Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (2 page)

We were heading toward the front door of an old farmhouse ahead, and I’d spotted movement just inside. I altered my course accordingly, trying not to give the bad guys within a shot at my pretty face before I had a chance to breach and clear. I dodged behind a pine tree and held position there, trying to see the front window through about a million green pine needles. It smelled a little like one of those car wash air fresheners.

“Nothing at the back,” Reed’s voice squawked in my ear. “Kat and I are moving up.” He hesitated, and when his voice came back, it was filled with jolly. “You know, I hate to be all Admiral Ackbar—”

“Then don’t,” I said, drawing a snort of laughter from Augustus behind me.

“Yeah, you say that one all the time.” Kat Forrest’s voice came through in a low crackle. “‘It’s a trap! That’s a trap!’ Everything’s a damned trap to you.”

“Not my fault we’re always walking into traps,” Reed said, sulky at being called out. My half-brother was many things, but not so graceful at taking criticism. Must have gotten that from the other side of the family. Hah.

“Augustus, do you see anything in that window?” I was peering through the tree like mad, but I’d yet to see the motion I’d caught before.

“No,” Augustus said. I could practically feel him quivering behind me as he leaned out to look at the front window of the house. “But I saw it when you first caught it.”

I stared at the window again. There was a lacy white curtain in there, and maybe it was just an air draft that had moved it, but since we were all stalking up to this house, about to kick the doors in, it didn’t really behoove me to run with that explanation. No, Reed’s number one guess was probably right, again, and we were walking right into a situation where our enemy was ready and waiting.

“Okay,” I said, “here’s how we’re going to do this—”

“Bust through the door, kill everyone, and then go to a bar and talk about how great we are,” Kat said.

I stared straight ahead, like I could see her grinning stupidly on the other side of the house. “No.”

“Can we get on with this?” Augustus asked, and I heard him scratching himself through the Kevlar and tactical gear. “It’s gonna be a hot day, you know. Like, Atlanta hot.”

“Hotlanta,” Reed said.

“You know, I think the heat in LA was a lot more manageable—” Kat started.

“You are the worst SWAT team ever,” I said to all of them in a low hiss. “Augustus, we’re moving on the door. Kat, Reed—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Reed said, “we’re at the back door, ready to breach.”

“And you’re having a conversation right outside?” I asked, indignant. “Where they can hear you?”

“We’re talking meta low here, Sienna,” he said, and the trill of a bird through their mics almost deafened me. This new radio system J.J. had procured for us was pretty good. “We are good to go.”

“Augustus, let’s do our part,” I said and ducked around to run for the front door of the house. There was no motion at the front window to indicate we’d been seen. I mounted the front porch at a run, using my flight power to stay about an inch above the wood planks. Augustus slowed as he came up, realizing what I was doing to quiet my approach and taking some care not to cause squeaks. He was light on his feet, that one.

I dodged past the door and took up position to the right of it. Augustus went to the left, and now I went whisper quiet. “We are in position. Going in three. Two. One—”

I nodded at Augustus and caught his nod in return, then lifted my right leg without pulling my back off the wall. I gave a strong back kick in the inch or two I had to work with. If I were human, it would have maybe rattled the door a little.

But I’m not human. Or at least, not just human.

My metahuman strength sent the door ripping off its hinges, flying into the house. I heard a similar sound behind the house as Reed and Kat kicked in the back door. Augustus and I held in place, just standing there, and he stuck a mirror on a retractable baton around the corner, surveying the rooms behind us before we decided to go rushing in. I caught a glimpse as he spun it to my side, and none of it looked good.

There were guys with guns everywhere.

“Hard way,” I muttered and broke off to the left without waiting for him to answer. I knew he’d get it, and I had work to do.

I rolled in flight a few inches off the ground, no planks squeaking for me, and ended up on my knees just outside the front window where I’d seen someone moving around. I was huddled down, ready to spring, staring right into the waiting window, all glassy and presenting itself as a beautiful alternative to entering through the open door where men were waiting to shoot me.

I didn’t want to keep them waiting. “Front door has heavy coverage,” I said, for the benefit of Kat and Reed, “using alternate entry.”

And then I sprang through the front window.

Glass burst as I shot into a dining room. Time seemed to slow down as I fluttered between the white curtains. The room had a good half dozen guys in it, almost all of them to my left, lined up to protect the door I’d just kicked down—as well they should, because what kind of nutbag comes crashing through a plate glass window?

I could see looks of surprise as heads started to turn. I was sideways, flying through the air, a little blood trailing from where the glass had cut me up and I hadn’t healed yet.
Wolfe
, I said, but he was already on it.

I fired, aiming at the closest target first. I saw a splatter as I pegged him in the upper chest three times, my HK chattering away with a shot for every pull of the trigger. I missed automatic weapons, but unfortunately that was another thing I’d had to leave behind when I’d passed out of government service. Now I had to do it the old-fashioned way, pulling the trigger once for each shot.

I switched targets, ripping three quick shots at the next guy, then the next guy, dropping each of them before I slid too far behind the wall that partitioned the dining room from the main entry hall. I altered my trajectory in midair, thanks to my pal Gavrikov, and came up just behind the wall, in cover. I debated my next move for about two seconds, which was as long as it took for Augustus to make his entry through the window on the opposite side of the room.

“Ow!” I heard him scream as glass probably tore into him. I heard the pop of his weapon going off a few times, and I surged around the corner. I ignored the three guys I’d already downed, taking advantage of the momentary distraction to catch two more with double taps behind the ear while their heads were turned to watch Augustus’s ungainly entry into the fray. “Ow, shit, oh, gawd, my—damn!” He rolled behind the wall on the opposite side of the entry hall, into a living room of some sort, leaving me in the entry with three more guys with guns.

“Hi,” I said, as two of them turned back. I drilled them each with perfect shots to the forehead, but the last was using his own guys as cover and they just weren’t falling fast enough. I saw him dodge away, and caught a flash of motion as he whipped his gun around to cover me. I heard the sound of return fire spattering against the wall beside my head, and something stung my face like a flick to the cheek as I retreated back into the dining room.

“Kat is down just outside the back door!” Reed shouted into the mic. “We have tangos everywhere in the back of the house!”

I put aside the bit about Kat for now, deciding my best course might be to start moving toward the back of the house to aid Reed, since there was only one guy left between Augustus and me, and he seemed to be keenly aware of us. “Augustus, SITREP,” I hissed.

“I’m sitting, all right,” Augustus muttered. “Got glass all up in my business. It just—ow!”

I rolled my eyes as I listened for movement in the front hallway. I heard it, but it was closer to the living room where Augustus was huddled, and the guy didn’t seem to be coming my way. “Next time maybe use your fancy earth powers to bust the window first? What the hell is the point of controlling glass if you can’t move it out of your way, you know?”

“Oh.” Augustus said, and then he faded, clearly in embarrassment. “That … that makes a lot of sense.”

I lunged around the other entry into the dining room and found myself looking into a kitchen with battered cabinets and hideous old white linoleum streaked with brown, like it was trying to imitate tile and failing horribly. There was an island jutting out, and I saw movement behind it, a flash of black, and I trained my weapon on it.

I could see a broken rear door just past the island, across the open space to my left that led into a family room, and that was about as far as my survey got me before someone opened up on me from that side and I had to dodge back around the wall.

“Did they just open fire on you?” Reed asked. “I’m behind the island in the kitchen.”

“Yep,” I said, listening to the chatter of weapons. I heard a lot of fire smacking the hell out of the wall I’d just leaned out from. “That was me.”

“Ungh,” Augustus said. “I’m—I’m kinda on my feet again. And—”

I heard the hard pop of a shot behind me, from the living room, and felt a burst of panic. “Augustus?” I said tentatively through the mic. I waited a fraction of a second then spoke again, more strongly this time. “Augustus?”

There was no answer.

“You suck,” Kyra Barton told her mother, face dark and serious, as she left, blond hair whipping behind her as she slammed the door, leaving Jamie standing in the kitchen of their Staten Island home, her daughter’s parting words echoing in her ears.

Jamie felt the words bounce around inside her, scoring pinball-like hits off the bumpers of her emotions. This was how it was lately: argument after argument, Kyra leaving in a slam of the door, or the sound of her locking herself in her room. It didn’t take much to get them going, either, just a little push, an offhand comment by either one of them and they were off to the fighting races, like they just picked up where they’d left off the last argument.

As though Jamie didn’t have enough on her mind already.

She ran fingers through her long, blond hair, then opened her eyes to see the clock. She was late again, the exchange with Kyra costing her time she didn’t have. She needed to be at her company right now, to meet with the banker to arrange an extension on a loan her business couldn’t pay just yet along with additional credit. She hadn’t counted on this fresh volley with Kyra. She should have, of course, but then, she hadn’t been the one in control of setting the appointment. It was the banker who had the power in that scenario, because it wasn’t like he was the one who needed more money to keep the doors of his company open.

Jamie surveyed the kitchen in a quick glance. Her wholegrain Eggos were burnt black in the old toaster oven, the appliance a remnant of their days in an apartment before they got the house. She picked up her coffee from where she’d left it on the counter before she and Kyra had started really going at it. She’d put it down because she didn’t trust herself not to accidentally break it in her grip. Now it shook in her hands as she tried to calm herself with soothing breaths, drips slopping down the sides of the wide mug that said “I Heart New York.”

“Why today, of all mornings?” Jamie muttered to herself, taking a long drink of the cold, pungent liquid. It was cheap coffee, the best she could afford. She leaned against the composite countertop and took a breath, trying to get her mind right so she could finish getting ready and get out the door for her meeting with the banker.

She turned her head when she saw motion out of her peripheral vision; Kyra had left the TV on, with the volume off. Jamie hadn’t even noticed because she’d been too busy rushing around, making sure Kyra had all her stuff for school, trying to chase down an invoice she was pretty sure she’d need for the meeting this morning. She had a pile on the dining room table that was now utterly out of order. That was okay. They always ate in the kitchen anyway.

Jamie started to turn off the TV, but the headline on the chyron at the bottom caught her attention: QUEEN OF WALL STREET HELD HOSTAGE.

Jamie froze, frowning as she nudged the tiny circular nub of the volume up button.

“—here live, on Wall Street, where a gunman has taken Nadine Griffin hostage. The NYPD has identified the suspect as Joseph Tannen, age 34, from the Bronx,” the lady reporter said, police milling around behind her, holding back the press and other onlookers. “Tannen apparently has a gun to Ms. Griffin’s head and is holding position behind her to keep snipers from firing at him.” The reporter shuffled around and thrust a microphone at a man with a comb-over who looked vaguely familiar to Jamie. “Lieutenant Welch! Lieutenant, what can you tell us about—”

Lieutenant Welch blanched into the camera, turning his head as he was caught with a blinding light in his eyes. “We have the scene cordoned off as best we can,” Welch said, his pupils obviously shrinking under the assault of the lights. “Mr. Tannen is making demands, and, uh—” Welch shrugged, “we’re talking with him.”

“What sort of demands is Mr. Tannen making?” another reporter called from somewhere in the scrum. Jamie watched, riveted. This was all happening real time, the LIVE label emblazoned across the bottom of the screen.

Welch looked pained, though this time it didn’t appear to be from being blinded by the light. “He’s making demands, but we are in conversation with him to try and resolve this situation peacefully.” The NYPD spokesman forced a smile that did not look good on screen—or probably live, Jamie suspected.

“Lieutenant!” someone else yelled. “Given the seriousness of Ms. Griffin’s crimes and the public opinion surrounding her, are you going to pay this man?”

Welch looked deeply uncomfortable to Jamie, as though someone had just turned the screws on him. “Mr. Tannen has asked for … a rather large sum. And he seems fixated on that amount. As you probably know, we don’t negotiate these sorts of things because we don’t believe paying bounties for our citizens sends the right message or incentivizes any kind of behavior we’d want. That said, we’re doing our best to res—”

“Lieutenant, if you don’t meet his demands is he going to—”