21.
“I have to talk to my brother,” I said, once we were a few miles down the road. “But he’s not going to be sleeping right now.”
The sun was rising, the horizon brightening as it rose to our right. We were heading north, almost to Nashville, Harry at the wheel. I assumed he knew what he was doing.
“Sounds like a phone call is in order,” Eilish said.
“The problem with the phone is—” I started.
“The NSA will be listening to his calls,” Cassidy interjected, “hoping to catch a whiff of you. That’s why he assembled the team to come to Scotland almost entirely in person.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So I need a way to talk to him that isn’t going to trip their alarms.”
“Who cares if it trips their alarm, so long as it doesn’t lead back to you and definitely incriminate him?” Eilish said after a minute. “After all, it’s not what they know, it’s what they can prove.”
“Spoken like a true criminal,” Cassidy said, but she wasn’t sneering, she was more … calculating. “If you just want to talk to him and you don’t care if they hear, you could call with a voice scrambler on. It’s what I use when I need to hide my identity. I even have a program on my computer that can handle it. Couple that with a little call origin bouncing—I could set up a phone call with him that could last at least a few minutes without the NSA tracing it back to us here.”
“Interesting,” I said, though I was really feeling a sense of stark terror. I looked to my left and sure enough, Harry was white-knuckling the steering wheel. He caught me looking and nodded once, which I took to be an affirmation of the fear I was thinking but barely daring to say.
If I called my brother now, even with the voice scrambler, the NSA, the government—the interested investigative parties—would have enough reason to be suspicious that they’d probably start watching him a little more carefully.
Which meant he could no longer hang out on the Gulf of Mexico with me and escape notice.
Which meant … if I made this call, I was saying goodbye to seeing Reed, in person, for the foreseeable future.
I took a deep breath. There was this kind of warring clash within me. Why was this so hard?
That clinging desire to sit on the patio at my rented condo, stare out at the blue waters while inebriating myself to the point of numbness … I was having a hard time letting go of it.
What else did I have to look forward to?
Oh, right. Getting punched in a Waffle House, getting dragged off to jail or somewhere else, and just generally enjoying the feeling of crawling through broken glass in order to try and return to some semblance of feeling normal—whatever that was before all the scotch and memory loss.
“I’ve carved out a real wonderful life for myself,” I muttered.
“Not exactly George Bailey, are you?” Harry said with a slight smile. “But yeah … you’ve made some friends.”
“They’re all great,” I said, “but it’s my enemies that have driven me harder down this path. Still …” I sighed.
Something in me felt like someone had grabbed my heart and squeezed tight, with meta strength, every time I thought about just giving up and going back to Florida to be alone with my scotch and maybe the occasional margarita. You know, to break the monotony of scotch.
I didn’t want to leave this fiery asshole flying around, wrecking my friends. And I didn’t want to leave the Terminator rolling around out there, either, doing who knew what besides attacking innocent—well, okay, “innocent” was a strong word, but still—girls in search of waffles.
That told me a little something about myself, something I hadn’t actually forgotten, but that had gotten buried under a few months of rust. “I need to make this call,” I said. “Set it up, please, Cassidy.”
“Wow, that’s brave,” Eilish said, “cutting yourself off from your brother when he’s been helping you all this time. I mean, you’ll probably have to stop using his company credit cards after this, too, won’t you?”
I clenched my teeth. Hadn’t thought of that. “Yes,” I said. “I suppose I will. So I hope you’ve got some gas money, Cassidy, because the revenge portion of this mission is going to require you to pay the daily expenses.”
Cassidy shrugged. “I can float you some basic expenses, but nothing outlandish.”
“And here I was hoping to R&D a full working replica of an Iron Man suit to use to destroy my enemies now that I’m more vulnerable.”
Cassidy’s brow creased, folding in thought. “You don’t seem the type.”
“Well, desperation does crazy things,” I said. “The call?”
“Give me a couple minutes,” she said, and went to pecking away at her laptop.
Eilish took the opportunity afforded by the silence to pipe up, as usual. “So … this us done with the condo in Florida, then?”
My jaw tightened. “Yep.” I found her presence suddenly so annoying, and I couldn’t place my finger quite on why. She’d been around for months, sure, but that wasn’t it. She was always snarking, and not really doing anything useful. She’d been helpful in Scotland, no doubt, but as I sensed her behind me, all I could feel was irritated.
What the hell was Eilish even doing here? Why had she followed me back from Scotland once that was all done? She could have been dropped off in London or Ireland or wherever, but …
Instead she was following me, and suddenly I was really annoyed about all the baggage I was picking up on this trip. Like I didn’t have enough going on without managing this Irish girl when I was already incredibly irritable. I wasn’t exactly a world-renowned diplomat, but that wasn’t a formula for anything good.
“Just as well,” Eilish said. “I was a bit tired of sun and sand and—I don’t know, whatever you want to call that wintery mess that you have on that coast. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a bit like summer back home, but still … if I’m to spend time on the beach, I’d like it to be a warm one.”
“Well,” I said, a little tightly, trying not to let my irritation with Eilish consume me, “it’s about to get hot for us, so … I guess you get half your wish.”
I heard her gulp, then Cassidy said, “Okay. I’m ready.” And then she tossed me something.
I caught it and only then opened my palm to see what she’d thrown. It was a small Bluetooth headset, and when I looked at her, she nodded, so I put it on. It fit in my ear and had a very tiny boom mic that extended about halfway down my cheek. It didn’t fit very well, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was going to fall out at a critical juncture during my call.
“Sound check,” Cassidy said.
“Uhmmm … scotch?” I asked.
“Microphone is functioning normally. Let me know if you can’t hear the ringing.” Her head was back down, focused on the laptop.
“What ringing?” I asked, and then a second later I heard it. “Oh.” It was a telephone ring, in my ear.
A moment later, there was a click as someone picked up. “Hello?” My brother’s voice was taut.
I paused for a second as I debated the best way to approach this. Hopefully the voice scrambler would be in place already. I glanced at Cassidy and she nodded, so I said, “Hey, bro.”
My voice came out sounding absolutely terrible, like a garbage disposal trying to grind up a tin can.
“Who is this?” Reed asked, sounding somewhere between suspicious and appalled at the tenor of my voice. It was pretty bad.
“It’s me, bro,” I said. “Come on, catch up. You can’t sit around all day trying to think your way through this like Rodin’s statue.”
“S—what the …?” I could tell he got it. “What happened to your voice?”
“Been gargling rock salt,” I said. “Does wonders for my vocal range. Listen, I only have a few minutes.” Cassidy helped up two fingers. “You heard about Kat and Veronika?”
He hesitated. “Are you out of your mind, doing this? I mean—are you freaking kidding me?”
“Focus, focus,” I said.
“Yes,” he seethed, “of course I heard about Kat and Veronika. Kat’s fine, by the way. And Veronika …” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah …?”
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “Just like Jamie Barton, she’s been … worked over. She may make it, she may not, depending on how well her meta healing abilities kick in.” He picked up a little steam now. “Why are you calling me?”
“I kinda got bushwhacked,” I said, figuring it wouldn’t do to lie. I also figured that if they hadn’t worked it out already, the government was going to get the picture about the Waffle House incident quickly, but I felt no need to tie that to this call, mostly for evidentiary purposes. “I’m in motion, and, uh … back in the game.”
“For f—no, no.” I could envision him shaking his head on the other end of the phone. “You should be—safe.” Conducting this conversation was like trying to fight with one had behind your back. He couldn’t say the things he wanted to say, and neither could I.
“Safe’s a relative term these days,” I said. “Jamie Barton probably thought she was safe heading across the harbor. Veronika definitely thought she was safe at her own house. Are you noticing a pattern with these attacks yet, Reed?”
I bet his jaw was just chock full of tension. “I noticed the pattern.” Which was me, of course.
“Then you know ‘safe’ is an illusion right now,” I said. “Besides, there’s another player who’s come off the bench. Not sure if they’re related. I’m sure you’ll get deets soon.”
“Look,” he said, “none of this is conclusive. We can speculate about the connection between these … victims,” he seemed loathe to say it, and almost ground the word out between his teeth like chewed cud, “but there’s no definite, final piece of evidence that says, ‘Hey, I’m targeting the known associates of’—well, you know.”
“Hey,” I heard a voice in the background say. It was Augustus. “They spotted our guy in Minneapolis. Wheels up in ten.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Shit,” Reed said at last.
I glanced at Cassidy; she had a single finger extended, then lowered it. She mouthed, “Thirty seconds,” and I nodded. “Starting to sound like that connection is firming up,” I said, ignoring that grinding metal sound of my voice being scrambled. “Who goes to Minneapolis in January if they can avoid it?”
“It’s still not definite,” he said, but dear God, was he a shit liar.
“Sounds pretty definite to me,” I said.
“Please,” Reed said, “let us handle it. I’m bringing everyone we’ve got left. This guy is going down. There’s no reason to—to expand the scenario to include undue risk to … other parties.”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me in years,” I said, pretty dryly. “But you know that’s not how it works.” And by ‘it,’ I meant … well, me. Even with everything in a haze, I could recall that much about myself.
Bench sitter? That was not Sienna Nealon.
“I know,” he said, and there was so much tension in his voice that if he’d had a wooden spoon clenched between his butt cheeks right now, the handle would have snapped. Because meta strength, of course. Yeah, we had super-powered gluts. It was all part of the meta package.
“So … this is kinda goodbye for a while, I think.” I tried not to sound too choked up because, scrambled as my voice was, it’d probably sound like a trash compactor crushing a metal garbage can. Or a Transformer making love to a steel beam. Horrible, either way.
“Sounds like it,” he said, and man, did I feel the regret. “You know you can call me anytime. One way or another.” Subtle reference to dreamwalking. So subtle it couldn’t be used against him in court if he ever got charged with aiding and abetting me. My brother was a smart man.
“I know,” I said. “Same goes—a little differently, though.”
“Just … stand back, please.” He was begging. “Let us handle it.”
“You’ll have a little bit of time before I insert the risk into this scenario, or whatever the hell you said earlier.” I felt a lump in my throat, like I’d swallowed my own fist. “Take care of yourself, Reed. And the others, too.”
“Will do. Hopefully, after today … you can go seek out some other exotic locale and just chill for a while. Job done.” He sounded pretty confident. “And either way … I hope I see you soon. Somehow.”
“Me t—” I started to answer, but the line clicked dead. I looked back and saw Cassidy nod. She’d killed it at the buzzer.
I took the headset off and wordlessly handed it back to her. “Harry …” I said.
“Minneapolis bound, I know,” he said softly. “We’ll take I-65 north through Kentucky, then make our through western Illinois. It’s about thirteen hours from here if we drive straight through.”
“Let’s drive straight through, then,” I said, and stared at the road ahead. The sun was rising to my right, and the city of Nashville was ahead.
And somewhere, thirteen hours beyond it, was Minneapolis and St. Paul, the Twin Cities of Minnesota.
Home.
I was going home.
And the thought that I wasn’t going to make it nearly in time for Reed and his battle with this metahuman who’d been attacking my friends and associates destroyed any of the joy I might have felt at the prospect of seeing home again.