25.
For variety, the network I was watching brought on Owen Traverton for an interview, because I guess trashing me was pretty much the national pastime at the moment, and I felt almost nauseous enough to throw up. I thought about going out front, setting the record straight—about what Traverton had done in his masquerade as my dog, about the crimes of Thunder Hayes, Bronson McCartney, and Louis Terry. Hayes was a straight-up long-term criminal. McCartney was a murderer. Terry was a pedophile, and a disgusting one. Even before he started ruining my life I wished I’d killed him.
Yet something inside me knew instinctively what would happen if I went out there and tried to defend myself. Maybe it was experience with the mauling I took in my first interview, but it was like I sensed sharks in the water just outside my office walls. These reporters didn’t like me. They looked down on me, held me in contempt, and I had this feeling that walking out that front door and facing my problems like my first instinct suggested would do little more than deliver all my watching enemies another victory. Because, really, how was I supposed to explain away the accusations that President Harmon had just made? “Oh, no, I totally didn’t kill anyone who really deserved it because they murdered my boyfriend.” I wasn’t a convincing enough liar to pull that one off.
My phone rang again, and I frowned at it. It was Kat, according to the caller ID, which was weird. Hesitantly, and only because I thought maybe J.J. had fried his battery and borrowed Kat’s to make the call, I answered. “Hello?”
“Oh my gosh, Sienna, I just saw,” Kat gushed, doing that thing where she sounds genuinely sorry to have heard your bad news. “Are you okay? How are you holding up?”
“Ariadne’s brandy bottle got broken in McCartney’s sack of our office, so I’m not doing that well,” I said, just letting the honesty flow out.
“It’s so terrible,” Kat said. “They’re just destroying you on every network. I mean, just when I think things can’t get any more horrible, the freaking president goes and tears you a new vaj live on national television.”
“Yes, I noticed,” I said, wishing she would stop rubbing it in. Actually, what I really wished for was to draw Shadow and just start shooting the TV.
My phone buzzed, heralding the arrival of a text message. I lifted it up and stared at the screen. My eyes nearly bulged out as I stared.
It was from Steven Clayton, famous Hollywood actor at large. On location in Australia and just heard the news. Don’t let the bastards get you down. You still have supporters out there, no matter how they try and trash you.
“Hello?” Kat trilled. “Sienna, are you there?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I got a text from Steven Clayton, believe it or not. He, um … was sending his support.” I felt a very strange wash of shame mingled with guilt. I’d done what Harmon had accused me of, yet still I had people like poor Steven believing that I was innocent. Maybe he was projecting on to me.
“Of course he was,” Kat said, without a hint of jealousy. I knew she’d been interested in Steven herself, since I’d run across him for the first time while helping Kat avoid being killed by Redbeard out in LA. “He’s a good guy. And Sienna … you’re one of the good guys. Errr, good girl. Wait, no … good girl kind of has a different connotation than good guy, doesn’t it? Being a good girl is so last century. You’re a bad girl, Sienna. In the best way.”
“Thanks … I think?” I wasn’t quite sure how to take that, because for once, Kat had gotten a step or two ahead of me.
“When people give you shit,” Kat said, “you don’t do what I do and just passively sit by and try and spin it into gold. Which sucks, by the way. I feel like I’m just sitting there, my mouth full of shit sandwich, trying to grin for the cameras. When someone gives you shit, you take it and cram it down their throat, not even bothering to smile until you’ve done it. Then you grin, because ha ha, they totally deserved that. I wish I were brave like you because I’m sick of taking peoples’ shit. I was sick of taking Taggert’s shit until you came along and reminded me that I didn’t have to. You don’t let people push you around, Sienna. Don’t start now.”
“People aren’t pushing me around,” I said. “The US government is, and mostly to stop me from, uhm … viciously revenging myself on people who have wronged me.”
“That’s boloney,” Kat said. “President Harmon is pushing you around. The press is pushing you around. They’re ripping you up, and you know damned well if you try and defend yourself, most of them are going to continue crapping all over you because it’s good ratings. The whole country knows you. A lot of people like you. Heroes falling? It’s like the gold star in their business, the number one thing they love to cover—scandal. And this is a scandal. Let me contact my PR firm in LA, see what they can do to turn this around for you.”
I felt strangely touched. This was Kat. Kat was eager to help me. “Thank you,” I said, feeling a little choked up.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sienna,” she said, calm and reassuring. “We’re going to get through this. Together, all right?”
“All right,” I said, and she clicked off the other end of the line. I sat there in the growing darkness, staring at the TV screen, but not a bit of it sank in on me, because I was still just sitting there, floored, at the fact that Kat—Kat, of all people—was my shining light in the darkness.
26.
I traded text messages with Steven Clayton for a while, and took a quick call from Hampton, who was sitting in Chicago and worried for me. I’ll spare you the mush, but it was a long talk, filled with deep pauses, and didn’t conclude until after the sun was down and the sound of the nearby road had faded somewhat. The reporters seemed to have gotten quiet. I could still hear them prepping for their next segments, but only a few were on the air at a time, and the breathless coverage of my office’s facade had given way to news reports about other goings-on in the world. Which was good, because there was a massacre going on in a third-world country across the globe, and not one going on in my parking lot, so it felt like it was only fair for them to at least report on that for thirty seconds per hour. The damned vultures.
Another text lit up my phone. Heard about your troubles. I hope it’s not true what they say you did, but just as you backed me, know I’m your corner. It was from Jamie Barton, and she’d signed it Gravity. I guess the copyright lawyers hadn’t gotten to her for that one yet.
I stood, my back and legs a little stiff. I thumped a booted foot up on the table and leaned over to stretch. As a meta, my muscles didn’t really get tight, but I felt the need to move, to do something, anything. The TV was on, but I was ignoring it to the best of my ability.
The phone buzzed again, and I scooped it up. J.J., read the screen, and I answered, “Give me happy news.”
“Well …” J.J. said, sounding pained, “that might be tough.”
I held in my disappointment. “Shit.” Okay. I didn’t hold it in that well.
“Palleton Labs is an interesting little conundrum,” J.J. said. “I managed to get past their firewall, but there’s almost nothing there.”
I waited for him to make himself clear, but apparently he was waiting for me to ask a question. “Whatever do you mean?” I obliged.
“There’s like, twenty computers on the network behind their firewall. I looked at the satellite overheads of that place, and I have to believe they’ve got more than twenty employees there.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Sooo,” he said, “I think what we’ve got going on here is a black network.”
“Racist!” Augustus called from somewhere in the background.
“I—no, that’s not what I—I totally did not mean—seriously, guy, I—” J.J. sputtered.
“Dude, I’m messing with you,” Augustus said, getting a little clearer. “You’re such an easy mark. You know what I mean?”
“He really is,” Abigail said in the background. “Because he’s a sweetie.”
I suppressed my gag reflex. “So you’re
saying the rest of the network is offline?”
J.J. sounded impressed. “Uh, yeah. It’s either that, or they don’t have more than twenty computers.”
“They’ve got a vault that takes up a lot of real estate on the top floor,” I said, “and it’s meta proof. A Gavrikov couldn’t get through it, and we burn pretty hot. So …”
“They’re into the secrets business,” J.J. said. “Seems likely they’d take their INFOSEC pretty seriously.”
“Uh huh,” I said, sitting down in my chair and leaning back again. “So … anything of use from the computers you could access?”
“One person has a really, really serious porn habit that I think they need to address,” J.J. said, “and I found the company financials. Not on the same computer. Ms. Porn Habit seems like she’s probably the admin supervisor, but the financials guy only had cat photos on his hard drive, other than his work stuff—”
“Fascinating,” I said, though it really wasn’t. “What do the financials say?”
“Nothing,” J.J. said, and then he laughed, “You have to read them!” He guffawed for a minute, then settled down. “That joke always kills me.”
“It’s a classic for a reason,” Abigail said, apparently feeding his ego. I guess he could use it.
“Anyway, Ariadne took a peek,” J.J. said, “and she claims that whoever does their finances should probably be in prison for fraud. Poor guy. He’s not gonna see any cat photos in there—”
“Why?” I asked, cutting right to it.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s because he wouldn’t get much internet time to look at cat pics in prison—”
“Why did Ariadne say the financials are fraudulent?” I asked, doing a remarkable job of restraining myself. Old Sienna would have gone nuclear about six annoying asides ago.
“Oh, because they don’t disclose what a lot of the expenditures are for,” he said. “She basically called it a blind man’s budget, where you’d get more information reading it if you—if you couldn’t see it, I guess? I dunno, I think she might have overreached with that analogy, what do you th—”
“I think I’m in the position of knowing that Timothy Logan and his crime bros were right,” I said.
“And crime sisses,” Augustus added helpfully.
“There’s something funky going on at Palleton Labs,” I said. “And since it’s all offline, I guess I’m not getting in to take a peek unless—”
“You actually go there and take a peek, yeah,” J.J. said. “That was the conclusion I came to, too. So … you taking a trip to Portland, then? Road trip, obvs, because you can’t fly anymore?”
“Thanks for rubbing that in,” I said. “And no. I have other concerns at the moment.”
“Uh, yeah,” Augustus said, sounding a little awestruck in the background, “you do.”
“Yes,” I said, trying to decide where he was going with that, “I’d—”
“No, Sienna,” Augustus said, and there was a stir of movement, “are you near a TV?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing up, “wh—”
I stopped mid-sentence as my eyes caught on the image on screen. There was a blazing fire, a hellscape of a burning building. It was utterly consumed, flames pouring from the roofline, an inferno leaping into the sky. I stood immediately, instinctively, wondering where it was, and if I could get there in time to save whoever—
But, no. I couldn’t fly. I relaxed a millimeter, that feeling of perpetual sickness infusing my stomach once more as I realized all the responsibilities of saving people all over the place were off my shoulders. I almost sat back down—
But then I realized that the building looked entirely too familiar.
The fire reached past trees, scorching their bare branches, which had already been bare before the fire licked at them. I knew, because I’d seen the leaves fall myself just a few weeks earlier. I peered at the blaze, and there in the front I could see the hole in the living room window where the Clarys had come crashing in only twenty-four hours ago, disturbing me in the middle of my margarita pity party.
“Oh no,” I whispered, and dropped the phone, barely catching it with my meta reflexes before it hit the ground.
I knew that place, that place that was burning.
It was my house.
27.
“Please just let me through,” I said, trying to push my way past a throng of reporters shoving microphones in my face. It felt like I could smell fire, even though I’d only just left the office a minute earlier. I’d had to call for an Uber, because I couldn’t fly, even though it would have gotten me there in a matter of seconds. No, I had to stay on the ground, because to do otherwise would have been against the laws of man and nature, but only one of them was actively trying to bring me down at the moment.
“Ms. Nealon, how do you respond to the president’s allegations of—”
“Are you a murderer?”
“Sienna, what do you think of the dress that Jennifer Lopez wore to the Academy Awards?”
I swear that last one was a real question. I squeezed into the back seat of a Prius and shut the door, and the driver shot off before anyone could get in front of her.
“Damn,” she said, looking in her rearview. “That was something, huh?”
“Tell me about it,” I said, looking at her eyes in the rearview. They were dark, and so was her complexion. Her hair was a different story, though, blond as blond could get, which looked like a lovely contrast to her deep chocolate skin tone. It was short, and frizzed into an afro. A blond, short afro. I tried not to stare, but it was kinda cool.
“So, we’re heading to 832 Hamilton Ave?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Expect a similar crowd when we arrive.”
“Are you famous or something?” she asked, looking back at me again.
I looked at myself in the rearview. I looked paler than usual, dark circles under my eyes. “Or something, yeah.” Infamous felt more accurate.
“I feel like I recognize you from somewhere,” she said, and she pursed her lips as she considered it.
“Do you watch the news?” I prepared myself, in case I got kicked out of my Uber.
“Nope,” she said. “Nothing on there but shit and more shit. If I want to feel bad about life I’ll go to talk to my brother for a while, you know what I mean?”
“Boy, do I,” I said. “Anyway … let’s just say I’ve been on the news today, and not in a great way.”
“Aww, that sucks. What happened?”
“Nothing. At least not lately,” I said. “This stuff … it’s all like ancient history to me.”
“Oh, yeah? When did it happen?”
“Five, six years ago?” I tried to do the math in my head as we hit 212 and headed east. “Feels like forever.”
“It ain’t easy, outrunning the past,” she said, nodding along like that was sage wisdom. It kind of was.
“Tell me about it,” I said and we fell into silence.
The ride was simultaneously forever and over in a minute, the trees on 212 blurring past at first, and then we merged with 62, and we were making the turn onto 35W north in a flash. Pretty soon we were exiting, and I could hear the sirens in the distance, see the cloud of black smoke against the light pollution of my neighborhood, the orange blaze lighting up the night.
I had the driver drop me just before my street and I ran the last few hundred yards. There was a crowd in front of my house, fire trucks just pulling up as I got there. A whole crowd of reporters and apparently no one had bothered to call 911. I guess they figured someone else was doing it.
I pushed through the crowd, lightly as could. “Let me through, please,” I said, trying to be polite. My words were wracked with desperation. I wanted to fly, high up, get this done. The house was just burning, the roof completely engulfed, flames coming out of the windows. I took a deep breath as I shoved to the fore, and readied myself, ready to pull the fire out and snuff it—
A hand like steel clamped on my upper arm, and I w
heeled about, ready to unleash on whoever was attacking me. The grip disappeared after my assailant had spun me around, his ruddy face lit by fire, smug, taunting, like a miniature Harmon, though he was far more familiar than that. “Don’t,” Scott Byerly said, and his tone was all warning, audible over the roaring of the flames.
“I’m putting out a fire,” I said, and turned away from him. Gavrikov, I said in my own mind, time to—
Scott grabbed me again, pulling me a step back, and I let him because I was putting all my effort into not hitting him hard enough to break his face and neck in one punch. “I’m a federal agent,” he said, as though I didn’t know this, “and this is a crime scene. If you interfere in it, I will arrest you.”
“Interfere?” I stared at him, his face shadowed and orange where the flames lit it. “This is my house. I just want to put it out—”
“No,” he said, and he smiled, just slightly. Friday eased up behind him, arms crossed, a grin of his own visible in the mask hole. “Don’t disturb the scene until our forensics people get a chance to go over it. It could be arson.”
“And how is arson a federal crime?” I asked. Somehow I wasn’t furious. I was crushed, brittle, feeling broken.
“Oh, the arson isn’t,” he said, and he leered at me, looking positively demonic in his joy at my sorrow. “I’m talking about your house. Your house is a federal crime scene.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a search warrant, and it was going to be executed tonight.” He glanced to the side, still smiling smugly. “We’re going to be looking into your culpability in this.”
“I’m no special investigator,” Friday said, taunting, “but it seems to me this fire might have been set to hide something.”
“Who would have motive for that?” Scott asked, but there was no doubt showing in who he believed responsible.
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