me. The only reason I’m here is because he had a heart attack.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Nicola Callivant said, but her expression was beginning to get frightened. “Grandpa Clyde—”
She suddenly looked over her shoulder, apparently holding a conversation with someone who’d come into her room. Matt couldn’t hear what they were saying. If the pickup was getting it, their voices were too soft for his abused ears to register. But he could imagine the news Nikki was receiving.
Her face was pale when she turned back to Matt. “What did you do to him?”
“It’s more what he did to me. Apparently, he was ready to kill if that would protect your family’s dirty little secrets.”
“You’re crazy,” she said flatly.
“Fine,” Matt spat. “I’ll call my connections at Net Force, and let them find Grandpa Clyde’s gun. Let him explain what he was doing in that car in front of my house—”
“No!” Nikki cut in. She looked at her watch. “You’re at home?”
“Where else?”
“I can be there in forty-five minutes. Will you at least wait that long?”
Matt nodded.
She cut the connection.
Sagging back onto his bed, Matt took in a long breath. Forty-five minutes. It was a bad omen.
He staggered to his computer. This time he wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He was going to leave word for Leif and James Winters, telling them exactly what was going on, in case his plan to get the evidence for who was really responsible for all this mess didn’t pan out. One way or another, he was going to put a stop to this.
Nikki Callivant actually beat her estimated time of arrival, but even so, she cut it pretty fine. Matt’s parents were almost due back home. Matt had left a message for them, too.
He wanted them to know exactly where he was going.
Swinging round onto the expressway that would take them to Delaware, Nikki was tight-lipped and quiet. Finally she asked, “Are your ears any better?”
“Yeah. The ringing’s down to a mild roar. Looks like I didn’t bust an eardrum.”
“When I was little, Grandpa Clyde sometimes took me to a firing range. He always made sure I wore these big plastic earmuffs. Even so, the noise was awful.”
“I’ll tell you something. It’s even worse in a small space like a car. Maybe because it’s so sealed in.” As Matt spoke he cracked the window, letting a trickle of cold air play across his face. By this time he should be sitting down for supper with his folks.
He hoped the note he’d left didn’t scare them.
“You’re treating what — whatever happened like some big conspiracy,” Nikki’s voice took on an odd note as she flashed him a look from behind the steering wheel. “My family — we’re not like that.”
“Let’s see how your dad and the rest react to your new, lower-class friend,” Matt replied.
He suddenly understood her tone. Nikki wasn’t trying to convince him. She was trying to convince herself.
They rolled on, barely speaking, through suburbs and then a stretch of country. Matt glanced at his watch as they pulled up at a gated compound. Nikki had actually shaved a few minutes off her previous record.
A guy in a blue coat — obviously a guard — appeared from the gatehouse. He greeted Nikki respectfully, but kept his eyes on Matt.
“It’s all right, Marcus,” Nikki said. “He’s a friend.”
The gate opened, and they were in.
Matt supposed he must have seen pictures of the Callivant compound somewhere. In real life the place seemed smaller, less — well,
Matt might have thought that was funny, but he was glad of the silent support as they went up the front steps. As they crossed the entrance hall, a man who was just a little too tight-faced to be handsome intercepted them.
“Nikki, Marcus said you’d just come in. I thought you said you were going to the hos—” The man suddenly realized there was a stranger present and shut up.
“This is my father, Daniel Callivant,” Nikki said. “Dad, this is Matt Hunter. He’s the one who called the ambulance for Grandpa Clyde. That was pretty nice when you think about it. Matt says Grandpa Clyde was trying to shoot him at the time.”
Daniel Callivant handled it pretty well, but he hadn’t expected any such confrontation in his own home. For an instant, just an instant, his unguarded expression revealed that he knew who Matt was — and what Clyde Finch had been doing off in Maryland.
Nikki caught it. Her breath sucked in, then she said, “I think we’d better see Grandfather Callivant.”
“He’s working on a speech,” her father objected.
“I think this is more important.” Nikki began leading Matt deeper into the house.
“Nikki!” her father called after her.
“There’s a solarium in the back,” Nikki told Matt as they skirted a formal dining room. “It sort of serves as a community den. We do a lot of living on this level because of the Senator—”
A door stood ajar ahead of them, and the sound of a national newscast leaked out. Then the door opened all the way, revealing a man in a wheelchair.
“Nikki, what are you doing here when Clyde needs you?”
Walter Callivant still looked like a senator, even though it had been years since he’d held the office. He had a mane of pure white hair, and a handsome, dignified face, with, as one political writer tried to put it poetically, “the look of eagles.”
On closer examination, however, the eagle looked old. Callivant’s skin stretched tightly over his bones. A blanket covered him from the waist down, concealing legs that hadn’t been used almost as long as Matt had been alive.
The Senator’s cold blue eyes shifted from Nikki to Matt. From the look of contemptuous dislike, Matt suspected that Daniel Callivant had managed a quick briefing. Maybe a place this big had house phones.
“I have to see Grandfather,” Nikki insisted.
“With this — person?” The Senator’s tone of voice would have been better suited if he’d said “worm.”
The Callivant patriarch rolled his automated wheelchair nearer. “Do you realize what you’re doing, Nicola? You’re a Callivant. That means you have certain — family responsibilities. Your grandfather is inside, waiting to see the coverage of his announcement that he’s seeking the nomination.”
He rounded on Matt. “And you bring this — what? This would-be muckraker
Anger overcame Matt’s sense of intimidation, and he finally found his voice. “Oh, sure,” he said. “What are the lives of a few peons versus the chance of having a Callivant back where he belongs?”
“Shut your mouth, you miserable thief!” the Senator thundered nearly as well as Lucullus Marten. “I know your type only too well — and I’ve dealt with them over the years. You’re like the rats in the wall, emerging to nibble, nibble, nibble away at your betters, coming out to spread lies like some loathsome disease. You’re a ghoul, digging up the dead past to feed on it!”
It was quite a speech, even if the Senator wound up mixing his metaphors a bit. “So tell me, Senator. Did you send Clyde Finch out for a bit of pest control?”
“You don’t seem to realize your position, boy.” The Senator’s face became downright sinister as he ran his wheelchair almost onto Matt’s feet. “You’re an intruder in my home.”
“There are people who know where I am,” Matt replied as steadily as he could. “Lots of them. And I have friends who know exactly what you’ve been doing. If anything happens to me, Net Force will be asking questions.”
“I’ve deposed directors of the FBI,” the elder Callivant sneered. “Do you think you can scare me with some low-level agent in a wash-and-wear suit?”
“I think that I’m here as an invited guest. And if you try anything stupid, you’ll discover you’re not above the
