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

  “Hang tight,” Phinneus said, pushing the pedal down and squealing the Buick's tires. It lurched ahead, and he fought the wheel to skip in ahead of an SUV, which let out a bellowing honk.

  He pointed the nose of the Buick right at the center of the Geo and let it rip, engine going full out. Two tons of modern American engineering against that little pile of shit – there wasn't much chance he'd lose, was there?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Sienna

  “Hang on!” I shouted as the Buick leapt at me, engine going full out as the hood threatened to bury itself in the side of my car. It was going to be a perfect T-bone, my little Metro would get speared like a toddler being tackled by a football player, and the president and I would be lucky to wake up before the occupants of the Buick busted enough caps in us to kill even me.

  The Buick was bearing down, perfectly aimed. With the full length of even the small Metro's side profile presented, there wasn't a lot of chance for them to miss.

  But I wasn't going to just sit there and take a hit to the side.

  I popped the emergency brake, spun the wheel, and the Geo's tires skidded, going abruptly sideways.

  It pulled a ninety-degree turn and the Buick lurched to compensate, but ended up hitting us a glancing blow on the driver's side just between the front wheel and the door. We spun slightly (more) as I knocked off the e-brake and pushed the pedal down, fishtailing past the Buick and the stunned eyes of the people who'd just tried to kill us.

  I burned rubber in the opposite direction of them and watched the Buick stop, trying to make a three-point turn in the middle of the intersection post-collision. I was a full block down before the driver managed to pull it off, even with meta reflexes and skill, and I took a hard turn to the right, heading west.

  “Some fine driving there,” the president murmured from the back. “Did they teach you that at the FBI academy?”

  “No,” I said. “I've been taking offensive driving courses for years, but I barely get a chance to use them. Against a reflex type – which I'm pretty sure is what I'm up against – I'm going to be outmatched.” I shifted the Geo into a lower gear and threw us into drifting turn northward, almost hitting a crossover SUV in my haste to get a couple of blocks out of sight quickly. “Which is why I'm trying to lose them before that happens.”

  I looked ahead, trying to assess the possibilities for running a light at the next intersection.

  No need; it was green when we reached it. Lucky us. I sped through, still heading north but about to cut west again.

  “How far are we from the White House?” Gondry asked, voice taut like wire.

  “Fifteen? Maybe twenty blocks?” I threw us into a northward turn again, flooring it past a semi that was struggling to get going after a sudden green light. I looked in the rearview. “I think we lost them, though, at least for n–”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than a honking horn behind us caused me to turn and look. A Toyota 4Runner was burning up the lane behind us, cutting off the semi, prompting the honkfest. It was not the Buick from earlier, but it was heading toward us with a fury.

  And there was no way I was outrunning it in the Geo.

  “Think we've got trouble on our six,” I said.

  “How'd they find us?” Gondry asked. “We were clear!”

  I looked farther back; the Buick had just cut in front of the semi too.

  My mind raced; they'd tracked us somehow, and only a few possibilities existed:

  Traffic cams? Maybe.

  The president, if he had a device on him. Except the Secret Service would be all over us, too. So no.

  I felt down into my coat, and lifted my phone out, staring at it warily as I blazed through another intersection.

  “What?” the president asked.

  “Nothing, sir,” I said, unlocking the phone and making a frantic call with one thumb.

  “Hello?” Kerry Hilton answered like everything was right in the world.

  “Hilton, it's Nealon.”

  “Yeah, I can tell from the caller ID. Whassup? Are you seeing this craziness with the president? They're saying he's dead–”

  “He's not, he's in the back seat of my car,” I said, cutting her right off. “I need full DC PD and FBI on my location now, Hilton. Order a track on my phone. You hear me?”

  “Huh?”

  “TRACK MY PHONE AND CONVERGE LAW ENFORCEMENT ON MY POSITION!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “I'm leaving the line open!” I tossed the phone aside onto the passenger seat and both hands back on the wheel.

  “Probably not the time to mention this, but I think I'm getting a crick in my back,” the president said. “You know, from leaning over this long.”

  “Better than a bullet in your head for sitting up,” I said, throwing a quick eye onto the rearview. No one was waving a gun, at least. That'd have made things interesting. Though I was pretty sure the meta driving the Buick was my sniper. Tough to tell with the mask, but I had my guesses: Phinneus, that old coot.

  In the passenger seat next to him? Probably Veronika Acheron. The metahuman assassin-for-hire universe was a small place, and I knew most of the major players by now.

  Someone leapt out the window of the SUV behind me, skating through the air across the distance between us on a slide of pure ice. The mask hid the face, but the yoga pants might as well have been a flashing sign:

  Captain Frost.

  Whoever was driving was a little harder to see, but the broad-ish shoulders (comparatively) suggested Tyler Bowen was behind me. As if in answer to my unasked question, the SUV dodged an impossible near-collision with a yellow cab, the bumper missing it by centimeters. It sure looked like his luck changing powers.

  “How are you with a gun, sir?” I asked.

  “Never touch the things. I hate them.”

  I held in my eyeroll. “That's a shame, because I could really use some help saving your life right now, and I can't really stop driving to shoot.” I sighed, pulling my Glock and readying it.

  Frost was catching up and I blew through another intersection. A little ball of ice hit the back window, cracking it. He'd slid into position above us, where I couldn't easily shoot at him.

  “I really need those ice blasts to not hit us right now,” I muttered, steering us just in front of a big Escalade that honked, braking so that it almost rolled through the intersection. It missed our bumper by a couple feet, because I didn't have Tyler's luck working for me.

  All I had was the devil's own. Which was to say – mine.

  Frost's next ice burst thwacked against the street outside my window. I suspected he'd been aiming for my tire.

  Looking out the window, he was up above me and to the left, hanging out in my blind spot. I blew through an intersection (green light, this time) and pointed my gun up toward him. I shot half-blind, taking a glance between each trigger pull, and hoping the bullets wouldn't come to rest in some poor pedestrian three blocks away.

  Frost dodged back at the second shot, and his sled just vanished from beneath his feet for a second. I watched with a smile in my rearview as he tumbled out of the air, legs moving like pistons and arms pinwheeling–

  He landed in the windshield of a Prius like the dipshit he was, the smaller Toyota skidding out and going sideways onto the sidewalk. I doubted the landing had killed him, but hopefully it had put him out of the fight, at least for now.

  “One down,” I muttered.

  “Who was that ice man?” Gondry asked. He was barely peering out the back window doubled over, head turned sideways to look.

  “I think it was Captain Frost from New York,” I said, trying not to smile. “Couldn't prove it, though.”

  “I thought he was a hero,” Gondry said.

  “And I thought he was a douchebag,” I said. “It's technically possible to be both – I mean, look at me.”

  Gondry chuckled. “Any chance this is drawing to an end?”

  I gritted my teeth as I threw the car into a drif
ting turn, tires and brakes squealing as I cornered in ways that the manufacturer of both tires and car had not intended. This brought us into a westward heading again. “Ten or so blocks to the White House, sir. Just hang on.”

  Another frantic look in my rearview presented another challenge. Both the SUV with Tyler in it and the Buick with Phinneus and Veronika were closing on my smaller-engined Geo.

  “What...what does that look on your face mean?” Gondry asked.

  “Oh, just doing some math in my head and hit a particularly unpleasant equation.” I took the next right turn, skidding again but keeping us in the correct lane as I fishtailed. A Smart car honked at me.

  “What...what math?”

  “Simple enough calculation,” I said. “How long can a Geo Metro outrun an SUV and a Buick sedan?”

  “I don't know,” Gondry said, sounding genuinely introspective. “How long can it?”

  “Not ten blocks,” I said, “that's for damned sure.”

  We passed under the shadow of a building, and I felt a chill run up my spine. A glance back revealed that some of the darkness lingered in the backseat even as we burst out into the light.

  “Safety check. Do you have your seatbelt securely fastened, sir?” I asked.

  “What? Yes, I do, why–”

  “Great,” I said, and jerked the wheel straight for a light pole. “Have a great flight, Kristina.”

  “Who?” the president asked, even as the shadow that had remained in the back seat settled into a human figure with shadowy eyes and an afro.

  The Geo smashed into the light pole at thirty miles an hour, glass shattering all around us. A scream filled the air as Kristina Bonner, trapped in human form, flew out of the back seat where she'd been about to stab the president with a shadowy knife hand, and past me.

  She hit the lamp post and spun off like a rag doll as the restraints caught me – nearly–

  And I thudded against the seat belt as my head hit the steering wheel, plunging me into darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Chapman

  “What the hell is going on?” Jaime demanded, only a thin thread of self control keeping him from shouting into his phone. He was safely back in his hotel suite, and the feed from Sienna Nealon's phone had just gone black. Rewinding the footage hadn't helped; she'd shouted something about Kristina and seatbelts and then the phone had gone flying through the air before everything stopped. Tracking, mic, footage. All gone.

  “Kinda busy right now, sir,” Veronika said tightly. He could hear a car door being thrown open in the background. “Can I call you back?”

  “Put the phone in your pocket and I'll listen as you work. Give me regular updates.” Chapman settled back in his plush chair, alone in the bedroom portion of his suite.

  “The job may be done. Stay tuned.” The rustling of phone against cloth reassured him that she'd done as he asked, and a distant, muted honking confirmed for him that the connection was still open.

  Chapman flipped to the Escapade app.

  CHALKE: Congrats on tearing up the District of Columbia. Getting emergency calls about car chases and meta powers and all else being flung around.

  KORY: Cell phone footage is springing up now on the 'net. I just linked to a great vid of some ice power guy sledding like Captain Frost across the air and getting wiped out by two well placed shots from Nealon. That one's going to win an America's Funniest Video prize, tbh. It's great.

  JOHANNSEN: I'd feel a lot better if this wasn't being caught on video.

  KORY: That's because you're a fossil who still gets his news from slices of dead tree the day after it's already happened. Embrace some change, old man!

  JOHANNSEN: You little weasel. Your website wouldn't know how to break news if a Pulitzer-worthy story came up and kicked you in the skinny jeans.

  BYRD: hey guys lets just visualize the goal we want accomplished ok like really focus on what we want to make it happen and maybe soon barbour will be no joke prez right yaaaaaay

  Chapman closed his eyes, almost physically revulsed by the spew of emojis that followed that missive. He made a mental note to delete the capability to use emojis in the Escapade app.

  CHALKE: Oh. My. God.

  Chapman sighed. Why did they always do these dramatic typings that left him on a cliff's edge?

  KORY: What?

  JOHANNSEN: What is it?

  Chapman refused to add his own inquiry, but it didn't matter, because he almost immediately lost focus when the sound of a gunshot over the open line snatched his attention away from the conversation scrolling on the screen and back to the events happening on the other end of his call.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Sienna

  I spit blood on the steering wheel and drew my pistol silently, tensing because I could hear someone approaching my car. The honk of horns in the distance, the occasional shout made their way through the fog of my skull trauma, but I didn't dare speak to the president and give myself away to the enemies that were surely creeping up on me even now. I could see sideways out the passenger window, which had been shattered in the crash. A DC street scene played out before me, and down the cross street I could see people running and cars stopped, gawking at my crash.

  The footsteps of our pursuers were quiet, but definite. A stir of motion and a groan from the backseat gave me some reassurance that my little stunt to keep Kristina from slaughtering him hadn't killed the president, but I couldn't turn to assess his condition without giving away that I was alive and about to thin out the herd of my enemies.

  And I was ready to do some killing. If I hadn't already killed Kristina by crashing the car or Frost by knocking him out of the air, I was definitely ready to kick off a slaughterfest in style with the yahoos approaching my vehicle right now.

  I steadied my breath, readying myself. The challenge was not letting them get close enough for Phinneus to get a clear shot on me but not moving so early that there was no chance of me getting the kill shot on one of them. I was facing deep odds, at least three to one, and I didn't need to make things worse for myself here by getting the timing wrong.

  The Geo's engine rattled in its death throes, making a strange, dripping, tick-a tick-a noise. Blood dripped down my palm in the humid air, my forehead aching and pressed against a steering wheel that had been built before the miracle of airbags. That would have taken some of the pain out of this experience.

  “...See 'em?” Tyler Bowen's voice reached me, and I recognized it from our encounters in San Francisco a few months ago. “Are they alive?”

  “Shut up, rookie.” Phinneus's unmistakable old man energy shushed the newbie right up. I suspected the only thing keeping me from catching a bullet in the back of the head from him right now was my seat blocking his view.

  Someone honked and a gunshot split the air.

  “Hey!” Veronika's voice was hushed but urgent. “No collateral damage.”

  “There's always collateral damage,” Phinneus said. He was easing closer. I knew he had his rifle at his shoulder, a bead drawn on my car, probably ready to pump fire if I kicked the door off and came at him that way.

  That signaled it was time for a change of tactics. I'd already released my seatbelt with the help of my knife. With care, I fell sideways, keeping below the line of the seats, and slithered my way to the passenger side, where I pushed the door open quietly and dumped out onto the pavement, landing in a little ball.

  “Hey!” Tyler Bowen was there, keeping watch on this side of the car. “She's here!”

  I snapped a shot right at his face. Perfectly aimed, perfectly aligned sights.

  It missed.

  I checked my aim, lining up the sight picture in the middle of his forehead. Fired.

  Missed.

  Bowen chuckled, though he'd flinched when I first shot at him. “Luck. Looks like it's not with you.” He smiled through the gap in his ski mask. “You're not gonna have much of it trying to hit me.”

  I readjusted my aim to the left
of his head by an inch, concentrated on the spot just to the side of his ear, and fired twice.

  The second shot bent under the influence of his probability bending powers, and slapped wetly into his forehead, splattering his brains out the back of his head.

  “Too bad you were working on my luck, not yours,” I said to his corpse as he fell. “Otherwise me shooting just past you wouldn't have bent the bullet right into your forehead, moron.”

  “Hey Sienna,” Veronika's wary voice came from the other side of the Geo. “Any chance you might be willing to just...walk away from this?”

  “Oh come on, random stranger who I've definitely never met or worked with before,” I called back. “From your total lack of experience in knowing me personally, you should realize that I am not the kind of girl who just walks away from a fight.”

  I was stalling. I needed to get the president out of the back of the Geo before Veronika burned the whole thing to a crisp. When she had her plasma powers going, she could cover her skin in an impenetrable membrane of superheated particles. Bullets couldn't get through, which meant she was immune to the only weapon I had at hand.

  “We're not here for you,” she called back. “Don't get me wrong, there'd maybe be a bonus in taking you out, but I'm here for the big show. And I'm willing to do a little horse trading to get what I want.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I reached up and grabbed hold of the Metro's rear door through the smashed window. Pebbles of safety glass got caught in my palm as I adjusted my grip. I didn't have time to open the door nicely. The sound would give me away. “I bet your partner there isn't willing to do horse trading. That phrase is probably triggering for him, given he made his bones being a horse thief in the Old West.”

  “I – what?!” Phinneus spluttered in outrage, as any Old West man of honor would have. “You listen here, little missy, I ain't never stolen in all my born days–”

  “Hey old man?” I said, and ripped the Geo's door right off its hinges, twirling around once like I was in a hammer throw competition, using the car as cover and throwing the door like a frisbee over the top of the car, “Gotcha.”