money. That’s what it always comes back to—the money. And they’ve managed to find—”
“We’ll talk about this later, Georgia.”
“But Senator Ryman, we—”
“I
“Senator, we have proof Tate was involved in what happened to Buffy.” The senator froze. Finally sensing that he might listen, I pressed my case. “We’ve had audio for a while, but my team found the payments. We found the contacts. Buffy wasn’t the start. Eakly was the start. Eakly and the ranch—”
“No.”
The word was soft but implacable. I stopped dead, run up against the side of that refusal like I’d just slammed into a wall. After a frozen moment, I tried again, saying, “Senator Ryman, please, if you’d just—”
“Georgia, this is not the time, and it’s not the place, especially if those are the accusations you’ve come here to make.” His face was cold. I’d never seen him look that cold toward anyone who wasn’t a political rival. “David Tate and I may not have always seen eye to eye on this campaign trail, and God knows, I’ve always known there was no love lost between the two of you, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you say these things about a man who spoke at my daughter’s funeral. I can’t have that.”
“Senator, that man was just as responsible for your daughter’s death as if he’d infected her himself.”
Senator Ryman’s shoulders tensed, and his hand actually rose several inches before he forced it down. He wanted to hit me; that truth was written so clear across his face that even Shaun could have seen it. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t. Not here, not in front of all these witnesses.
“It’s time for you to go, Georgia.”
“Senator—”
“If the three of you aren’t off the premises in the next fifteen minutes, you’ll be spending tonight in the Sacramento County jailhouse, as I’ll have had your press clearance pulled.” His tone was calm, even reasonable, but there was no kindness in it, and kindness was the thing I was most accustomed to hearing from him. “When I get back to the Center, I’ll come by your trailer, and you’ll show me every scrap of proof you think you have.”
“And then?” I asked, despite my own better judgment. I needed to know how seriously he was willing to take this.
“And then, if I believe you, I’ll back you up when we call for the federal authorities, because what you’re saying, Georgia, what you’re
He was right. If it got out that the Ryman campaign had been harboring a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon—hell, that a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon was actually
“If you don’t believe me?” I asked, shaping the words with lips that had gone numb.
“If I don’t believe you, you’re all on the next bus to Berkeley, and we’re parting ways before the sun comes up,” the senator said and turned his back on me, all smiles as he shifted his attention to the crowd. “Congresswoman!” he said, joviality coming back into his voice as if he’d flipped a switch. “You’re looking lovely tonight—is that your wife? Well, Mrs. Lancer, it surely is a pleasure to finally have the opportunity to meet you in the flesh, after seeing you in so many of those Christmas card photos—”
And then he was moving away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the crowd, the important people of this little modern Babylon pressing all around me as they struggled for a moment of his attention, my colleagues standing not ten feet away, waiting to hear what I’d accomplished.
The truth had never felt like it was further away, or harder to make sense of. And I had never in my life felt like I was more lost, or more alone.
We were eleven when I first understood that we weren’t immortal. I always knew the Masons had a biological son named Phillip. Our folks didn’t talk about him much, but he came up every time someone mentioned Mason’s Law. It’s funny, but I sort of hero-worshipped him when I was a kid, because people remembered him. I never really considered the fact that they remembered him for dying.
George and I were hunting for our Christmas presents when she found the box. It was in the closet in Mom’s office, and we’d probably overlooked it a thousand times before, but it caught George’s eye that day for some reason, and she hauled it out, and we looked inside. That was the day I met my brother.
The box was full of photographs we’d never seen, pictures of a laughing little boy in a world where he’d never been forced to worry about the things we lived with every day. Phillip riding a pony at the state fair. Phillip playing in the sand on a beach with no fences in sight. Phillip with his long-haired, short-sleeved, laughing mother, who didn’t look anything like our mother, who wore her hair short and her sleeves long enough to hide the body armor, whose holster dug into my side when she kissed me good night. He had a smile that said he’d never been afraid of anything, and I hated him a little, because his parents were so much happier than mine.
We never talked about that day. We put the pictures back in the closet, and we never found our Christmas presents, either. But that was the day I realized… if Phillip, this happy, innocent kid, could die, so could we. Someday, we’d be cardboard boxes at the back of somebody’s closet, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. George knew it, too; maybe she even knew it before I did. We were all we had, and we could die. It’s hard to live knowing something like that. We’ve done the best we could.
No one gets to ask us for anything more. Not now, not ever. When history looks our way—stupid, blind history, that judges everything and never gives a shit what we paid to get it—it better remember that no one had a right to ask us for this. No one.
Twenty-five
Georgia, what just happened?”
“George? You okay?”
Both of them sounded so concerned it left me wanting to scream. I settled for grabbing a flute of champagne from a passing server, draining it in one convulsive gulp, and snapping, “We have to go. Now.”
That just redoubled their concern. Rick’s eyes went wide, while Shaun’s narrowed, accompanied by a sudden frown. “How pissed is he?” he asked.
“He’s pulling our press passes in fifteen minutes.”
Shaun whistled. “Nice. Even for you, that’s impressive. What’d you do, suggest that his wife was having an affair with the librarian?”
“It was the tutor, that was the Mayor of Oakland’s wife, and I was right,” I said, starting to stalk for the exit. True to form, they followed. “I didn’t say anything about Emily.”
“Excuse me, but does one of you mind telling me what’s going on?” interjected Rick, putting on a burst of speed to get in front of me. “Georgia just got us kicked out of a major political event, Senator Ryman’s clearly pissed, and Tate’s glaring. I’m missing something. I don’t like that.”
I went cold. “Tate’s glaring at us?”
“If looks could kill—”
“We’d be joining Rebecca Ryman. I’ll fill you in once we’re in the car.”
Rick hesitated, licking his lower lip as he registered the anxiety in my tone. “Georgia?”
“I’m serious,” I said, and sped up, going as fast as I could manage without starting to a run. Shaun took the cue from me, linking one arm through mine and using his longer legs to give me a little extra speed. Rick hurried along behind us, holding his questions until we got outside. Bless him for that much, anyway.
