Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11) Read online

  Unyielding

  Out of the Box #11

  Robert J. Crane

  Unyielding

  Out of the Box #11

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2016 Revelen Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  101

  102

  103

  104

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  Dedicated to the great Jo Evans, whose incredible contributions to the Sanctuary series ended up left out of the credits in Legend, and who, honestly, deserves more than one book dedicated to her. But if I had to pick only one, I think Unyielding is the one that fits her best—in the best possible way.

  1.

  I woke up alone, in a bed that wasn’t my own, as I had for months. The smell of stale cigarette smoke had long ago settled into the furnishings around me, and into my nose, a subtle, constant irritation. I blinked, looking at the thin slits of light that made their way through the blinds into my room. It was a small room, though it was probably not any smaller than my last.

  It felt smaller, though.

  I drew a deep breath, sucking in the cool mid-morning air. The red clock on the dresser at the foot of my bed told me it was 10:56 a.m. I pushed my face back into the pillow. The rough, buzz-cut sides of my head scraped against the pillowcase. I still wasn’t used to that feeling of having a mohawk. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I’d been living in Cedar City, Utah, for months, and between the hair, the glasses and the new wardrobe, no one yet had realized that I was the top slot on the FBI’s most wanted list.

  I fumbled at the nightstand and grabbed my glasses. I’d stolen them from a hipster in Denver, Colorado, and popped the lenses out. I’d had the lenses replaced with non-prescription ones in Las Vegas, right before I picked Cedar City as the place I was going to hide out. It had been an easy decision, picking Cedar City. I’d just looked at a map, recalled all the places I’d been in my law enforcement career, and found one that I had zero ties to.

  Et voila. Cedar City, Utah. Population: 29,162. Plus one.

  It was a nice town, nestled against a series of brown mountains that rose in the distance. Quiet, bordering on sleepy, really. I had no complaints on that score. Given how I’d left my last hometown, action was not something I was seeking. Quiet was.

  I rolled out of bed, my feet touching the thinly carpeted floor. I smacked my lips together, my mouth dry like I’d gone for a flight low over the desert sands. It was like that every morning, the cottonmouth of a dry climate. My ears itched every day like someone had sucked all the moisture out of them, and when I scratched them, little flakes of skin came out like ear dandruff.

  Still better than the fifteen inches of snow Minneapolis had probably had by now, though.

  There was a calendar pegged to my wall, with the days crossed off. I didn’t know why I was crossing off days. It’s not like something important was coming up. I wasn’t working a job or anything, just existing on a daily basis, sliding through life in Cedar City while trying not to draw any attention to myself. I woke up in the mornings, mentally groused about the dryness, watched TV, wandered out to the corner store for a little while, hit the Walmart if I was in the mood to, ate at Sushi Burrito, IHOP or Denny’s, and watched cable news throughout the day.

  If my old psychiatrist, Dr. Zollers, had known how I was filling my time, he probably would have put me on suicide watch. And it might not have been a bad idea.

  I scratched at an itch on my forehead as I kneaded my toes against the pitiful carpeting beneath them. I grabbed a hair tie off the end table and put my mohawk in a ponytail. I stood up and wandered out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, staring at myself. What remained of my hair was pink, the color of Pepto-Bismol. My eyes were green now, the result of contacts I’d picked up in St. George or someplace; I couldn’t recall where. I had other disguises at the ready, hidden here and elsewhere. Sooner or later, even as dumb as the people in charge of hunting me were, they were bound to find me, and I’d need to run.

  Again.

  That was all I was waiting for, really, for them to catch up to me, so I could start this whole process over again by rabbiting hard to my next bolt hole. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I looked … thinner. I’d never been a Skinny Minnie, but I was getting closer now. I was eating less, sleeping less, and I might have considered taking up smoking if not for the gawdawful smell that already permeated my new residence. I needed something to soothe my nerves and fill my time, and booze wasn’t the answer. At least not in Utah. They didn’t make it easy here, and even with as much time as I had to fill, I’d gotten lazy about how many hoops I was willing to jump through.

  I wandered out of my bathroom, adjusting the strap of my wife-beater-style shirt, scratching at myself beneath the cloth boxer briefs I’d bought at Walmart on the cheap. It wasn�
�t a look I would have been sporting normally, but that’s the first rule of changing one’s identity—don’t ever look like yourself.

  I settled into my easy chair, one loose spring poking up into my right butt cheek, and I growled. The spring had been busted for a month, but I wasn’t motivated enough to do anything about it, at least not yet. I turned on the TV with a click, setting the remote on the little table next to me, and fished down below into the magazine rack beneath the surface, coming up with a protein bar. I ripped it open, dropped the wrapper in the trash, and starting chewing on almonds and some sort of sweet peanut butter and honey flavor that was holding it together as I stared, eyes half-lidded, at the TV.

  “… and it’s day thirty-five of the manhunt for Sienna Nealon,” a handsome young reporter was saying, microphone held in front of his chin, “with authorities in the FBI capture team still claiming to have abundant leads. They are, however, still encouraging anyone with any information to please contact them at the tip line—”

  I snorted with bitter laughter. Yeah, the news was still covering me almost twenty-four seven. It wasn’t even the least bit nice, either. Most days, I found at least five completely manufactured stories about me on the news—on average, two would involve sightings, never anywhere near Cedar City, two were about past misdeeds I’d done, at least seventy-five percent of them total bullshit, and the last was generally an update from FBI Director Andrew Phillips, whose standard-issue, “We have no further information at this time,” was the entirety of the report six days out of seven.

  Watching cable news report on how the world was doing with me missing? Well, it wasn’t exactly It’s a Wonderful Life. Watching this crap, you might think the entire planet was at peace except for the United States, which was clearly suffering from an advanced case of Sienna Nealon Being the Worst Thing in the World. All the other problems must have been solved, I guess, because they sure as shit weren’t talking about them. It was all hunting me and human interest stories. A more cynical person might have thought the books were being cooked, the deck was being stacked—

  Oh, wait. I was as cynical as it got.

  But I still couldn’t pry myself away from watching the self-hate fest that was every major news network. I glared at the reporter, who had stopped to take a question from in studio. “… Any idea,” the anchor was asking, “… when we’ll have an update from the FBI?”

  The reporter on scene nodded. “The FBI is intending to have a full press conference later this afternoon.” He smiled bleakly. “For those keeping score at home, this will be only the second press conference in the course of this investigation—”

  That made me sit up. Phillips had been stonewalling for damned good reason; the FBI didn’t tend to comment on ongoing investigations, and answering questions at a presser during an active investigation meant sending in someone to lie like a mofo to try and dodge the questions they didn’t want answered. Questions like, “Do you actually have any idea where this fugitive is?” The answer to which was a soundbite that would be played for the next month on repeat loop and make Phillips look like an ass. Phillips didn’t like to look like an ass, this much I knew about the bastard. (Okay, I knew a lot more than that about the bastard. He had been my boss, after all, before climbing the ladder to become FBI Director.)

  If he was holding a press conference on this case, that probably meant something was happening.

  Something big.

  I swallowed, saliva barely present in my dry, desert-filled mouth as I sat forward in my chair, wondering what the hell it could be.

  2.

  Scott Byerly

  “We need to do this fast,” Scott whispered in the mid-morning quiet. There was a sleepy little mid-sized city around him that was clearly awake, just not terribly busy. He wondered when—or if—this place ever did get humming. A big tractor trailer rattled by, its cargo made up of logs, the engine rumbling as it down shifted on the main street. “She can’t have a whisper of warning that we’re coming, or this is going to turn messy fast.”

  “Whisper quiet, got it,” Augustus Coleman said, snapping his M4 Carbine up in a ready position. He was garbed entirely in black tactical gear except for his head, which was exposed. It seemed like a good play; if Sienna Nealon had an ounce of mercy left in that ragged mess she called a soul, it’d be for someone she cared for, like Augustus. Or—

  “Speed is the name of the game,” Reed Treston said, nodding once, sharply. He, too, was wearing the black tactical gear of a man about to take part in a SWAT raid. He was carrying a submachine gun and checked the chamber before letting the slide click closed. The smell of gun oil wafted up into Scott’s nostrils and he flared them, blowing a breath out to cleanse the scent before it stuck in his nose.

  “She could run, you know,” Friday said, his chest swelling as he Hulked-up for entry. He didn’t have a rifle; he was slung with some unbelievably huge machine gun that looked like it belonged in a war zone rather than small-town America. His chest expanded from normal size to something that would have looked bizarrely out of place even on a bodybuilder in the Mr. Universe contest. His biceps were cut, each one the size of a giant tortoise shell. His forearms looked bigger around than a hog’s head—not that Scott had had much experience with hog’s heads. He’d seen one in a specialty butcher shop one time.

  “Yeah, she might rabbit if she sees it’s us,” Augustus said, straitlaced and serious.

  “Don’t bet your life on it,” Reed said tightly. “She’s ‘round the bend, there’s no predicting what she’s going to do. She could kill us all, snap flame blasts that’ll cook us in our tac gear and roast marshmallows over our corpses.” He fidgeted with his weapon, checking the chamber again and accidentally ejecting a bullet in the process.

  “Damn,” Augustus said, showing the first sign of regret. “I didn’t figure she’d lose her mind like this, but … damn, y’know?”

  “She’s been going downhill for a while,” Reed said tightly, adjusting the sling of his weapon.

  “She’s been at the bottom of the hill for a long damned time,” Scott said, putting a glare on Reed that got returned with slightly less force. “I’m just glad you and your team finally realized that.”

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Reed said, and he pulled his hand back from the slide of his gun, stopping himself before he fiddled with it again.

  “Right,” Scott said, and he could feel the nervous energy churning in his belly. He spread out the blueprints on the table in the center of their panel van. They were parked on a side street, and had the back door open, letting the cool air filter in. The van had cameras hidden in the sides, and he glanced continuously at the angles of approach around them, making sure that she wasn’t sneaking up to ambush them as they did the final planning. “We enter here, front door, breach and clear,” he ran his finger through the map of the living room past the entry. “Reed is on point, face out—”

  “The better for her to disintegrate it,” Reed muttered.

  “—Augustus, you’re secondary,” Scott went on. “Friday, you’re going around the back to intercept if she tries to flee out the rear window.”

  “Where are you gonna be?” Augustus asked. There was no hint of sarcasm, which was a welcome change from their first few weeks together. He’d settled down nicely, though, now that he was past the adjustment period and understood the horror of what they were up against.

  “Right behind you,” Scott said. “If she uses fire, I’ll douse her as best I can.” He fiddled with his vest; it had two tanks of compressed H2O built into the back, as well as a canteen that was filled to the brim. He’d been prepping for this encounter for weeks, and all he needed to do was flick a switch built into his glove and he’d have enough water to drown the entire room with plenty left to spare. “I’m not going to lead because she’s more likely to kill me than either of you, but I won’t be but a step behind. Okay?” He looked around for concord, but settled for a lack of open antipathy.

  Re
ed seemed sullen, but nodded once. “Let’s get her.”

  “Yeah, let’s,” Friday said, and jumped down out the back doors. The entire frame of the van bounced. “I know you guys are hoping for some fun on your end, but I hope she runs right out into me.” He fussed with his machine gun, adjusting it so he could look over the sights. It was a monstrous beast, but then, so was Friday. He was still hiding his face behind that weird black mask, though. Months of working together, and Scott still had no idea what he looked like beneath it.

  “Go time,” Scott said, and jumped out of the van after Friday. The suspension didn’t protest nearly as much when he did it. He wasn’t carrying a machine gun, though—or even a rifle. He had a standard Sig Sauer P226 in one hand, the same kind the Secret Service used—and kept his other free in case he needed to deploy the emergency water. At this elevation, and as dry as the air was, he’d need every drop.

  “Let’s make some noise,” Augustus said as he hopped down out of the van. The local cops were about a hundred yards away, keeping a nice little cordon up around the street. Scott stared at their target in the distance; it was an old apartment building that looked rough, its planks of wood siding having long ago turned grey with age and hard weathering. Whoever was living here didn’t exactly have a bundle of money, that was for sure. It was a small enough town to lack the ubiquitous cameras on every street corner that could be co-opted to scan with facial recognition software, and yet not so small that everybody knew everybody and any stranger would be immediately noticed. A college town, with lots of new arrivals every fall.

  It was the perfect place for a young woman to hide.

  Friday trotted off at a run. Scott led the way toward the front of the apartment complex, threading his way through the not-quite-empty parking lot. The police had cleared the complex quietly, and they’d surveilled the building for a couple hours and seen movement behind the blinds in their target, so … someone was here.

  “Go quiet,” Scott whispered, so low that even meta hearing wouldn’t pick him up unless it was close. He had a mic on his collar, and he could hear Friday puffing into it.