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“Yes.”
“Why doyouget to choose what’s good?”
He thought about it. The choke chain twisted slightly when he swallowed, pinched the skin of his neck. It took him awhile to find words not cloyed with cliché.
“There’s no getting around suffering,” he said. “But if someone’s being terrorized at the hands of another person, that’s something different. Not playing victim, not claiming to suffer on behalf of someone else, not being a martyr to themselves. Not suffering over ideas or ideals or some metaphysical bullshit. When it’s too painful for any of that. When you see it in their eyes. Bone-deepsuffering.” His voice had intensified, and he took a moment to back down what he felt rising in his chest. “Suffering for no better reason than that someone else wants them to. Then it doesn’t matter where they’re from or the color of their skin or who they want to fuck or marry or pray to or vote for. They’re in pain. And trying to alleviate that? Is the closest thing to good I’ve found.”
That was also why he let his clients choose the next person to pass his covert phone number on to. Because they understood suffering. They could see it, know when it was real.
It was the most he’d ever spoken at once.
Ever.
Naomi hadn’t moved. Her attention was locked on him so intently that were it not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, she could have been a paused image on a screen.
She asked, “Then you kill for them?”
He watched her face closely, no excessive use of the forehead muscles to indicate insincerity. No, he trusted her. Which meant they could honestly disagree on what they disagreed about.
“Then I escalate the situation as far as it needs to go,” he said. “That’s what my adversaries aren’t counting on.”
“Someone who will escalate?”
The air was cool, and his throat still felt raw, coated with chemical aftertaste. He wet his lips. “Someone who can escalate higher than they can.”
“You’ve been pretty effective.”
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you go out into the world not feeling like you deserve anything from it.”
A muffled sound of amusement escaped her. “That should bemymotto.”
He lowered his eyes to indicate the restraint chair he was captive to. “You’ve been pretty effective, too.”
“We identified you heading into the medical center a few months ago,” she said. “A security camera in the parking garage. Your face was blurred, but we got gait recognition.”
That would’ve been when he’d arrived to see Mia into her surgery. Medical confidentiality issues meant scant cameras inside the private areas of the hospital, so they wouldn’t have been able to chart his course and connect him to her—a small blessing. He wondered at the scale of NSA surveillance they must’ve been running across the country in order to find him in one parking garage at the western edge of the nation.
“We’ve been staking it out since. The manpower alone.” Naomi shook her head. “You can’t begin to imagine what it’s taken to catch you.”
“You could’ve just asked nicely.”
“I did.” Her smile was melancholy, even doleful. “In the end.”
A chime jarred them from the moment. Naomi withdrew a Boeing Black smartphone from her pocket. A quick glance at the incoming message, and then she turned away from Evan, picked up a comically tiny remote control hidden behind the monitor, clicked it, and stood back.
The encryption code scrolled across the screen.
A moment later the monitor went black.
Then blinked to life again.
Evan found himself face-to-face with the president of the United States.
10
A Low-Rent Prometheus
A former constitutional lawyer, President Victoria Donahue-Carr dressed the part of Intrepid World Leader. A midnight-blue pantsuit, the blazer enhancing the lines of her shoulders. Her posture was erect but slightly forward-leaning, hands clasped on the blotter of the Resolute desk. Flags standing sentinel at either side, Old Glory and the presidential coat of arms against a backdrop the same color as her suit. Heavy maroon curtains encroached on the trio of tall windows facing the South Lawn. Nothing else within the scope of the camera recording her.
