Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13) Read online

  Pretty much the opposite of me. It was tough getting into character for her. Ms. Gracie probably wouldn’t have tipped as well if she’d been a real person, but that was the advantage of being Sienna beneath it all, I guess. At least for Hannah.

  “Are you doing the buffet this morning?” Hannah was asking out of politeness. Ms. Gracie always ate the buffet for breakfast, because Ms. Gracie had a problem putting down her fork when she should have.

  Coincidentally, it was a problem Sienna Nealon might have had as well, though it had become a lot more obvious since I’d come here and had occasion to be more idle than I’d ever been in my entire life. And better fed as well.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, trying to act like I was thinking about getting a fruit bowl or something. The buffet had fruit. I assiduously avoided it, though, because who wanted fruit when you could have pancakes covered in real, thick Vermont maple syrup? And don’t give me that crap about how pancakes are good with fruit; pancakes are good with syrup. Maybe a fruity syrup, if you’re in the mood. Save the strawberries for burial under a mountain of whipped cream, because that was the only way I liked them. And I honestly would have rather just had the whipped cream.

  Yeah … Ms. Gracie had a problem.

  “I’ll just take the buffet,” I finally said, tossing the thin, one-column paper menu aside. Hannah nodded, projecting an aura of calm acceptance. Inside, I was not calm nor accepting. I was raging a little bit at myself, but it was tempered with the desire to go hit the omelet station and request every single kind of cheese in my breakfast, including the aged, pickled feta and the creamy goat cheese.

  “Very good,” Hannah said, nodding her head. “Do you want anything else to drink?” Her islander accent was still strong, even after years of being around about a million mainlanders.

  “Milk,” I said.

  “Whole or skim?”

  I warred with myself. “Whole,” I said, giving up the fight quickly. If I was going to drink skim milk, I might as well have just stuck to the water.

  Hannah nodded and vanished, threading her way across the full room. I sat there for a few seconds longer in self-loathing, then sighed and started to get up to make my way to the buffet.

  I filled my plate with other goodies, like buttered toast, a blueberry muffin, some juicy sausage, hash browns and a custom-made omelet before picking my way back over to my table.

  As I did, I noticed a guy in a muscle shirt with his arms exposed was staring at me. His stick-figure girlfriend next to him paused with a bite of cantaloupe the size of a pinky finger hanging off her fork, inches from her mouth. They were both looking at me with the same gawking expression on their faces, though his was laced with smugness, his arms folded in front of a black shirt that said, “5%.”

  Their whole manner irritated me, because it was as rich with scorn as my pancakes were with syrup, so I nodded at his shirt and said, “5%, huh? I could have guessed that was how much of your brain you were using just by the dumb look on your face.” I spoke with a northeastern accent, long-practiced, because there was no accent like Bahston for being an asshole.

  His smugness died in an instant and he looked down at his shirt like he’d forgotten what it said. “That’s my body fat percentage,” he said, expression darkening. He had a plate of lean proteins in front of him, and I could have believed the 5% figure, if I actually cared about such things. “And since most people only use 10% of their brains, 5% isn’t so bad.” He tossed that one my way like it was a stunning refutation of my insult.

  “It’s half,” I said, blinking in surprise. “Half as much. That would be bad. And even if it weren’t, that 10% number is bullshit. But in your case, I believe the 5% of your brain in use is entirely in the stem.”

  “Not funny,” he said, face darkening further. “And not true.”

  “Way to prove me wrong by using your wits to rebut, there, guy,” I said, letting the back of my robe brush my chair as I sat back down to start devouring my breakfast.

  “What are you eating that for?” Mr. 5% asked his girlfriend, and I heard the clatter of a fork as he slapped the eating utensil out of his companion’s hand. I could hear him plainly without the aid of my meta enhanced hearing.

  “I was—”

  “You don’t need it,” he said with supreme, asshole snippiness. “You think I haven’t noticed the disgusting cottage cheese forming on the back of your thighs? You need to stop eating.”

  This was greeted with a choked sob, and the sound of his girlfriend leaving the breakfast room via the nearest exit, which led to a walkway to the beach.

  I ate in silence, ignoring the hell out of Mr. 5%, who was stewing and trying to catch my eye, probably looking to continue the fight I’d just picked with him and that he’d promptly continued with his girlfriend, the douche.

  I savored my meal, staring out at the ocean in the distance. There were some clouds on the horizon, which I took to mean, based on my boundless three months of experience, that we’d see rain come rolling in later this morning, and it’d be gone by noon. I sighed and looked around the breakfast room. I liked it here, but it was starting to get a little crowded for my taste.

  After finishing my breakfast in silence, aided by my incomparably delectable omelet, I drank the rest of my coffee and left, without a further word from Mr. 5%. Which was good, because his companion might not have been insulted to the point of violence by his asshole behavior, but I was insulted enough to consider doing some on her behalf.

  “We see you tomorrow, Ms. Gracie,” Hannah said as I signed off on her tip on the way out. I smiled at her and gathered my robe close, stepping out onto the path to the beach.

  The air was warm, the sea running across the sand in the distance a harmonious sound that was way, way better than the noise of horns honking, or people shooting at you. I walked with bare feet toward the beach, which was sparsely populated this morning, only a few people hanging out in the white chairs with blue cushions that rested all along the beachfront. They had canopies you could pull up if the sun got to be too much, and even a little flag you could raise in order to signal some kind waiter to bring you a drink of your choice.

  I’d gotten lots of drinks here over the last couple months. Lots and lots of them. Too many to count. They had helped balloon my waistline to the point that I’d been forced to go up a size or three.

  I walked past the infinity edge pool, listening to the gentle splash of water running over its edge, as though it ran directly into the ocean beyond. Sometimes I sat here, too, because you couldn’t just hang out on the beach all the time, after all. A change of scenery was occasionally necessary, because … I dunno. It really wasn’t that necessary, because it was all just variations on a theme—blue waters, white sand, white concrete decking. Umbrellas, beach chairs, and flags up so you could booze yourself into oblivion.

  I shook my head. It was going to be another day of boozing myself into oblivion here at the pool or on the beach, I knew, unless I decided to go on one of the boat expeditions. Then I’d still booze myself into oblivion, I’d just be doing it on the open sea instead of here at the pool or on the beach. I could also have done the same from my patio back in the hotel, but … I had done that yesterday.

  “Ugh,” I said, and then heard a footstep behind me, turned, and said, “Ugh,” again, but louder.

  “I saw you looking at me back in there,” Mr. 5% said with a grin that really proved my brain stem observation true. “And I came out here because … let’s face it … you couldn’t take your eyes off me.”

  3.

  Scott

  Scott Byerly could feel the ocean drawing nearer as he drove his borrowed government sedan toward the Atlantic. It loomed behind the vegetation at the edge of the parking lot, a boardwalk platform rising above the patch of green to form the barrier between him and the sea. It was like a wall between the world of men and the ocean.

  There was a time when, at this distance, almost a block and a long stretch of sandy be
ach away, the ocean might have felt too far for him to get a grip on it.

  Not now, though. It was right there, near as life, as though he could reach out and take hold of every molecule from here to the shores of West Africa, ready to deliver it to a place of his choosing.

  Ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks still cluttered the parking lot. Mansion-like houses stood on either side of the public park, and in the distance he could see tall condo towers rising into the sky. People were all around him, like an ocean he had to cross in order to reach the real ocean, the salt spray in the air so near, yet so far.

  But even they weren’t enough to separate Scott from the feel of the sea.

  He parked the government sedan behind a cop car with its lights flashing and stepped out into the warm air. He could taste the salt in the breeze, strong and tangy, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds to really drink it in.

  “You the FBI guy?” someone asked, and Scott opened his eyes to see a middle-aged man approaching cautiously, hand outstretched. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

  “Scott Byerly,” he said, extending his own to the local cop, who was sweating through a long-sleeved shirt and a thin suit jacket. Scott flipped his ID, more out of habit than because he thought the guy needed to see it. “I heard you had a meta incident.”

  “Name’s Rafferty,” the cop said, pumping his hand. “You got here awfully fast.”

  “I was in Orlando already,” Scott said, looking past Rafferty toward the beachfront, where a few cops were milling around up on the boardwalk. The ocean was right up there, he could practically touch it … “Doing cleanup on that thing that went down in Central Florida a couple months ago.”

  “Oh, you mean that cult compound or whatever?” Rafferty asked with the sort of practiced disinterest that told Scott the detective knew all about it and was just fishing. “Didn’t one of your old friends bust that one open?”

  “Reed? Yeah,” Scott said. “It’s still a real mess, though. All these people had been prisoners for years and years in an isolated society of their own. Trying to get them reintroduced to ours is … uh, well …”

  “Yeah,” Rafferty said, nodding for Scott to follow him. “Our department got a captivity case once. Little boy imprisoned by a kidnapper for six months. I wouldn’t want to be the psychologist who had to pick up the pieces of that one.”

  “I expect it’s going to be a long road for most of them,” Scott said as they ascended the wooden steps. The boardwalk groaned almost imperceptibly under all the weight upon it; Scott doubted anyone but he could have heard it.

  “Figure at this point it’d be more of a job for social workers than an FBI Task Force head,” Rafferty said, still fishing. His dark hair was thinning, but he’d grown it out long on top. The sea breeze caught it and pulled it back hard, revealing a sharp widow’s peak.

  “It would have been,” Scott said with the ghost of a smile, “if my task force was made up of anyone other than me.”

  Rafferty took that in quick. “You were recruiting.”

  “Trying to, anyway,” Scott said. He kept smiling. “It didn’t really pay off.” Of course, he hadn’t really wanted it to, which might have had something to do with the outcome.

  “You covering the whole country right now? By your lonesome?”

  “When I’m not task force-ing on the manhunt for Sienna Nealon.” He held back his look of thin amusement; it was getting harder and harder to send the other elements of the task force in the wrong direction without having Andrew Phillips sniff him out.

  Rafferty grunted. “How much time are you really putting in on that task force investigation?”

  “Why, all that I can spare, of course,” Scott said, almost mockingly. Rafferty had probably picked up on it. Local cops were always the ones that came at him with questions like this. Some of his fellow members of the Bureau had asked as well, politely enough, but he’d been slightly more circumspect with them. “We are talking about one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, after all. Catching her is a vital duty.” He restrained his own laughter, because he’d perfectly parroted Phillips on that one.

  “Uh huh.” Yeah, Rafferty got it. “I’m not sure I’d want to find her, either.” He cast his eyes down the shore. “I’m not even sure I want to find these two.”

  “Two, huh?” Scott looked with him.

  The beach was more or less clear at this point, though there were still cops out there taking witness statements, and a forensics scene set up right in the middle of the shore. They hadn’t done a chalk outline, since there was sand everywhere, but they’d clearly highlighted where the victim had gone down before the paramedics had rushed him to the hospital.

  “Yeah, two,” Rafferty said. “Male and female, both Caucasian, late teens, early twenties—”

  “Female has strawberry blond hair,” Scott took up from memory, “male has dark hair, slicked back with shaved sides—”

  “She’s tattooed on both arms, and at the small of her back,” Rafferty went on, “he’s got one on the right shoulder—”

  “That matches hers, right?”

  “Yes.” Rafferty did not look amused. “You’ve been watching these two?”

  “They’ve been working their way down the coast,” Scott said, sighing. “I kept chomping to go after them, but—”

  “Task force.” Rafferty knew.

  “You know how the priorities run,” Scott said. “I guess things finally got too public to ignore.”

  “At least our vic’s not dead,” Rafferty said. “Sounded like the boy—”

  “Elliot.”

  “—Elliot came back and revived him,” Rafferty said. Didn’t read from a notebook or anything, just kept the facts in his head. “How would he do that?”

  “He’s an aeolus,” Scott said, leaning both palms against the wood railing of the boardwalk. The sea salt spritzed lightly on his face as he summoned a little taste closer.

  “Controls wind, right? Like your buddy—”

  “Reed? Yeah.” Scott glanced at Rafferty. “I’m not sure we’re buddies anymore, though.”

  “You have a falling out?”

  “Not really,” Scott said. “Just not sure where we stand. The girl—woman—female suspect—”

  “She’s the one who put our victim down.”

  “Her name’s June Randall.”

  “I know.”

  “From Westerville, Ohio. Outside Columbus.”

  “I’ve been watching her, too.” Rafferty looked jaded as hell, like he was struggling to keep from blowing up. “How long has your brass been holding you back from going after these two?”

  “About two months.”

  “Damn,” Rafferty breathed. “How many—”

  “Eight people have ended up in the hospital,” Scott said. “No one dead, fortunately. All that’s down to June, it sounds like. She loses her temper pretty easy. But it’s all petty crime, so—”

  “So it takes a back seat to your Most Wanted fugitive. I get it,” Rafferty said grudgingly.

  “Do you?” Scott asked, then whispered, “I don’t.”

  “So you’re going to go after them now, right?” Rafferty asked. “Before something worse happens? Because I would bet this girl is working up to worse.”

  “Finally, yes.”

  “Good.” Rafferty settled into a lean next to him. “What do you need from me?”

  “What do you have that’ll do me any good at finding them?” Scott asked.

  “They’ve been heading south until now,” Rafferty said. “Their last hit was, what, two weeks ago—”

  “North of Daytona, yeah.”

  “That’s a hundred miles north. I think they’ve been cooling their heels around here since then.”

  “Probably,” Scott agreed. He looked out at the beach. “Can’t imagine why …”

  “Heh,” Rafferty said, “if they’ve been holding out for two weeks, they’re probably about dry of cash, right?”

  “Likely. They’re prett
y petty in their thieving. Make off with a few bucks, burn through it, rinse and repeat as needed.”

  “So you think they’re gonna hit—” Rafferty’s radio beeped, along with those of a bunch of other cops. “We have a Code 24 in progress, the convenience store at the corner of—”

  “That's a robbery,” Rafferty said.

  “And there we go,” Scott breathed, taking it in.

  “Predictable sort, aren’t they?” Rafferty said, motioning Scott toward the boardwalk stairs. “That’s only ten minutes from here. Less if we floor it.”

  “Lead the way,” Scott said as they both headed for their cars. The boardwalk was a swarm of activity now, cops on the move, leaving the scene of one crime and on their way to the next.

  4.

  June

  “I want some nachos,” June said, filling up the plastic, crinkling container with the bagged chips. That done, she tossed the lid off the condiment bar for the wrapped burgers the gas station sold and took a handful of jalapenos, sprinkling them on the chips. Then she drowned the entire mass in hot, synthetic cheese.

  “Please, take whatever you want,” the clerk behind the counter said. His name tag said “Steve.” He looked like a Steve, blushing hard, red hair, all teary-eyed. “Just don’t—”

  “Hurt you?” June dabbed a chip in the cheese, scooped a couple jalapenos back on as they started to fall out of the plastic tray, and balanced the whole thing delicately until she crammed the entire tortilla chip in her mouth. She chewed and strode toward the counter where Steve was standing, his hands up. June made a face, then spat the nacho, cheese and jalapeno mixture right in Steve’s face. He blanched in surprise, then teared up further as a jalapeno slid down his cheek. “These are stale!”

  “I’m sorry,” Steve whimpered.

  “Come on,” Ell said, hiding behind the shelves at the front of the store. He was peering out at the cops who were establishing a perimeter around the gas station even now. “Let’s just go.”