“Thousands,” Kat said with certainty. “Thousands and thousands.”
“He never got that,” I said. “He looked right at me, looked me the eyes, the man who helped me—us—win the war against Sovereign … and I could tell that he’d just lost the righteous feeling, that he didn’t think it was worth the sacrifice anymore.” I met her eyes for a blink. “I told him he should just go. Just … be rid of me, that he’d never get to have a normal life with me, because …” I held up a hand and stared at it. “I can’t touch anyone for very long without hurting them … but I can’t keep my hands to myself, either. That’s the job, isn’t it? Keep trying to … to do the opposite of Redbeard. I keep trying to influence things, to shape them, to make them better by taking the bad guys who want to shape them badly out of the game. I’m sculpting the world anew with my own hands, but I can’t … touch it.” I blinked, and my vision blurred. “He said … he said he couldn’t cut the cord. ‘I can’t just stop loving you,’ he said, ‘even if I wish I could’.”
I blinked and felt hot liquid stream down my cheek. “And I heard that in my head, and stinging from getting my ass kicked on national TV by Gail Roth, I just did what I always do, and tried to make it right. I kissed him, I touched him, and we …” I swallowed hard. “We … you know.” I choked up. “And in the middle of it … I put my fingers softly on his forehead, and left them there just a few seconds longer than I needed to … and took every single memory of us away from him so he could move on.” I smacked my dry lips together. “I did what he couldn’t. I tried to give him …” I blinked, and my cheeks ran afresh. “I tried to set him free.”
“You made yourself a prisoner in the process, though, didn’t you?” Kat asked, and I blinked in surprise. “Now you’ve got the memories for both of you. And you can’t get rid of them, can you?”
“No,” I said, and the tears came streaming down my cheeks again. “I’ll never forget. I have to remember it all—the pain, the tears, the good times and the break-up … for both of us.”
102.
A week later, on election night, Ariadne and I were watching with mounting unease as the returns rolled in on TV. I’d started the evening thinking maybe I’d want popcorn, heavily buttered and guilt-free, but by this point I was just wanting booze, also guilt-free.
“It’s not decided yet,” Ariadne said, watching me out of the corner of her eye as we sat in the living room, the TV tuned to one of the news channels.
They had the electoral map up, and it wasn’t looking so hot for Senator Robb Foreman. He’d need to swing a lot of states to pull this one off. “It may not be over,” I said, “but the fat lady is definitely warming up.”
Ariadne just pursed her lips in worry and didn’t say anything. We’d both voted that morning and kind of puttered around aimlessly waiting for the serious coverage to start pouring in about five. When it had, I know I wasn’t the only one thinking about pouring a drink in order to deal with it. Ariadne’s face had a flushed, worried quality all night. “Hard to believe the polls swung ten points in one week,” she said, not putting the blame exactly where it belonged.
She didn’t have to. The blame was sitting right here, in my chair, without her needing to do any shifting. By burning Redbeard to death I’d suddenly put my horrendous and violent nature to work for the American people in the best possible way. Naturally, Gerry Harmon had been quick to tout his not firing me over the last year plus as a vote of confidence that had paid off, and somehow, the media that had been wanting me to spontaneously combust in a tank of gasoline only a few weeks ago was singing my praises so effusively my mother would have preemptively slapped me just to keep me humble after hearing all of it. You know, if she were still alive.
Even his prior relationship with Brock hadn’t stuck to Harmon. Whoever had filmed that YouTube video of him ripping the hell out of Brock had some serious prescience, I’d give them that. I’d watched it a couple times, and it was a nasty piece of work, with the president practically cutting a campaign ad right there under the portico at Anna Vargas’s house and using a stunned Buchanan Brock as the perfect prop. The man had stood there and taken the president’s vicious tirade with only a little sputtering and some ineffectual replies.
Best of all for Harmon, even absent the knowledge that Brock was a dirty bastard, it was the sort of thing that played well. He’d ripped him for being a greedy piece of shit, and naturally, press digging on Brock had revealed … well, he was a greedy piece of shit with dirty deals in every corner of LA. If there was an odious dollar to be made, Brock was all over it, from running a scam charity to backing a super-dicey hedge fund that dodged the hell out of taxes using every loophole known to man and apparently a few that weren’t even known to the IRS until now.
Yep, that had been worth a ten-point swing in the polls in seven days. And the worst part was, I had to sit back and watch it shift knowing that if I said a damned word, not only would the landscape shift underneath me, but well, let’s face it—I’d just burned a man to death on video. There would be consequences, no matter how, uh, pure my intent was in doing so.
“Uh oh,” Ariadne said, drawing my attention back to the television.
“And with 51 percent of the vote in,” the anchor said, “we are now prepared to call the state of California for President Gerard Harmon, which gives him—”
I clicked off the television before he could finish. “The whole damned ballgame,” I said in disgust.
Ariadne gave me a smile of sympathy mingled with dread. “Maybe it won’t be that bad.”
“Oh, you think?” I ask, giving her the side-eye. “I don’t care how much I just helped him. My days have been numbered for a year. I guarantee you I’m out plus or minus a month from inauguration day.”
“It’s not like you haven’t known this was coming,” she said, still sympathetic.
“It’s not like I have anywhere else to go,” I said snottily, as my phone began to buzz on the arm of the couch. I looked down at it and frowned, gun-shy that it might be a text from Dick-o. J.J. had shown me how to block his calls and texts, but I still lived with the PTSD of thinking he’d send me a dick pic—errr, the kind that didn’t involve his face, I should clarify.
It wasn’t him calling. It was a 202 number. I held it up and showed Ariadne.
She frowned. “Who’s calling you from Washington, DC?”
I shrugged and hit the answer button. There was only one way to find out. “Hello?”
“Please hold for the President of the United States,” came a woman’s very steady, very perfunctory voice on the other end of the call.
“Shit,” I said, “it’s Harmon.”
Ariadne’s eyes went wide. “President Harmon?”
“No, Dan Harmon, the creator of Community. We’re in the same anger management group—yes, Gerry Effing Harmon—”
“That’s still President Gerry Effing Harmon, thanks to you,” came Gerry Harmon’s energetic voice crackling through the line with more than a little amusement. “How are you doing this evening, Miss Nealon?”
“Peachy,” I said. “I guess congratulations are in order.”
“Yes, I’m having my people send you that fruit basket,” he said, oh-so-full of helpful irony. “I know, I know, you haven’t quite made it the hundred and twenty days yet, but after what you did stopping that lunatic in LA, I feel like special thanks are in order.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, not really feeling it. “Though I have to admit, I’m a little surprised you’re calling me … what, ten seconds after the victory was announced.”
“Well, when you owe someone as much as I owe you, it pays to show a little appreciation,” Harmon said, smarmy as ever. “But you’re right, I’ve got speeches to make, an agenda to shape. This is going to go down as a landslide, you know. I’ll have long coattails tonight, and it’s all thanks to you.”
I had a feeling he didn’t mean that, but he was being a politician and blowing smoke straight up my ass. My ass,
ever health-conscious, did not appreciate the secondhand smoke. “You’re welcome,” I said again, not meaning it any more than the first time, but strangely unable to come up with some way to insult the man who’d just won an overwhelming victory because I’d set someone on fire publicly.
Yeah. You come up with something to say in that situation, because I came up with nada.
“Well, good evening to you, Ms. Nealon,” President Harmon said. “I hope you have an excellent rest of your night.”
“How likely do you rate that?” I asked, just being honest.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s low,” he said jovially. “By the way … your agency is being merged with the FBI.”
I felt like someone had whacked me in the back of the head and knocked my eyes out of their sockets. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, you’ll be in DC soon,” he said casually.
“Um, I live in Minneapolis,” I said. “Not really planning to move.”
“Of course not,” he said as though it were obvious. “That’s your choice, naturally. I can’t blame you. Many, many people consider themselves rooted to a place for one reason or another. But either way, I wish you the best of luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, and realized he’d hung up. “Asshole,” I said, pulling the phone away from my ear.
“What was that?” Ariadne asked, staring at me in concern.
“We’re being folded into the FBI,” I said, frowning. “They’re moving operations to DC.”
“He called to tell you that himself?” Ariadne looked slightly impressed. “Tonight?”
“No, he called to gloat,” I said. “He just tossed that last bit in because he hadn’t had enough good news for tonight, he also needed to guarantee I wasn’t going to be around to screw up the rest of his administration.” I grabbed the TV remote and started to throw it, then thought the better of it. Showering us both in shattered plastic chips was not a wise way to vent my anger. I let it drop to the couch, and saw small cracks in the side where I’d squeezed it. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good call, I guess,” Ariadne said, sounding shell-shocked. “I … might stay up a little while, ponder over the … well … this.”
“Being jobless?” I stood. “We could move, I guess.”
She looked right at me, and I detected nervousness. “We could.”
“I don’t want to move. You?”
“No.” She shook her head.
I sighed and left her, heading to my childhood room, where I climbed into my childhood bed and felt … well, very much like a child, out of control of my own world, my own destiny … still. I tossed and turned, clutching at my pillow, worrying that I was about to be out of a job, and that the purpose I’d poured my life into, the one that I’d pushed Scott aside for, was about to be taken away from me, ripped out of my hands by someone more powerful than me.
I tossed around like that for hours, my insides roiling like a storm. The only real job I’d ever had, the only one I thought I was any good at, was about to be yanked out of my hands.
I stared at the ceiling like I was a kid again, feeling like I was trapped in my room, trapped in my own house … trapped in my own life, with no way to escape.
On second thought…the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Ugh, change.
Epilogue
The White House
Washington, DC
President Gerry Harmon could not recall the last time Amanda Brackett had smiled before this week, but it had been a while. His Chief of Staff’s moods changed with the polls, and so naturally, she’d been sour for a bit before now.
“You’ve got your speech?” Brackett asked, the faint trace of a smile playing over her lips.
“I do,” Harmon said with a smile. He felt just as mellow now as he had while losing, but then, he’d been in a good mood for a little while before the shift in polls.
“Know it by heart?”
“I know the sentiments by heart,” Harmon said, waving a hand. “It’s mostly … let’s face it, it’s a puff speech, not a policy speech.” Those would come later.
“Mmhmm.” Brackett gave him a little of that no-nonsense frown, which was something she employed quite a bit in her capacity as Chief of Staff. “You came within a whisker’s edge. You know that, right?”
“Of losing?” Harmon looked in the mirror and straightened his bow tie. He always went with the classics, and his tux was a perfect representation of that. “It wasn’t as close as you think.”
“If not for that Nealon girl—”
“Who you wanted me to fire,” Harmon said with a satisfied smile. It wasn’t smug the way he did it, more like a polite reminder to Amanda that he wasn’t an idiot, that he had some idea of what he was doing.
“Hm,” Brackett said. “And what about Brock?” She fixed her gaze on him. “That could have been a disaster.”
“And yet it all turned out in our favor,” he said, turning away from the mirror, his bowtie straight. She didn’t think it was, he could tell, but it was.
“Because of an anonymous tip,” Brackett said. “A sudden, fortuitous anonymous tip.” She stared right at him. “And an untraceable one, as I understand it.”
“Yes,” Harmon said, nodding along, “indeed. Fortune smiles.” He arched his eyebrows and started for the door, knowing she’d hit him with it before he made it out.
“Did you tip them off?” Brackett asked.
Harmon paused before the door to the Oval Office and turned smoothly back to her. “Why, Amanda, are you asking me if I personally sent an email regarding one of our … greedier, less ethical donors, unearthing one of his less savory schemes that involved the slaughter of our constituents in order to make a whole oodle of money?” He straightened. “Why, if I had known, it was certainly my duty to inform the duly constituted authorities.”
“You are the duly constituted authorities,” she said, impassive. “It was a good play. Especially distancing yourself from him in public before it came out.”
“Buck Brock was an easy target,” Harmon said. “He was only connected to us because he wanted power and influence, and he confused money with that. A common error.”
“Still,” she said, playing it a little cool, “I’d pay folding money to know how you figured that one out.”
Gerry Harmon smiled at his Chief of Staff. “The thing about people and secrets is … everybody thinks they’ve got secrets, and nobody realizes that … nothing is secret. The world has changed in the last five years, and the biggest secret ever kept was exposed … there are gods among us. Some piker idiot with a land scheme that hinges on mass murder? That’s a petty secret. There are bigger ones still out there.” He stopped theatrically. His eyes danced; he was natural speech-giver, and loved playing to an audience.
“Yes?” Amanda Brackett was nothing if not a game audience for him. That was part of the reason he kept her on, even in spite of her dour and sour self. “What are they?”
“They don’t call them secrets for nothing, Amanda,” Harmon said. He held the door open for his Chief of Staff. “Oh, and now that we’re done with Nealon … get her out. She knows it’s coming. Preferably wait until after inauguration, just to give the press some room to forget, but before we have any more … incidents.”
Brackett nodded. “Will do, sir. How do you want it handled?”
Harmon smiled. “She called me a dick. Handle it … however you think appropriate. Use your imagination.” And with a parting smile, he left to go address his crowd, to give the speech he had in his pocket, and to celebrate his third—and final—term.
Sienna Nealon returns in
PAINKILLER
Out of the Box, Book 8
Coming April 12, 2016!
Available for Pre-order on Amazon Now!
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editorial/Literary Janitorial duties performed by Sarah Barbour and Jeffrey Bryan. Final proofing was handle by Jo Evans. Any errors you see in the text, however, are the result of me rejecting changes.
The cover was masterfully designed by Karri Klawiter.
Jennifer Ellison, who provided excellent feedback as both a first reader and an LA resident so I (hopefully) didn't make too much of an ass of myself in trying to get a feel for the locale.
As always, thanks to my parents, my kids and my wife, for helping me keep things together.
Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change Page 35