Ruthless (31 page)

Reed and I watched him go. “That was interesting,” my brother said after he was out of earshot. Which, for a meta, takes a while.

“What?” I asked, my gaze falling on Ariadne, who was sitting just inside the lobby with some of the other hostages, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Based on the look on her face, part of me thought I should go talk to her. She’d killed someone tonight, after all. That was a heady feeling.

I decided against it. My first kill was so long ago I could barely remember it at this point, and there had been so very many between then and now that part of me felt like I had absolutely nothing to share with her that would be of interest.

“Scott,” Reed said, drawing my attention back to the question he posed. “And you. I would have thought, after the breakup you had, things would be … I don’t know … a little more … emotional … between the two of you.”

I felt my face freeze, and it had nothing to do with being exposed to frigid air all night. “We’re all grown-ups here,” I said and turned to walk away, back toward the dormitory building. He followed and said nothing, but I could tell by the silence that he didn’t quite believe me.

I opened the door to my quarters, and my faithful dog greeted me with a wagging tail and a little mewl. I fell into a chair and patted his head, only then realizing that my brother had followed me in and was now standing by the door, frowning.

“What?” I asked, craning my neck to look at him. Sleep would be a mercy for me at this point, not that he was inclined to grant it. A flash of what I’d done to Natasya Sokolov came back to me, and I found myself strangely untroubled.

“Where was your dog when we were here earlier?” he asked, staring at my mutt.

“Hiding, probably,” I said, letting my head roll back onto the back of the couch. “Gunfire, explosions going on, strangers all up in this area … not the sort of things dogs like to be around for, you know.”

“Huh,” Reed said, and shrugged. “Those Russians … did you ever get the background on them?”

“Just the basics in the files,” I said, “woefully incomplete. Why?”

“At the bottom of what I read was kind of a footnote,” he said, still standing at the entry, “sort of half supposition, half backchannel intel, maybe. Something about how the four of them had gotten sent to that prison in the first place, the one in Siberia.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Go on.”

“They rebelled against the Soviet government for some reason,” Reed said, shuffling between his feet. This wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have. This was the conversation he was killing time with until he got his courage up. “But the thing I want to know … is if these guys were the ones who rebelled against the government … who do you suppose stopped them? And where do you think those people … or person … are now, whoever they are?”

“That’s a chilling thought,” I said. It wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate the repercussions of. I stared at him, shuffling, and just asked. “What’s on your mind?”

He didn’t answer at first, and it gave me time to wonder if this was going to be one of those conversations where I just let him think he was right to shut him up for a while. I saw him mentally shift gears, and then we were off to the races. “There’s a part of you that really thrives on the righteous kill, doesn’t it?”

I stared at him, then blinked. Twice. “I do what I have to,” I said.

“No,” he said and wandered past the painting I had on the wall outside the kitchen. He acted like he was going to inspect it, like he hadn’t seen it a million times. “You like the fury that comes when someone deserves it. That fills you up, doesn’t it?”

“Are you asking me if I like killing people?” I asked, still feeling tired. “Are you asking me if I’m a psychopath or—”

“No,” he said, and his eyes fell on me. “But I am asking you why you don’t seem to have a problem with it.”

“Why I don’t have a problem with … what?” I asked, staring back at him dully. I was so tired. “Doing … what I just did tonight?”

“What you just did tonight …” He chuckled, but it was mirthless, more of an expression of astonishment than humor. “Sienna, you killed twenty? Thirty? I don’t even know how many people you killed tonight. I killed one, and I feel like I’m about to shake apart. Ariadne killed someone tonight and she looked like she was ready to break down and cry.” He looked me up and down. “You look like you’re ready for a nap, one that’ll be filled with peaceful dreams instead of the screams of the dead.”

I just stared back at him. “Fun fact: the dead don’t scream. Only the living can do that.”

“Jesus,” he breathed.

“Let me spin a little story for you,” I said, getting to my feet, slowly. “You walk into that prison tonight. Warden Reed. Man in charge.” I head for the fridge, but I swivel my head to look at him the whole time. “You’re out front, you’re the big man on campus, and you have to get those assholes back in their cells without a gust of wind at your command.” I opened the fridge and found it pretty much empty, apparently still lacking the ability to spontaneously fill itself. Thwarted again. Where could I get a miniature quiche at this hour, I wondered? I shut it and stared back at him. “Can you do it?”

I saw the resistance, the desire to change the subject, the urge to lie, all pass across his face in a second. “No,” he finally said.

“No,” I said quietly. “You can’t. They’d have charged you. They’d have killed you. Torn you up like a wet tissue in the wind.” I opened a cabinet, even though I knew already what I’d find. Empty. “I’m a hard person because I have to be. Anyone else couldn’t have walked into that prison and bluffed those guys back into their cells.”

Reed stared at me flatly. “I doubt Crow Vincent considered you blowing his head off a bluff.”

“It was a promise,” I said. “One I couldn’t keep.”
But not for lack of wanting,
I didn’t say. I didn’t need to. It was implied, because I’m me. “These prisoners … they’re animals. Animals who prey on a system that’s not equipped to deal with them. They deserve to live in the jungle, not in civilization with the rest of humanity.”

I could see the questions brewing behind his eyes. “How does that … what you do … make you any better than them? Any more deserving of … living with humanity?”

I felt a cold chill run over me. “Reed … I don’t.” I felt the gulf between us. “I don’t live with humanity.” I felt my eyes settle lower, on the floor. “I wasn’t raised to live with humanity. I was raised apart. And I’ll always be apart.”

I don’t know how he would have reacted to that, and as it happened, I didn’t get the chance to find out because the phone rang. Long, urgent tones, filling the air with that irritating sound. I needed an excuse to stop talking anyway, so I answered it. “Hel—”

I didn’t even get it out before J.J. started talking. “So, uhm, yeah, there’s a problem. Again.”

I stared at Reed, newly emboldened by the interruption to make eye contact again. “Of course there is. What, specifically, is this particular problem?”

“We’ve got all these emergency crews wandering around here, and they’re picking things over,” J.J. said. “They got to the hostage place on the fourth floor, trying to figure out what happened there to reconstruct it for forensics and all that fun stuff—”

I put him on speakerphone so Reed could share the verbal diarrhea. He gave me a pitying look.

“—so anyway, I came out of the closet to walk them through it all—literally, no jokes here, guys, I’m not—you know, not that there’s anything wrong with, you know, what with Ariadne and all—”

“J.J.,” I said. I would liked to have been sleeping already.

“Anyhoo,” he got back to it, “I came up to the fourth floor to look it over with them, and you remember that melted heap of slag where you set infinite fire to Anselmo?”

I stared at Reed. He stared at me, brow puckered with curiosity. “Vaguely,” I said, prompting my brother to give me a disappointed look.

“Yeah, well,” J.J. said, “there’s nothing left.”

“Of Anselmo?” I asked. “Good. I’m sure he’ll be mourned by—oh, right, not a damned soul on the planet.”

“No, I’m saying there’s not much left,” J.J. said. “Like, if he had melted to slag, there should have been tons of organic material, but as it is—”

“J.J.! The point, please. Before I fall asleep right here on the phone.” I hoped this story had a happy ending, but my stomach was warning me it might not.

“I rewound the security footage,” J.J. said, “to when he got burned, and, uh … well, guys … it looks like Eric Simmons came and carried him to the helicopter. Took him along on their flight into adventure.”

Reed looked at me, and he was cool on the outside. I could tell he was in low-grade panic on the inside, though. “Did you see anything at the crash site that could be—”

“No,” I said, playing it back in my mind. “No. I didn’t.” I looked Reed straight in the eye. “He wasn’t there.”

And I felt my empty, acid-riddled stomach drop.

That meant Anselmo Serafini and Eric Simmons were
both
still out there, along with the brains of this whole operation … and probably mad as hell at
me
.

Omaha, Nebraska

The trip from Minneapolis to Omaha took the better part of the day, because the driver stuck to back roads and avoided the interstates. “Better to avoid the government eye,” he said, in an accent right out of Simmons’s vision of every hillbilly movie ever. But he kept the pickup moving fast over those back roads, all the way to the farm outside of town.

They pulled up as the sun was setting, Simmons feeling like his ass was gonna fall off and not sorry to have seen the last of that drive. He’d stuck his head out the window every now and again, to make sure someone wasn’t flying over him. He’d talked to Cassidy on the way. She was keeping an eye on them, mostly. Whenever the satellites she had a backdoor into passed overhead, anyway. She said it was clear.

Twelve hours and hell if he knew how many miles later, they were there. It wasn’t so bad on him; he was just glad to get out of the prison. It had to be hell on Anselmo, though. That poor guy.

The driver threw the pickup into park and just got out. Left Simmons sitting there, Anselmo leaning over on his shoulder. Anselmo had been leaning on his shoulder the whole trip. It felt a little gross, given how the dude looked at this point, but when Eric lifted the Italian’s face off his shirt at that first diner where they’d stopped for lunch, it hadn’t left anything liquid behind, so it was all good.

“Dude,” Eric said as the driver walked away, “a little help here?” The driver just kept on walking, heading for the main house, pulled open an old, wooden screen door and stepped inside, letting it shut behind him with a clatter. He’d kinda given the impression throughout the ride that he was a dick. His name was even Richard, though he didn’t go by it or Dick. He’d shown up when Eric and Anselmo had fallen out of the helicopter, driving the pickup with an RPG tube still smoking in the back, and he’d introduced himself as Clyde, Jr.

“Damn, Anselmo,” Eric said, and the Italian stirred a little at his side. He still smelled like burned pizza or something, just awful. They’d bought him some cheap clothes at a gas station, but they were sticking to him. He had no hair, either, but that was the least of his problems. “I guess we’re gonna have to do this ourselves.”

Anselmo made a weak, gurgling noise. That was about all he’d been capable of the whole trip.

Eric opened the passenger door of the pickup and stepped out, propping Anselmo against the seat, holding him up with one hand. The air was filled with a dry, dusty aroma. There was no snow on the ground here, which felt weird after driving through the blizzard-drenched states of Minnesota and then Iowa. Nice change, though.

“Dude, Anselmo,” Eric said, looking in at him, “can you walk?” He looked at the man, and faint slits of eyelids opened enough for him to see someone staring back at him. “Can you hear me, man?”

“I … can hear you,” Anselmo said. Those were the first words he’d spoken all day.

“Whew,” Eric said, and made a show of mopping his brow. He looked out across the flat horizon at the empty fields and took it all in. It damned sure wasn’t L.A. “We’re here, man. We gotta go inside. Do a meet and greet with our new friends.”

Anselmo barely registered that. “Friends …?”

“Yeah, man, Cassidy found us some …” Eric waved his hands at him. “Forget it, just—let’s go in. I’ll explain when we get there.”

“All right,” Anselmo said, and he spoke with a rasp of his own. Sounded a little like Cassidy that way, actually. Weird. Probably inhaled some of that fire stuff that bitch had used on him, burned his airways. Eric took him in hand and started carrying him, helping him walk. His skin felt funny, all ridged and knobby, scarred all over.

“Hello?” Eric asked as he opened the screen door. The inner door was open and something smelled like it was frying inside. Kinda made Eric feel a little sick, that smell. He didn’t do fried stuff; it messed with his stomach. “Anybody here?”

A woman appeared at the edge of the porch. She was a pretty big lady, apron hanging off her neck and covering her front as best it could. It missed a lot of ground, but he could see a polka-dotted shirt beneath it, and she wore a pair of brown pants that looked ill-fitting to say the least. “Well, come on in,” she said. Her face was dowdy, with a pinched line for a mouth. She looked at him, half-carrying Anselmo, and disapproval showed instantly. “Gawd, he looks like the devil himself did a number on him.”

“He kinda got burned,” Eric said, dragging Anselmo in past her. She moved to let him through, but she didn’t offer any help.

“Well, that much is obvious even to the unpracticed eye,” she said with a drawling accent. “Is he pussing?”

Simmons blinked. “What?”

“Is he dripping puss?” she asked again, taking him for a moron. “Clearly he’s had some injuries. I just don’t want him dripping anything foul on my upholstery.”

Now that he was inside, he got a look at her living room and wasn’t sure why she was worrying. The couch was ripped in at least twenty places and looked like it might have been old when the seventies were just starting. “Ummm … just set him over here?”