Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (33 page)

Jamie stared at him—those eyes, those lips—and she did some quite unexpected, as all the despair she’d felt in the last day lifted.

She leaned in and kissed him.

It was long and full and lovely, her eyes closed and the pressure returned on his end, his fingers lightly touching her face as they kissed. It had been a long time, a very long time, and she’d missed this. She could taste the faint minty aroma of his breath—

Her eyes sprang open and she broke from the kiss, suddenly aghast. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

He took a moment coming back from it, like he’d just wakened from a dream, and his cheeks flushed hard scarlet beneath the stubble that she found oddly rugged and alluring. “I—ah—uhm—I’m sorry, that was—so unprofessional of me—”

“It was my fault,” Jamie said hurriedly. “I came in here and asked you for help, and then I go and—do that—”

“I feel like I’m preying upon you,” he said, obviously embarrassed, “as though I predicated my help on you doing—doing that—that wonderful—” He stopped himself, and took a long breath. “I wanted to do that even absent helping you.”

Jamie stared back at him. “I wanted to do that even if you told me there was nothing you could do to help.”

“Well, okay then,” he said, and he smiled, a smear of lipstick making his lips look slightly pink. And he leaned back in to kiss her, and she did not mind at all.

Nadine had done a lot to make sure she wasn’t being followed after she left her office. She’d gotten out of an Uber on Fifth Avenue, gone through a department store in one entrance, came out from another entirely after wandering through the sparsely populated aisles for a while. She took a cab next, to Central Park, where she meandered a while and then changed in a restroom, putting a shawl over her head to hide her hair, and big sunglasses over her face. She dumped her leather handbag, putting the contents she needed into a plastic shopping bag and packing her clothing away in it.

She wandered out of Central Park and flagged down another cab, and this one she rode to six blocks from her destination, a building in midtown. She navigated her way down streets and avenues, taking a circuitous route until she found the building and buzzed the front door. When she said, “Henry sent me to pick up the donations,” she was buzzed up instantly. She looked at the street around her through the dark glasses, checking once to more to be certain she hadn’t been followed.

Nadine walked up to the third floor and found the door already open. She slipped inside, checking the hall quickly. There was no one there, and so she came inside and shut the door, locking it with her gloved fingers.

“Taking a mighty big risk meeting in person, dove,” said Abner in the darkness. The room they were in was an office of some sort, but with blackout curtains in front of the windows. He clicked a desk lamp on, and it revealed his fat face by yellowed light. He smiled. In the lamplight, his teeth appeared yellow, as though he was a copious smoker even though she knew he wasn’t.

Nadine made her way over to the desk, staring across at Abner then smiling in calm relief. “You have no idea how many twists and turns it took me to make sure I got here alone.”

“A great many, I hope,” Abner said, opening his desk and pulling out a bottle of something that looked expensive. He could afford it, doing what he did. He pulled the stopper and gave a generous amount to his coffee, then offered her the bottle. She shook her head with a smile. “The question is … why did you risk it?”

“I’m growing sick of calling naked from my safe room,” she said, figuring that this revelation would put him off balance. It did; he had his coffee cup up to his lips and he almost choked on it, putting the cup down in a ring of wetness, hacking like he’d taken a gulp into a lung. “Nothing personal,” she said sweetly, “I don’t mind being naked talking to you, but … the lack of a face to talk to is … lonely.” She said the last word wistfully, as Abner got his cough under control. “I’m a little bit of a social outcast, you see.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said, sounding quite choked. “Well … I was going to give you an update next time you called, but I think you know what I’m going to say.”

She was fairly certain she knew as well, and that was why she’d come. “I want to hear you say it anyway,” she said, wandering over to a bookshelf at the side of the room and looking at a snow globe with some European village nestled within under a layer of white. She kept her hands fastened behind her back, though.

“Well, you know the big job’s done,” he said, still a little choked but back to business. “All the loose ends are taken care of and everyone who could identify me are good and dead. A few little strays managed to get caught in the net cast by those heroes, but they’re of little concern since they were hired by the ops chief of the mission, and he’s dead.” Abner cleared his throat again. “So that’s done. Evidence rendered to ash, glass, and deleted disk space all around, from the SEC to the FBI to the US Attorneys.”

“Good,” she said, turning her head to give him the hint of a smile. Her hair bristled against the restraint of the net beneath her shawl, but she ignored it. It was necessary. “And the other thing?”

“Jamie Barton, you mean?” Abner smiled. It was an ugly expression, even absent the yellow tinge the lamp gave his teeth. “I’ve set up quite the gauntlet for her to go through. ArcheGrey did us a solid and wrecked her finances in the collateral of the cyber-attack. Our lady’s already experiencing the joys of poverty—not a dime in the bank, lost a loan her business needed to survive, and she’s had all her accounts closed. She’s even lost her phone and car to sudden, surprising nonpayment. Foreclosure to follow.” He showed a trace of regret here. “Wish I could have had ArcheGrey speed that one up, but it would have been a bit obvious if he leapt right to it. But don’t worry, the other things coming are going to be plenty enough to make this lass miserable.”

“Oh?” Nadine asked, fishing.

“Something’s about to happen that’s going to turn her life upside down, make what we’ve done so far look like, uhh … a day in the park.” Abner leaned back, chair squeaking under his girth. “Then once that’s done, I’ve arranged one last kick to make the lady take a deep dive into despair before her end comes, one way or another.” He took a long pull of his coffee, droplets still running down the sides from his mess earlier. “You said to ruin her life … well, I’ve done it. When this is over, I promise you she’ll be the saddest soul in cell block D, if by some miracle she lives.” He grinned.

“And it’s all done?” she asked. “Set in motion? Because I want this bitch to suffer, no ifs, ands or—”

“It is,” he said, reassuring. “I’ve made all the arrangements.” He lifted his watch up and looked at it. “One of the little bombshells is about to go off right now, in fact, if you’d like to stay and watch.” He picked up a TV remote and gestured to one on the wall.

“No, I’ve been out of sight for too long already,” she said, infusing her words with regret. “I need to get back. I just wanted to … hear what you had to say, make sure the arrangements are on track.” She sighed. “You’ve been a real pro, Abner. I couldn’t have gotten out of this without you.”

He nodded, smiling faintly. “Just take heed, Nadine, and remember … I can’t do this again, okay? We’ve buried everything they had, and there’s no connection back to you. So stay out of trouble if you want to keep free.”

“I will,” she said with a smile. “It’s a shame you couldn’t help me again.” She let her smile turn nasty. “But it does mean I don’t have any more reasons to keep you around.”

She raised the pistol she’d been hiding in her pocket and shot him in the face, three times. It had a suppressor on it, which made it sound like a crack, like she’d dropped something, instead of a full-blown gunshot. She stared into his face as each shot hit, watched him die, his gurgling coming to a stop relatively quickly.

When she was sure he was dead, she walked around the desk and pulled the whiskey bottle out of the desk. She spilled it all over his paperwork and his computer, which frizzed quietly as it shorted out. She left the pistol in the middle of the spill; it was untraceable, without a serial number or her fingerprints anywhere on it. Then she took the desk lamp and broke the bulb with one good whack against the corner of the desk.

She carefully set the broken lamp in the puddle of booze, and watched the electric current light the alcohol with a
Whoosh!
Nadine stepped back from the desk, watching the flames spread for only a moment before she headed for the door. She didn’t even look back, because why would she? He may have been the first person she’d actually physically killed, but who cared? This was done.

On to the next thing.

“Sienna, it’s going to be okay,” Reed said through the videoconference, sounding more than a little alarmed himself. “It’s just—”

“It’s just your ex slept with a total skank,” Kat said, offering her two cents worth. “I mean, really? Nadine Griffin? Ewww, that’s all I can say. I used to feel all special that he slept with me. Lately, I’m just feeling increasingly gross about the whole thing.”

There was a moment of silence, and Ariadne said, “You don’t even remember your relationship with him.”

“Yeah,” she said, like she was explaining the obvious to idiots, “but you guys told me we did it, and I felt really special about it for a while.”

“Sienna,” Reed said, “you broke up with him, remember?”

“I fully know that,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I could feel cold chills trickling down my back, replacing the hot rage I’d felt. “And I wouldn’t undo it, either, it’s just …” I stopped, or rather, my shame stopped me, and then I realized—these were my friends. “I just … I should be over him, I know. I haven’t cared if he slept with anyone else. I assume he has. Hell, I’ve hoped—or at least told myself I hoped—that he’d find someone good, someone worthy of him. Everything I’m feeling right now …” I couldn’t put it into words, but it was like some magical cocktail of rage, sickness, envy, sweats and a little more rage. “He’s not mine,” I said softly. “I let him go. It’s been years.” My voice cracked. “So … why does this hurt so much?”

“It’s natural, Sienna,” Ariadne said gently.

“I thought I was past it. Past him.” I sounded hollow when I spoke, and it made me sicker.

“It’s a process,” Reed said. “You don’t just get over someone who was a major part of your life for as long as Scott was, okay?”

“Yeah,” Augustus said, chiming in, “it’s like … he’s that ex you want to see you out with your new girl, so you can be all like, ‘Yeah, I did better than you’!”

I blinked. “Crude as he put it,” Reed said dryly, “Augustus has a point. You and Scott have some unresolved … stuff … going on between you.”

“That was totes obvs in LA,” Kat said. “Major issues between them.” She held off for just a second before starting with the wheedling, “Are you sure you don’t want to be on my show? Because this is exactly the kind of storyline that would—”

“NO!” Reed and Ariadne chorused together, answering for me before I had a chance to move from disgust to outrage.

“Just a thought,” Kat said, contrition not in evidence.

“Sienna?” Ariadne asked, and I looked at my phone again to see her staring up at me. “It’s going to be okay.”

I could see my face in the corner, and it was a mess. I counted myself lucky I didn’t wear makeup, because if I had, it would have been smeared everywhere. “Thanks, you guys,” I said weakly.

“If I could just say something,” J.J. said, sounding like he was a little anxious about saying anything but speaking up nonetheless. “Sienna … I know this is tough, but … you’re tougher than the problem you’re looking down. You’ll make it through this, even though I know it—it hurts in the gut, in the heart—you’re—you’re a better person than this Nadine Griffin is, so I know you’ll … keep your cool about her.” He sounded a little nervous.

Suddenly I felt a little ashamed for wanting to wear her decapitated head like a party hat. “Thank you, J.J.,” and with that, my rage was mostly gone.

He was right. I was better than Nadine Griffin. Besides, I was going to see her rot in a jail cell. I took a moment and pulled myself together. “Okay,” I said, taking a breath to steady myself and giving only a glance to the wreckage of my hotel room, “I’m on this. I will find evidence for this woman’s crimes and put her ass in the pokey.”

“Yeah, that’s the spirit,” Augustus said, “whoever told you ‘living well is the best revenge’ was full of shit. Living well while your ex’s new girl is in jail, that’s the best revenge right there. Way better than being the crazy ex-girlfriend who loses her damn mind on you.”

I blinked. I had been close to being the crazy ex-girlfriend, and the thought took my breath away like a hammer to the kneecap. “Oh … oh … hell,” I said, and felt sick again, for an entirely different reason.

“It’s going to be okay,” Reed said. “Intervention managed. We’re all good now, back on an even keel and—”

“Oh, damn,” J.J. said, and my phone buzzed just then. “Oh, man …”

“Never a good sign when the geek says that,” Kat chimed in.

“J.J. …?” Reed asked before I could say it.

“You guys might want to turn on your TVs to the nearest cable news channel,” he said. “This … is not good.”

I looked over at my TV, shattered to pieces in the ruin of my hotel room. “I … don’t have a TV anymore.”

“Oh, Sienna,” Reed said, and he bowed his head, eyes closed.

“Okay, well,” J.J. said, “the FBI has issued an arrest warrant for a suspect in the destruction of the US Attorney's office thanks to an anonymous tip. They say it’s one Jamie Barton, a.k.a.—”

“Gravity Gal,” I said under my breath, as once more the cold chills ran over my arms and down the back of my neck.

“Yep,” J.J. said. “They just outed her on national television, got a picture of her without the mask and everything. Looks like they’re going after her with everything they’ve got.”

Jacob was back behind his desk now, tapping away at his computer and exchanging shy looks with Jamie every few seconds. He’d meet her eyes, grin, and then look down, blushing.