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“Right!” Grace says proudly. “And I even know who the shooter was—but like my mama always said, tellin’ all you know just gets your head empty. Anyways, I thought on it and saw no need to tell.”
Lev feels himself really warming to Grace for the first time. “I figured it out too. And I agree with you. No one needs to know.” But, thinks Lev, maybe there are things Grace needs to know. He thinks about the situation with Starkey and realizes that if Grace is the strategist she appears to be, perhaps the challenge should be put to her. “I have a train for you to run through Grand Central Station,” he says.
“Send it on through.”
“The question is: How do you win a three-sided war?”
Grace frowns as she considers it. “That’s a tough one. I’ll think on it and give you an answer.” Then she crosses her arms. “ ’Course I can’t give you an answer if you don’t come with us, can I?”
Lev offers her an apologetic smile. “Then don’t give the answer to me. Give it to Connor.”
49 • Connor
Holding tightly to Cam’s arm, Connor escorts him down the stairs. Una is in the back room of her shop, building a new guitar, escaping into her work.
“You sent him up there without warning any of us!”
Una looks up from her work with only mild interest, as if, in her mind, they’ve already left. “I sent him to the bathroom. It’s not like he was going to escape.”
Connor doesn’t bother to explain his anger. It’s a waste of his breath. He continues down to the basement with Cam, who doesn’t resist.
“So,” says Cam, with irritating nonchalance. “Someone named Sonia in Akron.”
Connor lets him loose. “We could have the Arápache lock you up as an enemy of the tribe, and you’ll rot in a tribal jail for the rest of your miserable life.”
“Maybe,” says Cam, “but not without a trial—and everything I tell them will become a matter of public record.”
Connor turns away from him, clenching his fists, growling in utter frustration—then turns back and finds Roland’s hand swinging, connecting with Cam’s jaw. Cam is knocked down, falling over a rickety wooden chair, and Connor prepares to hit him again. But then he looks at the arm. He holds eye contact with the shark. This might be satisfying, but it’s not helping the situation. If he lets Roland’s muscle memory rule that arm, then Connor loses more than just his temper. In a sense he loses a part of his soul.
“Stop,” he tells the shark. Reluctantly, the muscles of Roland’s fist relax. Cam is the prisoner here, not Connor. He has to remind himself that no matter how compromised he feels, he still has the upper hand in the situation. He reaches down, rights the chair, and backs away. “Take a seat,” he tells Cam, folding his anger back in on itself.
Cam gets up off the dusty ground and pulls himself into the chair, rubbing his jaw. “That grafted arm of yours has its own set of talents, doesn’t it? And is that someone else’s eye, too? That puts you two steps closer to being just like me.”
Connor knows Cam is trying to goad him into losing control again, but Connor won’t let it happen. He brings the focus back to the matter at hand.
“You have nothing but a name and a city,” Connor says, with relative calm. “It’s more than I want you to know, but even if you bring it back to the people who made you, it won’t make a difference. And Sonia’s just a code name, anyway.”
“A code name, huh?”
“Of course.” Connor shrugs it off like it’s nothing. “You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to say a real name when anyone could hear.”
Cam gives him a Cheshire smile. “Like a rug,” he says. “I believe there’s a brain bit in my right frontal lobe that’s a BS detector, and it’s pinging in the red.”
“Believe what you want,” Connor says with no choice but to stick to his story. “Una will keep you locked in this basement as long as she feels like it, and when she lets you go—if she lets you go—you can tell Proactive Citizenry whatever you want; they still won’t find us.”
“Why are you so convinced I’ll crawl back to them? I already told you, I hate them just as much as you do.”
“Do you expect me to believe you’d bite the hand that made you?” says Connor. “Yes, maybe you’d do it for Risa, but not for me. The way I see it, you’ll go to them, and they’ll take you back with open arms. The prodigal son returns.”
And then Cam asks a question that will linger in Connor’s mind for a long, long time. “Would you ever go back to the people who wanted to unwind you?”
The question throws Connor for a loop. “Wh—what has that got to do with anything?”
“Being rewound was a crime every bit as heinous as unwinding,” Cam tells him. “I can’t change the fact that I’m here, but I owe nothing to the people who rewound me. I would uncreate my creators if I could. I was hoping Risa would help me do that. But in her absence, it looks like I’ll have to rely on you.”
Although Connor doesn’t trust him, there’s a deep and indelible bruise to his words. His pain is real. His desire to bring down his creators is real.
“Prove it,” Connor says. “Make me believe you want to tear them down as much as I do.”
