The Inner Circle

“Orlando… He wasn’t supposed to be there,” Clementine stutters. “When Orlando opened that SCIF and handed me his coffee… I thought the chemo would just… I thought he was in the Plumbers-that he was watching me for the President… that they’d found out about me. I thought it would knock him out… but I never thought it’d…”

“What do you mean, the medicine’s for you?” I ask.

“Ask yourself the real question, Beecher: After all these years, why now? Why’d I pick now to track down my father?” Her chin is still down, but she finally looks up at me. “They diagnosed me eight months ago,” she says, her hands-and the gun-now shaking. “I’m dying, Beecher. I’m dying from… back when Nico was in the army… I’m dying from whatever they did to my father.”

105

'She’s a liar,” Dallas insists.

“They changed him!” Clementine shouts. “Whatever the army put in Nico… that’s what made him insane!”

“You see that, Beecher? It’s pure delusion,” Dallas says.

“It’s not delusion,” Clementine says. “Ask him, Beecher. He’s in the Plumbers, isn’t he?”

“I’m not in the Plumbers,” Dallas insists.

“Don’t let him confuse you,” Clementine says. “I knew it when I saw him at the cemetery. But when I first found out about Eight-ball… ask him what I was blackmailing Wallace for. It wasn’t money. Even when they nibbled and replied to my message in that rock at the graveyard-I never once asked for money.”

“Is that true?” I say to Dallas.

He doesn’t answer.

“Tell him!” Clementine growls, her hand suddenly steady as her finger tightens around the trigger. “He knows you’re working with the President and the barber and all the rest of his ass-kissers who’ve been hiding the truth for years!”

Dallas turns my way, but never takes his eyes off Clementine’s gun.

“She asked for a file,” Dallas finally says. “She wanted Nico’s army file.”

“His real file,” Clementine clarifies. “Not the fake one they dismissed him with.” Reading my confusion, Clementine explains, “My mother told me the stories. She told me how Nico… she told me how he was before he entered the army. How when they were younger… how she used to keep the phone on her pillow and he’d sing her to sleep. But when he finally came home… when he left the army-”

“He didn’t leave the army. They kicked him out-for trying to use a staple remover to take out one of his superiors’ eyes,” Dallas says.

“No-they kicked him out because of what they put inside him… what they turned him into,” Clementine shoots back. “Have you even bothered to read his fake file? It says he got transferred from army sniper school in Fort Benning, Georgia, to the one in Tennessee. But I checked. The address in Tennessee was for an old army medical center. Nico wasn’t just a sniper! He was a patient-and he wasn’t the only one!” she adds, looking right at me. “You know another one! You know him personally!”

“What’re you talking about?” I stutter.

“My mother-before she died-she told me, okay. You think they came to our tiny town and just took one person? They took a group of them-a bunch of them. So you can think I’m as crazy as you want, but I’m not the only one with the results of their experiments in me, Beecher. You have it in you too! You have it from what they did to your father!”

I shake my head, knowing she’s nuts. “My dad died. He died on the way to the recruitment office. He never even got a chance to sign up.”

“And you believed that. You believed that because that’s what they told you, okay. But he was there. He and Nico and the others… they were enlisted long before anybody knew it. Your father was alive, Beecher. And if I’m right, he still may be!”

My lips go dry. My stomach crumples, folding in on itself. She’s a liar. I know she’s a liar…

“You can look for yourself,” she adds. “Ask them for the records, okay!” It’s the third time she’s ended a sentence with the word okay, and every time she uses it, every time her voice cracks, it’s like a fracture, a faultline that’s splintering through her, threatening to undo everything she always keeps so neatly packed in place. “My mom told me-the experiments were all going right-until everything went wrong-!”

“Do not listen to her!” Dallas says. “She spent months planning this-months to manipulate you and blackmail us. She’s an even bigger psychopath than Nico!”

“Beecher, do you know what kind of cancer they found in me?” Clementine asks as I replay the last words Nico said to me back at the hospital: Nico begged God to make Clementine different from him. He wanted her to be different. “The kind of cancer no one’s ever heard of. Ever,” she adds. “Every doctor… every specialist… they said there’re over one hundred and fifty types of cancer in the world, but when they look at mine, they can’t even classify it. The mutation’s so big, one doctor described it as a DNA spelling mistake. That’s what my body is. That’s what yours may be! A spelling mistake!”

“Beecher, I know you want to believe her,” Dallas interrupts. “But listen to me-no matter what she’s saying-we can still help you walk away from this.”

“You think he’s stupid!? Your Plumbers caused this!” Clementine yells.

“Will you stop?” Dallas insists. “I’m not in the Plumbers-I’m in the Culper Ring! I’m one of the good guys!”

“No,” a brand-new voice-a man’s deep voice-announces behind us. “You’re not.”

There’s a hushed click.

And a muffled boom.

A small burst of blood pops from Dallas’s chest. Lurching backward, Dallas looks down, though he still doesn’t register the fresh gunshot wound and the blood puddle that’s flowering at his chest.

Even before we spin to face his attacker, I know who pulled the trigger: the one man who benefits most from having all of us out here, in one place-the man who will do anything to get this file-and who’s spent nearly three decades proving his loyalty while protecting his dearest friend.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Dr. Palmiotti says, his eyes burning as he turns the corner and points his gun at us. “You had to know this was coming.”

106

'That’s not… No…” Dallas stutters, barely able to stand and still not registering his wound. “You told me… you said I was in the Culper Ring-”

Ignoring him, Palmiotti steps in close and snatches the file from Dallas’s hands. “You need to know you were serving your country, son.”

Dallas shakes his head, his body still in shock.

I try to take a breath as the stale air fills my lungs. Tot had it only part right. Yes, Dallas was in the Plumbers. But he didn’t know he was in the Plumbers.

“Beecher, you see what these people are capable of?” Clementine snaps as all the doubt, all the sadness, all the weepiness she just showed us is suddenly gone. For the past few days, every time Clementine had a mood shift or revealed a new side of herself, I kept saying it was another door opening inside her. She had dozens of rooms. But as I look at her now, I finally understand that it doesn’t matter how many rooms she has. It doesn’t matter how striking the rooms are. Or how well they’re decorated. Or how mesmerizing they are to walk through. What matters is that every one of her rooms-even the very best one-has a hell of a light switch. And it flips. Instantly. Without any