Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,24

as a signal that vitality and warmth were retreating for the season.

Older cars were parallel parked at the sides of the streets. The houses were built high off the road on either side of us. They had no front yards to speak of; instead a concrete terrace came four feet above the sidewalk, with a staircase in front of each house that led up to front porches. The whole place had the feel of a valley, with the houses overlooking the street.

“Omega put a safe house here?” Kat idly mused from the front seat. “Why?”

“If they’re recruiting metas like the Directorate,” Reed said, “it helps to have operations all over the map. That way, say a meta in Sioux Falls manifests and you get wind of it, you can dispatch someone to get to them before anyone else does.” He shrugged. “It makes a difference when you’re building an army.”

“An army?” I paused and turned my head to favor him. “Alpha doesn’t have safe houses all over the U.S., do they?”

“Nope,” Reed said with a casual shrug. “They have intermediaries like me to keep an eye on things, to try and get to any really powerful metas that come to our attention; our main focus is Europe. We’re really more of a token presence here, though, trying to watch Omega’s North American operations rather than offer any serious interdiction efforts.”

“Well,” Clary said, leaning forward over my shoulder, causing me to almost gag from the stink of his breath, which smelled like rotten fish, “you better watch and learn, Alpha dog, because we are about to do some serious interdicting.” He giggled, a low-pitched sort of thing that reminded me of the time I’d heard Scott choke on a hotdog in the cafeteria.

“Interdiction means interfering or stopping,” Reed said, looking at Clary with undisguised disgust.

“Well, we’re gonna do that too,” Clary said with a nod.

Scott slowed the vehicle as he looked across Kat and out the front window as the GPS dinged. In the back, we had no windows to speak of; there were none on the sides, and the rear windows were covered with a Velcro foam that kept anyone from looking in at us while we were running surveillance.

“I’m gonna turn us around,” Scott said, as the van accelerated again. “I’ll park us with a clear view and we can get the cameras going.”

“Or we could just go up and ring the doorbell, see who’s home,” Clary said.

“Clary, our mission is to recon first,” I said. “Ringing the doorbell isn’t exactly a subtle way to find out who’s inside.”

“What, you wanna sneak around the back and peer in the windows or something? Screw that.” I heard his seatbelt unsnap and he was already moving toward the back doors, even though we were still moving. “Let’s get this party started!” The back door swung open and he was out.

“What the hell is he doing?” Scott said, and he slammed the brakes. “Is he seriously going to go knock on the door? What is he thinking?”

“Clary doesn’t think, does he?” Reed asked.

“Dear God, I hope he gets the right house,” I said, already unfastening my seatbelt. I ran the ten feet to the back door and jumped down to the pavement, racing to catch up with Clary, who was already up on the sidewalk. The air held a dampness, and the sky was hazy, a light fog still lingering thanks to the cloud cover.

“Clary!” I said, trying to keep my voice down, knowing he could hear me. “Clary!” I said again, now only a few feet behind him. He had reached the steps at the bottom of the house and was starting to ascend the first when I caught him. “Clyde,” I said with a hiss as I laid a hand on his shoulder. He brushed it off.

“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” he said as he continued up the steps.

“What are you doing? I am in command of this mission—Ariadne is going to have your ass if you don’t get back in the damn van.”

“I’m gonna get this show on the road,” he said as he reached the front porch. A squeak of an old floorboard caused me to cringe, as though it were attached to a wire that would report directly to Omega HQ that we were, in fact, here. I felt as though they were watching us through a pinhole camera and could see stupid Clary in his Ugg boots and me trying to get him to