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Jones shakes his head. “We’ll come back here tonight before we drop you off at Wallingford. Let you sleep off the blowback and wash off that paint.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He grunts.
All of that sounds possible. I might really be coming back to this room, Yulikova and Jones might really be federal agents trying to figure out how to deal with a kid whose criminal past and valuable skill make him both an asset and a liability. They might really not be planning on double-crossing me.
Time to go all in, one way or the other. Time to decide what I want to believe.
You pays your money and you takes your chance.
“Okay,” I say, sighing. “Give me the papers.” I take the pen out of my hoodie and sign on the dotted line, with a flourish.
Agent Jones’s eyebrows go up. I grin.
Yulikova walks over and looks at the papers, tracing one gloved finger just under my name. She puts the other hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to take good care of you, Cassel. I promise. Welcome to the Licensed Minority Division.”
Promises, promises. I put away the pen. Now that the final decision is made, I feel better. Lighter. The burden of it is removed from my shoulders.
We head out. In the elevator I ask, “Where’s Agent Brennan?”
“Already there,” is Jones’s response. “Setting things up for us.”
We cut through the lobby and go out to the car. When I get in, I make sure to take the same side that I rode in on the way here. As I fumble with my seat belt, I grab my cell phone out of the side well in the door and shove it into my pocket.
“You want to stop for a breakfast burrito or something?” Jones asks.
Last meal. I think it but don’t say the words aloud.
“Not hungry,” I say.
I look out the tinted window at the highway and silently go over all the things I am going to have to do once we arrive at the press conference. I list them all to myself and then list them all again.
“It’s going to be over soon,” Yulikova says.
That’s true. It’s all going to be over soon.
* * *
They let me out into the memorial park by myself. I squint against the bright sunlight. I keep my head down as I pass through security, holding up my ID tag. A woman with a clipboard tells me that there’s a courtesy table with coffee and doughnuts for volunteers.
There is a big stage with a blue curtain covering the back. Someone is rigging a mic up to an impressive-looking lectern with the seal of New Jersey on it. A roped VIP section is being set up to one side of the press pit. A couple other people are stacking speakers under the stage, which is fronted by a shorter curtain, this one white.
Behind that is the area where the trailers are, arranged in a semicircle around several tables where volunteers arrange stacks of leaflets, signage, and T-shirts. Then there’s the far table, with the food on it. People are milling around, talking and laughing. Most of them are wearing headsets like mine.
Yulikova did her homework. The layout is just like the map. I pass by the trailer that Governor Patton’s supposed to use and head into the one that Yulikova marked for me. Inside is a gray sofa, a dressing table, a small bathroom, and a television mounted high on the wall, tuned to a news channel that’s promising a live broadcast of the speech. Two newscasters are talking to each other. Below them is the closed-captioning of what they’re saying, slightly off and on a delay, based on my limited lipreading skills.
I check my phone. It’s seven forty in the morning. Patton’s speech isn’t until nine. I have a little time.
I depress the flimsy lock on the doorknob, then rattle the door a little. It seems to hold, but I don’t trust the lock. I could probably pick it blindfolded.
There’s a crackle in the headphones, and then Agent Brennan’s voice. “Cassel? Are you in?”
“Yeah, everything’s perfect here,” I say into the mouthpiece. “Never better. How about you?”
She laughs. “Don’t get cocky, kid.”
“Duly noted. I guess I just watch TV and wait.”
