“We got lucky,” Shaun said, with a grin. “Thanks for getting us through the red tape.”
“My pleasure.” Senator Ryman looked back at the glowering general. “General Bridges, thank you for your concern for the well-being of my press pool. I’ll be speaking to your superiors about this operation, and I’ll make sure they know your part in it.”
The general paled. Still grinning, Shaun waggled his fingers at him.
“Nice to meet you, sir. Have a nice day.” Turning back to Rick and me, he slung his arms around our shoulders. “So, my beloved partners in doing really stupid shit for the edification of the masses, would you say I bought us another three percent today? No, that’s too conservative, for I am a God among men and a poker into unpokeable places. Make that five percent. Truly, you should all worship me in the brightness of my glory.”
I turned my head enough to glance at the Senator. He was still forcing himself to smile, but the expression wasn’t reflected in his eyes. That was the face of a man under considerable strain.
“Maybe later,” I said. “Senator Ryman? Did you drive out here?”
“Steve was listening to your report,” the senator said. “When he heard you’d found something, he called me, and we came out here immediately.”
“Thank you for that, sir,” said Rick. “If you hadn’t, we might have had a few issues to contend with.”
“Permanent blindness,” said Shaun, looking at me.
“An all-expenses paid stay at a government biohazard holding facility,” I countered. “Sir, did you want us to follow you back to the house and give you the details on what we found?”
“Actually, Georgia, thank you, but no. Right now, I’d like the three of you to return to your hotel and do whatever it is you need to do. Go do your jobs.” There was something broken in his expression. I’d thought he looked old at the funeral, but I was wrong; he looked old now. “I’ll call you in the morning, after I’ve had time to explain to my wife that our daughter’s death wasn’t an accident, and to get very, very drunk.”
“I understand,” I said. Looking to Rick, I said, “Meet us at the hotel.” He nodded and turned to head for his car. I didn’t want him to ride with us and leave it here. We’d just annoyed the army. A little accidental “vandalism” wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. “You’ll call if you need anything, sir?”
“You can count on it.” The senator’s voice was mirthless. So was his expression as he walked over to his government-issue SUV. Steve was already standing next to the passenger-side door, holding it open. I couldn’t see any other security guards, but I knew they were there. They wouldn’t be taking any chances with a presidential candidate this close to a recent hazard zone. Especially not after the things we’d just learned.
I watched the senator climb into the car. Steve shut the door behind him, nodded toward us, and got into the driver’s side, pulling out. Rick’s little armored VW followed a few minutes later, rumbling down the road toward civilization.
Shaun put his hand on my shoulder. “George? We okay to get going before the jerks in power come up with a reason to detain us? Other than the cat. Rick took the cat with him, so if there’s going to be detention, it’ll just be him. Beating erasers, getting electrodes strapped to sensitive parts of his body…”
“Huh?” I twisted around to look at him. “Right, leaving. Yeah, I’m ready to go.”
“You feeling okay?” He peered at me. “You’re pale.”
“I was thinking about Rebecca. You drive? My head hurts too much for it to be safe.”
Now Shaun was really starting to look concerned. I don’t like to let him drive when I’m a passenger. His idea of traffic safety is going too fast for the cops to catch up. “You sure?”
I tossed him the keys. Usually, I don’t like to be in the car when he’s behind the wheel, but usually, I don’t have a bunch of dead people, a distraught presidential candidate, and a splitting headache to contend with. “Drive.”
Shaun gave me one last worried look and turned to head for the van. I followed and climbed into the passenger seat, closing my eyes. Showing rather uncharacteristic concern for my well-being, Shaun opted to drive like a sane human being, pulling out at a reasonably sedate fifty or so miles per hour, and actually acknowledging that the brakes could be used in situations other than “band of zombies blocking the road ahead.” I settled deeper into my seat, keeping my eyes closed, and started to review.
When I said that the facts on the outbreak at the ranch didn’t add up, I’d been half-expecting to find some sign of human neglect or possibly of an intruder who kicked off the whole mess and managed to get overlooked in the carnage, leaving it to be blamed on the horses. Some small thing that was nonetheless enough to trigger my sense of “something isn’t right here.” In short, a blip, a little bit of nothing that didn’t change anything.
Rebecca Ryman was murdered.
This changed everything.
We’d known for weeks that Tracy’s death—and thus probably the entire Eakly outbreak, although there wasn’t anything conclusive that could be used to prove it—wasn’t an accident, but we’d had no real proof that it was anything more than some lunatic taking advantage of an opportunity to cause a little chaos. Now… the chances of two random acts of malicious sabotage happening to the same group of people were small to nil. They just got smaller when you stopped to consider that the man who connected both incidents was one of the current front-runners for the office of President of the United States of America. This was big. This was very, very big.
And it was also very, very bad, because whoever was behind it thought nothing of violating Raskin-Watts, and that meant they’d already crossed a line most people don’t even realize is there. Murder is one thing. This was terrorism.
“George? Georgia?” Shaun was shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes, squinting automatically before I realized that I was facing blessed dimness. Cocking an eyebrow, I turned toward him. He smiled, looking relieved. “Hey. You fell asleep. We’re here.”
“I was thinking,” I said primly, unbuckling my belt before admitting, “and maybe also dozing a little bit.”
“It’s no big. How’s the head?”
“Better.”
“Good. Rick’s already here, and your crew is driving him up a wall—he’s called three times to find out when we’d be on site.”
“Any word from Buffy?” I grabbed my bag and opened the door, sliding out of the car. The parking garage was cool and fairly full. Not surprising; when the senator booked our rooms, he put us in the best hotel in town. Five-star security doesn’t come cheap, but it comes with perks, like underground parking with motion sensors that keep constant track not only of who’s where, but how long they’ve been there and what they’re doing. Stay down here walking in circles for a while, and Shaun and I could get a whole new view of hotel security. That might have been appealing if we hadn’t already been working a story that was almost too hot to handle. I was starting to miss the days when toying with rich people’s security systems was enough to make our front page.
“She’s still at Chuck’s, but she says the servers are prepped to handle whatever load we ask them to and that the Fiction section won’t have a response for a day or two anyway; we should go ahead and run without her.” Shaun slammed his door, starting toward the elevators that would let us into the main hotel. “She seemed pretty shaken up. Said she’d probably sleep over there tonight.”