7.
Packing was a breeze, thankfully. I didn’t have much, and what I did have was easily shoved into my suitcase. There were no clothes waiting in the laundry, because Reed had put all of mine away for me before leaving. I perhaps should have found it awkward that my brother was laundering my unmentionables and then putting them in the drawers in my room, but honestly, I had zero interest in washing my own clothes, so it was something I’d learned to overlook in the last few months.
“We’ll head north,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out on the landing, bag slung over my shoulder. Cassidy was just behind me, and Eilish was bringing up the rear, locking the door as we left the condo. She’d been pretty quiet since I’d made the decision to leave. For someone who’d been so keen on getting out just a little while earlier, she’d changed her tune pretty fast.
Or stopped singing, I guess. Because of the quiet.
“Oh, good,” Cassidy said acidly. “Because if we headed south, we’d be in the Gulf of Mexico within minutes, and if we headed west we’d be aiming for Texas where this meta is not—as yet.”
“I notice you didn’t throw in a chance to make fun of her for not saying east,” Eilish said, pocketing the car keys with hardly any effort. She was slick, a practiced thief, and those movements carried into her everyday life, I’d noticed.
Cassidy flushed only mildly. “If you were to head east, you could catch Interstate 75 or Interstate 95, both major north-south feeder arteries on the east coast.”
“In other words, that would make sense, so she didn’t want to make fun of me for … not suggesting that?” I had lost the thread. I blame scotch. “Anyway … northward. We go north. Maybe via 90-75—whatever she said.” I waved a hand at her. “I leave the navigation to you, Cassidy.”
“Fine,” she said, falling into a hurried step behind me. If I looked skeletal, she looked like bone fragments strung together with dental floss. “Where are we going?”
I cast a look back at her. “I dunno. Where are we going?”
Now she flushed a shade darker, and her asthma acted up, very audible in her next breath, which sounded like an unintended hiss. “Well, given that we know little to nothing about this—this villain,” I thought that was a bit rich coming from a lady who’d once conspired to humiliate, destroy and kill me, all from afar and with the aid of my worst enemies, “I think our first step is to visit the scene, as best we can.” She whitened a little as she seemed to decide the course, “to, um, canvas for clues.”
“In a place where the cops and federal agents are thicker than the mosquitos on warm nights around here?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I think we’re a lot better off getting to within a day’s drive of the scene and then waiting there until this guy shows his face again.”
Cassidy was frowning so deeply behind me I could hear it in her voice. “Your plan is just to wait for him until he shows up again?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Were you watching that thing unfold? Where he sent the bridge to the bottom of the bay?”
She caught up with me, coming alongside me and shooting a fiery look that was probably burning holes in the windows of the other condos we walked past on the way to the stairs. “Yes. Of course.”
“Then you should know,” I said, really wishing I’d brought a scotch for the road, “what happened on that bridge—”
“Was an attempted execution,” she said fiercely. “That man—that monster—he attacked my—”
“Mass murderer boyfriend,” I said, smacking Cassidy with my words rather than my fist—for now. “Let us not forget that Eric killed more people than this guy. And if he were still alive—”
Cassidy grabbed me by the hand and spun me, almost causing me to drop my bag in shock that she’d tried to manhandle me. Mousy Cassidy. She was staring at me with a blazing fire in her eyes. “He,” she said, now straining, “is not—dead.” The last word came out as kind of a hushed whisper.
Drink almost got the better of me, and I was on the verge of saying, “Suuuuuure he’s not.” But I was about to spend hours and possibly days in a confined car with Cassidy, and some little genius part of me stopped that reply at the last second. Instead, I went with the blandly neutral, “Okay.” And then followed it up with, “But it wasn’t an execution, there on the bridge.” I looked at her, trying to stay somewhat compassionate by dialing back my desire to hit her so hard she’d fly off the balcony and into the parking lot. It wasn’t as easy as you might think, with the scotch burning through my veins.
She only held off for a moment before curiosity got the better of her. “What was it, then?”
“Looked like a bloody annunciation, didn’t it?” Eilish tossed in. I gave her a nod. Mad respect. She went on. “I mean, he drops of out of the sky like a fiery avenging angel, doesn’t he? That’s not just a vigilante coming to—what does Sienna call it? ‘Lay the smack down’?”
“Pretty sure that was Dwayne Johnson, not me,” I said, maybe reddening a little. From drink, surely. “I might have quoted and possibly appropriated it as my own.”
“He doesn’t really say much, just throws down the vengeance on your boy and then leaves,” Eilish said. “Executions have announcements—I mean, I assume. We don’t really have those in the UK, see. But I’m guessing when you do them here, there’s some sort of reading off of the crimes the guilty party’s committed, et cetera. None of that, though. Ergo, it wasn’t vengeance for your ship the bloke was after, in spite of this fire man’s sandbagging attempt to fight your lad.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Either he’s a government agent that got carried away in striking down a threat, or …” I shrugged. “This was the start of something else.” We took the stairs down a few at a time to the ground floor. “And if it was the start of something else …”
“We’ll be hearing about it soon,” Cassidy said, almost numbly. That was, of course, her problem—she couldn’t figure out people. Eilish, though—she knew people. She had to. They were her marks.
“Now, this guy can fly,” I said, “so really, he could show up anywhere.”
“Then why head north?” Cassidy asked, blinking as she tried to reason along with me.
“The eastern seaboard is the mostly densely populated section of the United States in easy traversal distance,” I said. “I mean, except during rush hour. You can go from Boston to DC in—what, a few hours?”
“In perfectly optimal conditions, six hours, forty-five minutes,” Cassidy said, “via the Acela Express.”
“So, we could go west, hope he shows up in LA,” I said, shrugging as we started to cross the parking lot toward the car. “But to cover the west coast, without aid of an airplane …”
She got it. “You’d spend days going from LA to Seattle. Less dense, more spread out.”
“Bingo,” I said. “So, until we know his motive, we’re going to pick the geographically closest and most populated section of America—and hope that since he’s already evinced interest in a person, that his next attempt to get whatever he wants involves another person—one located in that giant metroplex we call DC-Jersey City-New York-Boston-whatever.”
“By the sheer numbers … you’re probably right,” Cassidy said, blinking and thinking. “How did you—”
“Learn people, Cassidy,” I said, waiting for Eilish to fiddle with the car keys and pop the rear of the SUV. “It makes everything easier when you do.”
That shut her up. We stowed our baggage and got in, Eilish in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger side, and Cassidy like a black hole of churning thought in the back. Eilish started the car, fiddling with the seat, with the steering wheel, what felt like endlessly.
Finally, my patience at an end, I asked her, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She stopped fussing with things. “Well … you Americans drive on the wrong side of the road.”
I chortled. “I thought the same thing about you Brits.”
“I’m Irish, not a ‘Brit,’ okay?” She blew air impatiently out. “But the fact remains—I’m driving and I’m not familiar with the way you do things here. Also, I’m pretty sure that since I never went through customs when I arrived on that magical SR-71 with the shrunken living quarters beneath the seat, that I’m probably going to be in big trouble if I get caught for driving without a license.”
I glanced back at Cassidy and she paled. “I’m—I can’t really drive very well—”
“Another area of theoretical knowledge yet to become practical in your life, Cassidy?” I took a shot at her. “Well, Eilish, you’re either going to have to convince Cassidy or do it yourself, because I’m really not capable of it after two rounds of scotch.”
“Three,” Cassidy said.
When I fired a glare at Ms. Skinnyjeans in the backseat, Eilish chimed in. “Don’t think we missed that nip you took just before we left.”
“Fine,” I said. “Three. In any case, I’m drunk, and cannot drive.” I smacked my mouth together. “So … we’re left with either Cassidy, who apparently hasn’t—”
“I mean, I maybe could,” Cassidy mused. “I guess I haven’t tried.”
“Yeah, let’s not learn now, on interstates filled with truckers and busy people,” I said. “Or we could go with you—experienced—”
Eilish did a little flushing herself. “Well, I’ve been in London the last few years, so—no, I haven’t exactly been driving there—”
“Oh, for f—” I started.
“Well, I ask men to drive me places if I need a ride,” Eilish said, throwing up her hands. “It’s not like driving’s this great, fun thing!”
“Not in European shoe cars, it probably isn’t,” I said, thumping my head against the headrest.
“And that’s another thing,” Eilish said, looking around the SUV. “It’s so big! I feel like I’m going to run over a small child and not even notice in this thing!”
“I imagine the screaming would give it away,” Cassidy muttered.
“But it’s insulated, see?” Eilish said, knocking on the door. It made a light thump, her fist against the pleather. “Anyway—I think we should ask a nice man to drive for us. I can do that.”
“How do we know he’s going to be any more competent than you two?” I threw a little feral savagery into the question, a little shot. A shot. God, I wanted a shot right now. I slumped, my head in my hands. “I’m casually shrugging aside the fact that you’re proposing kidnapping a man in order to chauffeur us. How far I’ve fallen.”
“Look, there’s a man coming right now,” Eilish said, looking at the rearview. “I’ll just step out, and ask him kindly for help—”
“Bending his will to yours,” I said.
“And then we’re home free,” she said.
“Except for the kidnapping.”
“And across state lines, no less,” Cassidy said. “That’s extra bad, in the US. I mean kidnapping at all is bad, but statutorily and punishment-wise, involving federal authorities—”
“Ugh,” I said, gurgling into my hands.
“I’m going to ask him,” Eilish said and started to get out. “I mean, he’s coming this way anyhow—”
“He could be a dad on vacation with his wife and kids,” I said, still speaking into my hands. “And you’re going to kidnap him for possibly days, and when he gets back to his wife he’s going to have to explain why he disappeared in a car with three strange young women—well, two strange young women and me, a perfectly normal young woman who just has a lot of shit happen to her—”
“Oh, hell,” Eilish said, “he’s coming right up to the—”
There was a knock at my window and I jerked my face out of my hands before I could even stop myself. I threw open the door and the man leapt out of the way, a step ahead, and kicked the door back at me expertly.
It caught me in the hands as I was springing out to attack, driving me back into my seat before I could deploy, so fast it just bowled me over without warning.
“Didn’t come for a fight!” he shouted at me, “Sienna … it’s me.”
I blinked, the painful ache in my wrists slightly dulled by the alcohol. “Who is that?” I asked. His head was out of sight, blocked by the roof of the SUV. I ducked down slightly, trying to see.
“Just me,” he said, and something drifted into my view, extended from between the door and the vehicle’s frame. If I yanked the door closed, it’d catch whatever he’d stuck in—
Oh.
It was a bottle of scotch.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” Cassidy murmured.
“Clearly a good friend of mine,” I said, yanking the proffered scotch out of his hand. He let me. I yanked the top and took a long pull, sighing once I was done.
“Well, definitely someone who knows you well, at least,” Eilish muttered, still looking a little on edge.
“Obviously,” I said. Mm. Peaty. “Who is that?” I asked, trying to peer at the man standing there. He was definitely in fine shape, definitely metahuman, definitely … uhm …
Kinda yummy. And that probably wasn’t the alcohol talking. He was wearing a suit, no tie, and … shapely. Greyscale suit, pressed white shirt …
He popped down into view, his short, dark hair impeccably coiffed. He stared at me with intense eyes, and a knowing smile, as I blinked in surprise.
“Harry Graves?” I asked, my breath escaping me once more. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m here to drive you,” he said, with a muted smile. “And also …” His smile evaporated, and he grew still. Graves wasn’t a twitchy man, so this came with some serious sense of setting off alarm bells in my head. He breathed, and when he spoke, it came out as a low, dramatic proclamation. “I need your help.”