Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) (25 page)

I stood there straight, looking right at her. “Yeah. Right. Well, maybe you can point me in the direction of whose place it would be to tell—” I watched lightning run down her skin like goosebumps and blinked. “What?” And I heard it a moment later.

I turned my head in the direction of the commotion. Three vans were parked behind me on the street and men were spilling out of them. Men with guns. Men with masks. Men with …

Men with powers. I saw one guy growing to fifteen feet tall, just ripping out of his clothes as he grew to giant size. Another’s skin glowed with fire as he stepped from the back of a vehicle. A third had the gleam of moisture on his hands, and others had the aura of energy building around them. I counted ten of them, the powered people, and they had at least twenty guys with guns as backup.

And they were heading straight for us.

“Yeah, it’s been years,” I said in reply to Senator Foreman’s greeting, with a not-shockingly muted amount of sarcasm. “I imagine if you had it your way, it’d be even longer.”

He stared at me, entirely from the shadow. He took his time answering. “Let’s just say I appreciate your discretion in coming to me quietly, in private, rather than in public.”

“I don’t imagine you’d want to be seen with me in public right now,” I said, turning to walk along the wall of the suite. There was a flowery picture hanging there, a watercolor of grass with long green shoots. “I’m probably approval rating kryptonite.”

“You’ve been having a rough go of things lately,” he said.

“My star is definitely not rising,” I said. “I’m a falling star. Problem with those is, they tend to burn pretty bright right before they hit the ground. If they’re big enough, they cause quite the mess. Seems I remember dinosaurs getting wiped out that way.”

“If I was just listening to your words, I might hear a threat there,” Foreman said.

“But you’re not just listening to my words,” I said. “You’re reading my emotions, and you know I don’t give a damn about threatening you. I’m not here to do that, and I
wouldn’t
do that, in any case.”

“The Sienna I knew wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But I’m not sure I really know you anymore.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Do I seem too different to you?” I pressed fingers into my temple, pointing at my head as I stared at the flowery painting. “Up here?”

“Yes,” he said. “You know I can’t read your mind, but I can read your feelings—”

“Same difference,” I said. “Emotions lead the mind.”

“—and you’re … bitter,” he said, after a moment’s pause for reflection. Or maybe he was just trying to find a way to say it that wouldn’t enrage me. I don’t know. “You seem less … I don’t want to say ‘stable’, but … I don’t know that there’s a more apt word.”

“You afraid I’m going to snap?”

“Not really,” he said. “But if you keep going this direction I’m not sure you’re going to end up anywhere you want to go. You seem … defensive—”

“Because I’m under attack from all sides.”

“—isolated—”

“Because I’m alone.”

“—angry—because of all of the above, I know,” he said before I could.

“You know what’s been happening to me,” I said. “I’m getting burned in effigy.”

“Being a politician, I wouldn’t know what that’s like,” he said lightly.

“It’s different for you,” I said, looking over my shoulder at him. “You have supporters. A lot of them, according to the last poll I saw.”

“I do,” he said cautiously. “And it’s kind of you to bring that up. But … strangely … not the reason you came, I don’t think.”

I bowed my head. “Why is that strange?”

“Because most people in your position—someone under siege, attacked, alone … they might look to someone comparatively popular thinking that person could ‘save’ them somehow.”

I snorted. “You’re not popular enough to save me. And you’re just as subject to this circus as I am. The press is coming at you with kid gloves right now. They’ll turn and bring the long knives out at any moment.”

“Probably right after the convention, my advisors tell me,” he said. “Though my campaign manager says it’s been a pleasant change of pace that they’ve gone somewhat easy on me thus far. She’s not used to that.

So what do you want?” he asked. “I assume you didn’t just come to me to catch up on old times.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I could use the civil conversation at this point,” I said. “But no, you’re right. I didn’t just come to chitchat.” I looked straight at him. “I’ve got a problem.”

“Just one?” he asked. “You’re scaling back.”

“A big one,” I said. “A big fat mystery with really powerful, connected people sitting in the middle of it that are making my life even more of a living hell than it was before.”

“Ahhh,” he said. “So that’s where this sudden increase of heat is coming from.” I watched him lean forward in his seat, and for the first time I could see hints of his features beneath the shadows. “What did you get into in Atlanta?”

“You know Cordell Weldon?” I asked.

He made a grunting noise. “I know
of
him. We’re not exactly friends, sitting roughly across from each other on the political divide.”

“Thought I might have heard you mention his name unpleasantly on one of the talk show rounds you made after the war,” I said. “His name came up with regard to an investigation I’m on. One of his orgs funds a homeless shelter where some residents went missing, ended up murdered, possibly experimented on for being meta. One of the workers who was looking into it turned up dead, too.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“So I had a conversation with him,” I said, “and he got a little defensive and threatening.”

“Only a little?”

“Maybe more than a little,” I said. “Definitely more than an innocent man would, I think. So I hunted down this other source, and he says Weldon’s dirty as a pig pen, has deals all over the place on the down low.”

“Of course he does,” Foreman said. “But you’ll never be able to prove that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You can’t tell me there aren’t people that have witnessed this.”

“Tons of them,” he said. “All in on the take or dead, most assuredly, if Weldon is halfway competent.”

“Ugh,” I said, letting my frustration creep out. “How do you even deal with slime like that?”

“How do I deal with scum like Weldon, or how should you?” He stood and adjusted his suit. “Because those are two different things.”

I looked at him across the room. “How should I deal with him?”

“If we go by your press, you should choke him to death and drop his corpse in the North Atlantic.”

I blinked. “Are you … serious?”

“Probably not,” he said, and he sounded grave. “How do you deal with a cockroach like Cordell Weldon? I don’t know. I’ve been dealing with people like him forever. He’s particularly good at galvanizing enough support and paying enough of the right people to keep the consequences of his corruption from raining down on him. Whatever the press says about your methods of dealing with people, sometimes I find it oddly refreshing. You just … do. And the problem is solved.” He looked straight at me. “That guy in England, for example. He could read the future, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Cassandra-type. He could read possible futures or something, see the probabilities and how they ran.”

“Guy would have been a nightmare to contain,” Foreman said, and he folded his massive arms over his chest and took a few steps forward. “People would go back and forth forever, for years, debating what to do about him. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours of discussion. All the while he’d escape a dozen times, maybe get recaptured if we were lucky. Or, conversely—” He snapped his fingers. “Problem solved.”

“Thank you for your late support on that one,” I said. “But what you’re suggesting here—”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Foreman said, holding up a hand. “You can’t kill Cordell Weldon, as much fun as it might be for me to consider how much easier life would be without him. I mean, you physically could, obviously, but if you did it, you’d be in a mess that’s probably not worth considering.”

“What do I do about him?” I asked. “I’ve got a mystery, he’s at the core, him and Edward Cavanagh—”

“Cavanagh?” Foreman asked.

“They’re in it together somehow,” I said. “Up to their eyeballs.”

“Woooooo,” Foreman said, like the air was being let out of him low and slow. “He’s a major opposition donor. Major. I feel like you’re teasing me with Christmas here, hinting that Weldon and Cavanagh are tied up in dirty dealings that you might be able to prove if you push at it.”

I stared at him. “It did cross my mind that you might benefit from my work. I thought maybe if there was an incentive, you might be more willing to … I don’t know, give me some form of aid.”

“I’m a little limited in what I can do for you,” he said. “I’ve got a bully pulpit, but if I try and use it on your behalf right at the moment—”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I said. “The new head of the agency has zero loyalty to you.”

“Quite the opposite, actually,” Foreman said. “He’s a hand-picked appointment of President Harmon and the administration, which makes him likely to react to any pressure from me by going in the opposite direction. I mean, I could dig a real nice trench and make a political issue out of what’s going on in your department right now, but I’m not sure it’ll do you any good at all. Might shine a little light in places you don’t want it to go, I think.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They’ve already threatened to drag my past into the cold light of day if I continue to make a pain in the ass of myself.”

“Hm,” he said, and his hands went to his pockets. “I think it’d be pretty self-serving of me to suggest you continue your investigation on this one. I mean, I’m not going to complain if you keep going and end up overturning these two, but you might want to give some thought to the blowback from this one. It could be … considerable.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said. “But I’m not ready to let this go.”

“Of course not,” he said, again lightly, “because you wouldn’t be you if you quit when it was smart to.”

“I get the sense you knew that.”

Foreman sighed. “I’ve been around you long enough to know your mind. Not as well as Zollers, but well enough. All along, the people who tried to pull strings at the agency, the ones who I approached with the idea to put you to work running the war against Sovereign, they thought that what we had on you would make you a loyal guard dog on a chain, one that would bark on command and do their bidding without question.”

I felt my eyes narrow at him. “But you didn’t believe that?”

I could see him smile in the dark. “All along, I had the benefit of reading your emotional state. No, I always knew that what we had was a furious tigress on a real thin leash.” He took a few steps closer to me, revealing more of his face. “See, there’s a rage in you, just under the surface. It bubbles like a volcano, always there, seething and raw and furious, ready to erupt from whatever vent it can find. Sometimes it goes big, sometimes it goes small, but I never made the mistake they did and tried to act like it was something I could contain.”

“Why didn’t it bother you to know that?” I asked, staring at him. “Why wouldn’t you run away, if it’s that bad? Shouldn’t you be afraid to, I don’t know, get burned or see the leash break or … something?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “because I never made the mistake of viewing you as a tool rather than a person. See, to Cordell Weldon or the president, you’re just a cog in the machine rather than an agent in charge of her own life. You’re useful insofar as you can get them something they want—power, money, whatever. I knew who you were inside all along, and while I certainly wanted you to help protect the world, I wasn’t pushing you against your own aims. That sort of pressure could be … unhealthy.”

“They’re pushing now,” I said. “Hard. Weldon’s pushing every button he’s got. I’ve had mercenaries come at me. The guy I’m working with had his house burned down.”

Foreman blinked. “That’s … interesting.”

“What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” I asked.

“A man like Weldon wouldn’t move hard and openly unless you had him over a barrel somehow,” Foreman said. “He’s a cautious guy, lives in the shadows with his illicit activities. If you didn’t have him on the run in some way, he wouldn’t have come at you like that.”

“But how do I have him on the run?” I asked. “None of this makes any sense at all.”

“Mysteries seldom do until you get all the pieces in place,” he said. “So … why did you come to me?”

“Power protects power,” I said. “And I don’t … I just don’t ‘get’ power, not the way someone like you, who’s in it, would. I think I was just … hoping you had some insight. Some direction I could go. Something.” I lowered my head. “Anything, honestly. I’m kind of at the end of my rope.”

“No friends, no public support, no family,” Foreman said, and there was a strikingly mournful quality to the way he said it. “Your merry war band is on the outs, and now you’re down to pretty much yourself, it feels like, based on what I’m getting from you. You sure it’s not the ‘lonely’ part that’s eating at you?”

“It’s the … ‘entire world arrayed against me’ part that’s causing the most consternation at the moment.”

“It’s not the whole world,” he said. “I know that sounds funny, but it’s really not the whole world. It’s the loudest voices shouting you down, though, because the press is against you, and I know that feels like the whole world, but it’s not. You can’t get the majority of people anywhere to agree on almost anything, so …”

“I know you were aiming for reassuring, but—”

“Not reassuring,” he said, “I’m trying to help you. Not everyone is against you, however it might feel. You get out of the ivory towers of Manhattan or out of the beltway in D.C. and get down to the street level in a city or town, and there are plenty of people who still support Sienna Nealon and think she’s a hero who saved the world.” He cringed. “I might take it a little easier on the people you run across, though, because that support is fading, and there are only so many more logs you can toss on that particular fire before you run out of fuel.”