Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (25 page)

She didn’t even realize when she fell asleep less than a minute later, exhausted, and still hungry.

The people in the lobby of my hotel looked at me funny when I came bopping in off the street soaked to the bone. It wasn’t that fancy of a hotel, but the skies were clear and the rain earlier hadn’t been enough to dampen a chihuahua. They were probably wondering how I got drenched but were either too classy or, possibly, too intimidated to ask. I rode the elevator up to my room while dripping all over the tile floor and the thin carpeting, and showered quickly. I tried to get the stink of the water off of me, and especially out of my hair, but I had a feeling that might be the work of days, so I just quickly dried my hair (by turning it into flame—it was safe, don’t worry) and then dressing in a spare t-shirt and jeans and picking up another phone out of my luggage and activating it with the special code.

The special code was sending a text to J.J., whose contact info was already preprogrammed into it: “Lost another one, this time to the briny deep of the Atlantic Ocean just outside the bay.”

The phone buzzed before I even made it out the door. “Switching you over to the new model now. Allow five minutes for full cloud sync. Also, how much do you stink right now? Because I’m guessing lots.”

I paused at the door and texted my answer. “Less than you after a gaming marathon, unwashed nerdling. XOXO, Sienna. P.S. Need traffic camera records for a series of garbage trucks hiding mini-subs that smashed through Manhattan this morning in attacks on bank and FBI building. Not a joke.”

I was waiting for the elevator when he buzzed me back: “I cannot do this hacking thing for you as it is totally and completely illegal.” I stared at his message, and another came through. “But if I could, then I would tell you that the NYPD is probably already in the system doing what you asked for, and they’ll likely have a report for you … in several hours … that will lead you to a warehouse in Brooklyn that was burned to the ground just after the incidents at the bank and the FBI HQ this morning. Also, suspiciously destructive incident at US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, though not as catastrophic as the FBI one due to building already having been evacuated as precaution when FBI attack word came through.” Another pause, then: “Also, just googled XOXO and I don’t think you meant that.”

I snorted as I stepped into the elevator. “Good call on the XOXO thing. What happened at the US Attorney’s office?” The phone buzzed that I was out of service, but the message sent when the elevator dinged my arrival at the lobby. “Also,” I sent a moment later, standing in the middle of the lobby like a statue with a phone cradled in my fingers, “any idea where those trucks originated before the warehouse, since I’m guessing that little fire will be attributed to arson and most of the evidence will have gone up in smoke?”

I was out on the street before he responded. “Tough to say on origin of trucks/mercs. No traffic cams in area around warehouse, lots of blind spots and multiple entrances to that area, not all covered by cams. Had to piece together final path of trucks from warehouse via a security camera mounted on a logistics company depot three blocks away. Will try to look back farther, but warehouse does not have online backup. Looks like they record on physical media like DVDs, so someone (YOU) would have to go out there and convince them to part with their records, send them to me, and allow time for me to comb-over blurry-ass footage with a fine-toothed comb in hopes that they brought the trucks in that way. Could take weeks. Or you could crowdsource to the FBI in hopes they do it faster.”

I stared at his message, and was pretty sure my frown was heavy. “HAHAHA,” I texted back. “What’s the likelihood they play nice and share even if they found something?”

“What are the odds a man would survive a direct kick in the balls by you on a bad day?” he replied before I’d even slid my phone back in my pocket. I had to concede his point. The FBI wasn’t likely to part with a shit sandwich if they knew it was coming my way. They had their own little meta task force, after all, and with Scott at its head, I knew the tone that they had taken with me was not a cooperative one.

I stepped out the door and flew into the air, determined to track down Welch. If anyone could make the feds cooperate, it would be him, because my leverage with them was nil. I paused, tucked myself up against a building for a second, and texted, “Ship that these mercs escaped to was home ported in Canta Morgana. Called the
Tirragusk
. See what you can find? Also, Revelen connection?” I just threw that out there to see what he made of it.

I didn’t even get my phone back in my pocket before it started ringing. I saw it was J.J. so I just answered. “Whaddup?”

“You serious on that Revelen thing?” He sounded kinda hopeful.

“Had it printed right across the bow, ‘Canta Morgana.’ And if you watch the news—”

“They’re joining in holy matrimony with Revelen, giving Revelen a port and Canta Morgana … I dunno, a bunch of tourism ad buys,” J.J. said. “Whatever Revelen has going for it.”

“So you’ve seen that news, then?”

“Eastern European politics are another hobby of mine,” J.J. said airily. “Right up there between painting Warhammer figures and studying the collected works of Isaac Asimov.”

“You’re a real Renaissance man.”

“So,” J.J. went on, probably suspecting me of poking fun with my comment (I was actually 80% sincere), “it’s probably not surprising this boat was chartered out of Canta Morgana if it was a merc op.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “But the question is, can we somehow trace back—”

“No.”

I blinked, leaning against the brick facade of the building I’d sheltered against, and stared down at a small crowd looking up at me from the sidewalk ten stories below. They were pointing, taking pictures. “That was fast.”

“Probably because in addition to all their ads proclaiming, ‘Vacation in Revelen,’ the next biggest import of this newly-joined nation state is, other than tourists and mercenaries, hackers. They’ve got feelers all over the darkweb, trying to draw talent to build their online infrastructure. It’s a big thing with them right now. I’d say it’s surprising 20/20 or the
New York Times
hasn’t done a special on it, but they’re probably too busy investigating whether Kat is really going to get ass implants to do any actual journalism.”

“So,” I said, frowning, “you’re saying—”

“That they’re ideally set up to hide whatever dirty dealing they’re doing,” J.J. said. “Also, if you check the State Department website, there are no travel warnings for the country. Which would make total sense if it weren’t currently serving as the mercenary clearinghouse of Eastern Europe. That’s a little suspicious.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe they’re in tight with President Harmon.”

“Could be,” J.J. said, “but it wasn’t that long ago some awfully suspicious stuff was going down in Bredoccia—that’s their capital—”

“I know.”

“—so maybe I’m a little suspicious, but when you’ve got armies of hackers and armies of—well, actual armies—for hire in your country and everyone’s pretending it’s all hunky dory, I kinda tend to view things through the lens of … yeah … worry. The fact that Cunningham vacationed there just before he went all explodey in the Minneapolis airport—”

“Yeah,” I said, embracing my inner worrywort. “The funny thing is, I’ve been talking with Gravity Gal … she’s an artificial meta, too.”

“Weird how that keeps popping up,” J.J. said. “I guess stopping Edward Cavanagh hasn’t kept his brainchild from spreading like he hoped it would.”

“Not exactly like he hoped it would,” I said, looking down at the people below me, like ants. “He wanted to give the whole world powers and see how the upheaval shook out. What we’re seeing is a trickle, which is worse than nothing but better than the total global chaos that would have resulted from most of the world getting superpowers.” I sighed. “Kinda sick of dealing with Cavanagh’s bullshit, though. He didn’t even have the grace to stop causing problems when he died, what with that plague in Chicago being directly attributable to him.”

“Yeah, you’d think that killing someone would put a stop to their being a pain in your ass, but here’s this asshole, stubbornly refusing to quit it even a year later.”

“I gotta go talk to Lieutenant Welch about this,” I said, blowing air out of my lips soundlessly. “Keep digging, see if you can find anything?”

“I can pretty much guarantee you that Revelen’s a dead end for me,” J.J. said. “I know you think I’m like, a god or meta of hacking, but I pretty much use tools to do a lot of the hard stuff. The hackers that have gone to Revelen are like … boss level. You’d need someone better than me to—” He just stopped. “Hrm. You thought about asking—”

“Jamal?” I let that one rattle around in my head a minute. Jamal was Augustus’s brother, and his power was over electricity. The problem was, he’d used his powers for evil—specifically, to kill some guys who’d murdered his girlfriend—and while he’d been a help to us in the past, I wasn’t sanguine about employing people who casually murdered in the name of vengeance. Mainly because I was territorial, and felt like I fulfilled the casual, vengeful murderer quotient for the team. “If you can get ahold of him, you could ask.”

“Oh, I can get ahold of him,” J.J. said. “I just hope he’s willing to help because watching him is like … I mean, he’s a master.”

“He can manipulate bits of data with his powers,” I said. “It’s not like he’s Yo-Yo Ma.”

“I’ve never seen Yo-Yo Ma hack the Federal Reserve and the CIA without getting detected,” J.J. said a little snippily, “but if I do, I’ll pay attention. Will let you know if we find anything out.”

“Sounds good,” I said and slipped off the wall as I put my phone back in my pocket. Those spectators were still looking up at me, so I flew off around the corner, figuring I’d track down Welch when I wasn’t being watched.

“So that’s what happened,” I said after I finished explaining everything to Welch. He was conveniently still on the scene of the bank job, since the other two attacks had gone straight to federal jurisdiction and had the FBI crawling all over them. I suspected this one was going to get snatched up, too, as soon as they got their poop in a group. Having their New York HQ blasted to smithereens had undoubtedly put a strain on the FBI’s ability to investigate this mess, but knowing the government response, they would probably have several hundred agents converging on the city to solve the crime. As an institution, they’d take the bombing of their building personally, and they’d be coming hard after every lead they could get.

Personally, I wasn’t enthused about being anywhere near that when it happened, but I wasn’t the type of person to walk away from an open investigation, either, so it seemed likely we were going to hit a point of conflict if I didn’t hurry and solve this thing. Faces needed pounding, I was pretty sure, and there was only one woman for that job.

“This was a big fat sucker punch,” Welch pronounced. I’d laid out all we’d seen and all my suspicions about the Revelen connection, too. He’d taken it all in. “If it’s like you say, and they hired pros to do all this … why?”

“Someone had a grudge against the FBI?” I shrugged. “What I can’t figure is … why hit this bank, too? Why not just … hit the FBI and the US Attorney …” I frowned. “Wait. Why hit both of those?”

“It might be hard to tie the US Attorney attack to the FBI, except by timing,” Welch said cautiously.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it wasn’t the same MO as the FBI one,” he said uneasily. “I’ve only heard rumors but … I hear it was a meta.”

I stared at him. “And you’re just mentioning this to me
now
?”

“The meta got away,” he said with a shrug. “No description.”

“What kind were they?”

“Whatever kind can turn the entire building into glass,” Welch said. “Because that’s what they did, turned the building and everything in it into glass, and let it collapse under its own weight. The whole thing is just a mess of shards now, and evening rush hour is gonna be interesting, lemme tell ya.”

My eyes widened. I’d never even heard of that power before. “That’s … new.”

“Oh, we’ve stumped the expert,” he said, and scowled. “Not a great sign.”

“And no one saw—”

“No one saw,” he said, “as far as I know. The info pipeline from the FBI is gonna trickle down nothing pretty fast, though. They’ll be holding their cards close to the vest from here on out.”

“Figured they might have taken offense to this attack,” I said. “At least you’ve still got the bank heist to work. And prisoners from it.”

“They’ll go to federal custody within the hour,” he said with a grunt. “If they haven’t already. And they’re not talking in any case.”

“What about dredging up the wreck of the
Hesperus
?” I asked as Welch started down the street. Cleanup crews were still picking up pieces of cars and mailboxes and other stuff that the garbage truck had crashed through on its path to the river.

“I don’t think that’s something we’re going to be able to manage,” he said, now focused on the minutia of the cleanup operation. “I’d bet the feds are going to take the lead on that one.”

“Man, is this a funeral?” I asked. “Cuz there is just no joy here.”

“Tell me about it,” Welch groused. “And here I was hoping you’d solve the bank robbery problem for me and blow out of town on a high.” He looked over the scene with a wary eye. “Seems to me you’ve opened something else entirely here.”

I eyed him carefully. “You’re not blaming me for this, are you?”

“Huh?” He looked at me like I’d woken him up with a slap. “No, it was happening before I sent you down here, and I doubt we’d have stopped the robbery or saved the hostages without you and Gravity Gal, so no … I don’t blame you. I do want to get it solved, though, and it looks like I’m not gonna get my way on that one, since the FBI is hopping mad.” He ran a hand through his comb-over, messing it up further. “Life’s full of disappointments, I guess.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said, because I didn’t really know what else to say.