. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“You wet yourself,” I said, prompting a round of cackling laughter around the table. Fannon looked at me sheepishly. “That’s why,” I said.

He nodded once. “Well … thanks for not killing me,” he said, a little lamely, and then raced off in a flash before I could respond.

“He’ll figure things out,” Veronika said quietly, and I was hard pressed to tell whether she was saying that for our sake or to reassure herself, professionally, that the next generation of assassins was going to be all right. Frankly, I was worried either way. She glanced at the stylish watch that she wore high on her wrist, pushing back her sleeve to see it. “I’ve got to catch a plane.” She shot me a tight smile. “’Til we meet again,” she said and started to roll her bag away.

“Veronika, wait,” I said, standing up to go after her.

She paused to look back, a slight smile turning up the corners of her red lips. The thrum of the crowds around us weighed on me, almost like I could feel it pressing against my chest in a weird way, like the buzz of the crowd was the beat of my heart.

“Thanks for the help,” I offered, not really sure what else there was to say. After all, “I never, ever want to fight you again, you total and utter badass,” didn’t really fit, did it? That was the sort of thing warriors kept to themselves.

“Thank you,” she said, turning a little more serious. “Gustafson … he got my help last time on false pretense. He was supposed to …” Her eyes looked far away for a second, “… to help people with my DNA. That he was doing the opposite … it was a betrayal. A very personal one.” She looked stiff then relaxed. “So I’m glad I could help.” She paused then smiled again. “Though, if you’re going to work for someone with deep enough pockets to let you train with live artillery, you should definitely call me if you ever need paid help. I have very reasonable contracting rates.”

“And how would I get ahold of you to discuss these possible contracts?” I asked, viewing her through a veil of suspicion. Her help was probably not in the realm of what I would consider ‘reasonable,’ but I was kind of a tightwad with money.

She pulled out a card and handed it to me. It was cream-colored, with embossed black lettering.

Veronika Acheron

Consultant

And her contact information was right there at the bottom.

“I’ll keep you in mind,” I said, very guarded, as she nodded once and walked away.

“And now we’re down to a slaughterhouse five once more!” J.J. declared. He wasn’t even three sheets to the wind; he was easily like twelve.

“You’ve never actually read that book,” Reed said, sitting in sullen silence at my side.

“Nope!” J.J. said. He did not even care.

Kat was watching Harry carefully while he nursed his scotch. He still had the bottle he’d liberated from the steakhouse, though it was down to a quarter of the bottle now. “Harry …” she started.

He seemed to perk up. “Yes, we really did spend a winter in Smolensk together,” he said, presumably reading her question before she could speak it aloud. He, too, was quite drunk by now.

“I just can’t even,” Kat said, and she stood up and walked out. I couldn’t quite put a finger on where she was emotionally on that, she was so blocked and stoic and she hurried out so fast.

“We also spent a summer in Oslo, and a year in Prague,” Harry said, his eyes very far away and showing the first hint of wistfulness since I’d met him, all his usual buoyancy gone. “A springtime in Paris …” He was whispering now.

“Harry,” I said, and he looked at me again like he was on the verge of dropping off to sleep. “Stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll keep my head down,” he said, nodding once. He got up, zipping his old jacket as he did so, and started to turn away before stopping. “A piece of advice,” he said, looking right back at me, and plunging ahead before I’d even had a chance to tell him whether or not I wanted it, “I know you feel it. The same pain I do, when I don’t keep my head down. It’s why you do … all this.” He waved around to encompass the bar, the world, something. “Trying to help people is your version of drinking and gambling.”

I stared back at him, unblinking. “Some of us have to worry about tomorrow, Harry. Since … you’re not watching after it.”

He broke into a grin and a low laugh. “It couldn’t be in better hands.” He straightened up. “Still and all … live for today every now and again, Sienna. You’d have more fun.” And with that, he wandered off, still carrying the bottle of scotch like a wino. He dodged a luggage cart and he was gone, off to wherever he had to go to make the world feel right for him again. A card table, probably.

“Are you going to take his advice and live for today, Ms. Nealon?” Reed asked from next to me. He sounded slightly less tense now that it was down to just me, him, and a stupefied J.J.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said with a slight smirk. I met my brother’s eyes and saw his worry. “As for you …”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Are you with me on this or not?” I asked, as gently as I could. “This Chang thing. The NGO?” He still didn’t answer, so I went on. “This gift horse, this—”

“I know what you’re talking about,” he said with mock impatience, then lapsed into silence again. “And yes, I’m with you. I wouldn’t let you roll a massive wooden horse into your city without standing next to you in case a bunch of Trojans pop out.”

“That really sounds dirty,” J.J. said, his voice low and throaty. He was truly obliterated.

“I’m with you,” Reed said, nodding at me, but not smiling. “Somebody’s got to watch your back, after all.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so I just smiled back. He had me worried for a while there.

“Call me Gerry,” President Gerard Harmon said to his guest as they both sat down, the guest in front of the
Resolute
desk and Harmon behind it. The Oval Office had the perpetual aroma of a room that had just been cleaned even though it probably hadn’t been touched since last night. That was Harmon’s impression of it, anyway. It was a nice enough smell, faint for the most part, and would have been reassuring if he’d been the germophobic sort. He wasn’t.

“Thanks for the invitation,” his guest said, taking a seat in the chair opposite him when prompted. Harmon liked obedience to power; it reassured him that the manners and dictums of the world were still in place in some form.

“Have you been watching the news?” Harmon asked, sitting down in his custom-made, bulletproof chair. The lights were on in the Oval Office because it was late, night shrouding the lawn outside.

“Caught a little on the way. Sounds like there was a ruckus in Chicago.”

“Indeed there was,” Harmon agreed. “Sienna Nealon and her team just prevented the dispersal of a bioweapon specifically tailored to kill every metahuman on the planet.” His guest shifted in discomfort. “A terrible thing, obviously, that never should have been invented, but then …” he chuckled lightly, “… one could say that about any weapon of mass destruction.” Feeling a little restless, he stood again, fully aware that he probably seemed antsy to his guest. “If anything, this proves that the agency—well, now it’s a department of the FBI, but you get the point—it provides a vital service as a bulwark against all the hazards out there in the metahuman world.” He came around the desk and leaned back against it. “I know you had … other … employment opportunities available, but I’m glad you put them aside to take over for Ms. Nealon now that she’s left us.”

His guest stared at him with dark eyes. “How could I not?”

Harmon pressed his lips together. “Of course.” He looked away for just a second. “Let’s not dance around it, then, shall we? One of the biggest threats you’re probably going to run up against, at some point … is the person who occupied your position last. You’ll need a team, and we’ve got a list of people you can start talking to that might be a good fit.” Harmon felt his face go stiff as he drove the point home. “Make no mistake, that confrontation will come. I guarantee it.” He looked up again, positive he had the full measure of the man in the chair, but still eager to see the look in his eyes when asked the question. “Are you ready for that? Going head to head with Sienna Nealon?”

His guest didn’t stir, didn’t look away, just sat there in the chair. Harmon had an impression for a moment of an empty suit, even though the designer suit sitting before him wasn’t empty at all, really. The man inside it was filled with emotion, specifically rage, from his impeccable shoes, up past the ruddy face colored with anger, all the way to the sandy blond hair at the top of his head.

“You’re damned right I’m ready for that,” Scott Byerly said, a rough, hateful smile twisting his lips. “In fact … I can hardly wait.”

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Editorial/Literary Janitorial duties performed by Sarah Barbour and Jeffrey Bryan. Final proofing was handle by Jo Evans. Any errors you see in the text, however, are the result of me rejecting changes. Thanks also to Lauran Strait, whose changes I didn't have a chance to implement this time, but thanks to her for her extensive read.