“I was supposed to see her yesterday.” Pride’s voice cracked. “Didn’t come by, though. We had that push on the southeast side, so I told Willa Jean to let her know I’d be by today for tea.” He let out a long shuddering breath and shook his head from side to side. “I should have been here yesterday.”
Ramona struggled to say something, but her vision blurred and her chest ached. Unable to speak, she wrapped both arms around his shoulders and rested her cheek on his head. “Both of us,” she managed in a whisper. “Your mom was amazing.”
Pride nodded, choking on whatever he wanted to say before simply nodding his head and giving himself over to his loss. She held him and gave herself permission to cry. There might not be time for that catharsis once Gilead emerged from her conversation with the coroner. As terrible as she knew it to be, Ramona wished for a heart attack or a stroke to have taken Dixie Belle from them. Something quick, something that would have kept ECHO’s matriarch from suffering.
The attending officers allowed them their space and kept their voices to respectful whispers in the bedroom. Pride swallowed back some of his tears and started to stand. Ramona stood with him, ready to keep him from trying to follow Gilead, but he shook his head and motioned to the door. “I need to check on Willa Jean, see what she knows. See if she needs anything.”
Ramona nodded and wiped her face with her sleeve. Pride wouldn’t cry in front of his niece, but he would make time to grieve properly later. “All right. When do you want to know what we find out?”
He pressed his lips together, his eyes tracking the plainclothes detective who emerged from the room with a phone pressed to his ear. “Later. Give Parker the details, let her decide how to manage them.” He gave Ramona a sad smile. “Standard protocol with family members, ma’am. You know the rest.”
She nodded. One of the officers fell into step next to him, offering his condolences in a whisper and escorting him to the main office. Ramona waited until they turned the corner before entering the living room. Familiar and unpleasant smells met her nose, her gorge rising before a cool hand pressed two fingers to the inside of her wrist. The sensation subsided, a hint of eucalyptus and mint hanging in the air in front of her nose.
Gilead let go and folded her arms across her chest in cool examination of the scene. The ECHO doctor had nearly twenty years on Ramona and all of the battle-tested experience to go with it. She inclined her head toward the group near the sofa. “They wanted to wait for him to leave before they brought in homicide. The entire staff has been questioned, except for the one who usually came in for light housekeeping. They’ve got the local law enforcement looking for her. That group will run their own toxicology panels and report what they find, and I convinced them to look the other way while I got a sample.”
“For?” Ramona closed her fingers around the plastic bag without understanding what to do next.
The doctor pursed her lips in mild annoyance. “Backup. You of all people should appreciate that. Officially, they’ll rule it as a heart attack. I don’t like spreading lies, but considering the circumstances…”
“It lets her pass in dignity,” Ramona finished. Her throat felt tight again and she blinked back tears. “That works. See what else you can get from the group here, okay?” She didn’t wait for Gilead to agree before heading for the front door. Others would handle the detective responsibilities; she had to speak with the head of ECHO.
* * *
Bella and Spin Doctor agreed that the best response involved an immediate statement that did not include Yankee Pride. The smooth public relations meta didn’t leave a dry eye in the press room when he left, Ramona at his side with a wad of tissues in one hand. She slid into the waiting car and let out a long breath. Tears threatened to roll down her cheeks again, but she drew her lower lip between her teeth and let her body sag against the seat. Spin buckled in next to her and brushed the front of his tailored suit. In the driver’s seat, Panacea offered her a sympathetic look and pulled out past a small crowd of waiting reporters.
“That won’t be the last, I’m afraid. We’re going to have to have a public memorial, something within the week.” He produced a sleek tablet from an inside pocket and started consulting the screen. “We’ll need to coordinate with the city, a few of the hotels. You’ll need to speak with our Russian comrades to see if they’ll want to send over any of their representatives from Moscow. Even though the dedication had a disastrous outcome, we did perfect the logistics of contacting our ECHO legacy members…”
Ramona could barely string three words together without crying, and the man next to her was coordinating travel arrangements for no fewer than three dozen people like it was just another conference. “Spin,” she choked out. “Slow down.”
He didn’t respond, but tapped at the screen and studied whatever appeared. The car turned on Peachtree and headed for the ECHO campus. “They’ll expect Pride to talk, possibly give the eulogy. Considering her service to the country, we might have to coordinate with Shreeves’ people. Better to have them for security than Blacksnake, that’s for sure.” More tapping. “Might create a problem with the Russians, but I’m sure we can work that out.”
“Spin!” For a brief moment, her eyes burned and her throat tightened. “The woman is dead, probably murdered in her own home, and you’re acting like it’s some social event!”
Spin Doctor stopped his frantic tapping and glanced out the car window. The Atlanta city traffic crawled past them, the midday rush made worse by the broken streets and destruction corridors. He let out a long sigh and rested both hands in his lap. “That’s exactly what it is, for everyone but Pride, Blaze, and their close family. We’re looking at the death of a legacy, but we’re also looking at an opportunity to bring this city together. After the fall of Metis and the rise of the Thulians, the people of Atlanta…” He shook his head. “Not just Atlanta, but the entire nation, even the world. They’re losing faith in us. Forgetting what ECHO and similar organizations could do and how they contributed during wartime.”
Ramona opened and closed her mouth, unsure if she could respond with something calm and logical. Turning Dixie Belle’s memorial into an opportunity to improve the image of ECHO felt disrespectful, even dirty, and she didn’t want any part of it. She folded her arms across her chest and focused on the stream of cars traveling into the city. “So, you think that they think that we’ve failed the city, and our only chance for recovery is some grotesque media spectacle?”
He winced at her words. “Not how I would put it.”
“You’re just exploiting what she is, the same way that they did when she first joined ECHO.” She pointed at his tablet. “You’ll invite half of the city and make Pride talk about his mother just to show that there’s some unity within the organization so the people can trust us again.”
“Not quite.” Spin consulted his tablet one more time before slipping it into his pocket and turning to face Ramona. He rested his elbows on his knees, perfectly manicured fingers folded before he spoke. “You’re right that I’m planning a public memorial. Miss Dixie Belle was a legend in the organization, and her contributions had a lasting impact even in the present day. To not set aside time and resources to celebrate her memory would be suspicious and potentially disrespectful in the eyes of the public.”
Ramona deflated and her arms slipped down to her side. He was right. This wasn’t an extension of any metahuman ability, but the simple and difficult truth. Eyes closed, she let her chin rest against her chest. Trying to talk made the inside of her throat ache, but she made the words come out in spite of the pain. “So you plan the funeral and we send the invitations. We get our people and Shreeves’ people to provide security, and we bring out the best of ECHO to honor the matriarch.”
Spin acknowledged her assessment with a single nod, and the pair rode in silence the rest of the way to the ECHO campus. At some point, Ramona closed her eyes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
O Fortuna
Mercedes Lackey, Dennis Lee and Veronica Giguere
Have you ever been in a position where disaster struck and you were utterly helpless? It was that moment that made me wholly realize what it was like to be human.
Of all of the members of ECHO, Vickie was, she had just realized, probably the least affected by the death of one of its most iconic members. Dixie hadn’t been on Overwatch; Vickie had never met her, and when those who had been wired for Overwatch Two had gone on visits, Vickie had disabled the feed to her monitors and had tried to keep her listening confined to cues she knew were meant for her, which almost never happened, except with Ramona. She kept recording, of course, in case anyone wanted to refer to those visits, but they were personal, and although Pride and Jamaican Blaze had not asked her to go private mode—they might simply have forgotten her constant presence—she felt it incumbent on her not to intrude.
So the memorial ceremony was just one more mission, so to speak, and one in which there wasn’t going to be too much she would be asked to do. It was, in an odd way, restful.
Well, not restful. There was still that gnawing grief. Not for Dixie. For Red. Yes, she had known he was a killer, not just because of her background check on him but because of everything her keenly-honed survival instincts had told her about him. She’d been terrified of him; he was feral, but you don’t show a feral thing your fear. Then, slowly, that had changed. He had changed, in fundamental ways. Enough that fear had ebbed and something else had moved in. At first, it had just been the need to get his respect. Then…his trust. Then—
Well, “then” didn’t matter anymore. Not that it ever had. The aches inside had never mattered to anyone except her, no matter what JM and Sera thought. Now the aches were just a little more profound, joined by grieving for him. He’d gone distant. And there was nothing she could do about that either. Feral again, in a different way, and she knew that if you pressed a feral thing too far, all you did was push it over the edge. Even though it hurt to have him in her life in such a removed fashion, it hurt her far more to even think of having him gone.
I’d rather be miserable with him than miserable without him. Even if “with him” is no more than a couple of sentences a day.
Moved more by a vague sense of what was appropriate than anything else, she’d dressed in an ECHO uniform and even dabbed a bit of her amber scent on. It filled the little room, but did nothing about the fact she had forgotten about breakfast. Of course she’d forgotten about breakfast. Breakfast was the one time he might make contact, if only to ask her for a music feed.
So what would Dixie have said to me if I wanted to grab a slice of pizza? she wondered, as her stomach growled. Huh. Probably “Go for it, honeychile.” Still…that would mean leaving the keyboard at a time when virtually everyone in ECHO, at least in Atlanta, was in one place. Bad idea. Instead, she sighed, and reached for another meal-in-a-can. And tried not to think about Red. Or not to think about him more. Because she’d been wrong; she wasn’t the least affected. He was. This meant not one thing to a man in a box with a multiple murder charge hanging over his head.
“You’re wearing your broody face again.” She glanced over at Grey. He was perched on a spot of computer case that was exactly the size of his seated “footprint.” There was not a millimeter to spare. “You’re thinking about Red.”
“Don’t you dare go all touchy-feely and try and get me to vent,” she said sharply. The familiar flattened his ears against his head, but wisely said nothing. She turned back to the monitors.
Just as Eight-Ball began screaming warnings.
She whipped around to face the stand-alone system so fast she knocked over a row of empty meal cans, but before she could even begin to read what was on the monitor, there was a huge physical and magical explosion in the vicinity of the front door. The concussion rattled everything and actually knocked her chair over. She tried desperately to scramble to her feet, but those were caught in the nest of cables under the desk. Grey screamed from the next room, adding his battle howl to the shrieks from Eight-Ball, and as a shadow fell between her and the light from the door, she looked up to—
—blackness.
* * *
When Bella entered the command center, Bulwark was watching the recovered tapes. Again. Part of her ached for him. Part of her was angry that he was punishing himself like this. And part of her was in despair, because here it was again. She was in competition with a ghost.
He turned with a feigned start, and turned off the replay. He knew she was there, of course. She rarely surprised him. The thing about Bull that people often overlooked was his ability to read his surroundings and people. Bull had a way of staring into the heart of a person. In return, he offered little, even to an empath, and it was infuriating at times just how difficult it was to read him. Still, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She treasured how little of him she could pick up just by proximity. She had to do things the hard way, old school, and she was loving it.
Except maybe now. How can I compare to his dead wife? If she could read him, maybe she could figure out what to say, to do. But she couldn’t read him, and his body language only told her he had closed himself up behind his walls again. It was a new lesson. She could pick up on surface emotions, even basic thoughts. That was what she did. With Bull, she had to relearn that ancient art of conversation, reading signs from body language, take hints from their shared chemistry, and she couldn’t have picked a tougher subject to start with. It was a challenge, and Bella loved a good challenge. So she began as she always did. Pick a play, carry it through, watch where the situation would go, and just go with it.
She strolled up next to him, gave him a knowing glance, and keyed the order to begin the playback again.
They stared up at the monitor, and watched in silence as the painfully reconstructed feed gave them enhanced images from partially recovered video files. Security reels dating back to the Invasion of the Vault.
All right. Where to start? Try to avoid anything that might turn into a fight…“You know, you never did tell me how these came to light,” she said.
“Jensen,” Bull said. “He finally managed to have these restored. Took him awhile too, the…bandits who corrupted these files really knew what they doing.”
Bella simply nodded. Try to avoid anything that might turn into a fight…don’t mention Red…don’t mention Red…
She’d already filed a long, long deposition, one she hoped Bull wasn’t going to find out about. In Red’s favor of course; how she, as both the CEO of ECHO and as someone who examined ECHO personnel psychologically on a regular basis, felt that the “Red Djinni” in those tapes was a vastly different person now from the one who had risked his life so many times she had lost count…but Red had killed ECHO personnel, and they now had hard proof of it. She knew they couldn’t just let that go, but she knew ECHO needed him and his skills and she was of the opinion that much of what he was enduring was ample punishment in and of itself. She knew exactly what Jensen was going for, here—not the death penalty, not incarceration, but something crueler—to grab Red and stick a lot of monitoring equipment and maybe a bomb in his head and put him on some sort of “suicide squad.” And in between missions, lock him in some deep solitary confinement hole with nothing more than a bed and a toilet. She didn’t have any illusions on how long he’d stay sane under those conditions.
For now, the Djinni was sitting comfortably, or not, in a secure cell in Top Hold. She secretly had limited internet access piped into his cell, giving him a window to the world outside if not a way to interact with it. And Vickie was probably doing something for him via Overwatch Two. If he was letting her. She wasn’t officially asking so wouldn’t officially have to say something about it.
Then again, Vickie could probably hide every damn thing she did, if she chose to. Bella was privy to Vickie’s feelings for the Djinni. It was an occupational hazard, the whole empath deal. When you spent enough time with people, even when you purposely bl
ocked things out, some things were too powerful to go unnoticed. The girl had it bad for Red, and it was as clear as air that she didn’t want anyone to know. Especially not him. Sera had said as much, in her still oblique way of talking. Vickie does not wish you to be aware of what you already knew, with a significant side glance out the window at the Parkour course, where Djinni was sitting atop the climbing wall, berating trainees. And less so does she wish him to be aware.
The video feed continued. Bella and Bull watched as a car slammed through the broken defenses of the Vault and crashed into the entrance bay. Figures rose from the wreckage, spraying bullets from automatic rifles, and Bella winced. The argument was inevitable. They had both watched this footage, many times. It was inevitable, what was to come.
“I can’t stay long, you know,” she said. “The memorial is starting soon. I have to be there.”
“I know,” Bulwark said, continuing to stare at the monitor.
“You could come with me,” she ventured. “You should be there, you know.”
“Someone should stay here, at Command,” he replied curtly. “Give my regards to Pride, please.”
“You were his friend a long, long time before I was,” she pointed out, one last-ditch effort to get him to pull away from this self-flagellation for a few damn hours. She felt her temper rising. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what he was doing to himself, and he was doing it anyway. Why? So he could justify the crucifixion of someone else he’d called friend?
“You know me,” Bull said. Finally, he looked at her, and for a moment she marveled at the pleasure of seeing something new in him. It was a treat, every time, even now, as his eyes spoke of love and betrayal and all the mixed-up confusion in between. “Or at least, you’re learning to. You don’t think I know, but I do. And I love you more for it, with each passing day. This is something so new for you it seems feverish, uncontrollable, wild and exhilarating. Unfortunate, that the timing is so rotten, the situation so devastating. But this is us, things need to be attended to. And I, I’m not really sure where to go from here. But you must know by now, that this is something I have to take care of myself, and that you can’t assist me. That you can’t fix me.”
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 31