Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (43 page)

“We fought,” I said honestly. “I mean, after you and Janus took off.” She blanched a little at the use of her ex’s name. “It was a steady stream of people leaving. Scott was … one of the first, but he didn’t leave town or anything. Just … didn’t want to be in the meta policing business anymore, he said. I think the war … what we had to do … I mean, you remember. He was waffling toward the end anyway, and he pulled it together for the fight with Sovereign, because of what it meant to him personally, but …”

“He was out,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said. “But he was … so supportive of me continuing … at first. We were still together even though he quit the job, and I thought … we could be apart at work like everybody else and together … well, you know. But it didn’t work that way.

“Once everyone left, it was down to me and Reed to do it all.” I was leaning forward, and I couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds at a time. “And we did, but … it meant a lot of late nights. A lot of calls to go around the country, even out of the country … and Scott’s … understanding … faded pretty quickly. He was working normal hours with his dad’s company, and I was … not.”

Kat nodded her head. “Your job became your life.”

“It took over everything,” I said, like I was doing my very own confessional-booth interview. “All my time. All my attention. Even when I was with him, I was pondering cases.” I blushed. “I’m not a good investigator, Kat. I’m a good ass-beater. It’s probably why I couldn’t figure out the angle behind Redbeard and Brock’s plan without someone anonymously tipping us off.” I frowned, that particular mystery prickling at me. “But I have to investigate for the job, and it … well, it takes time. It takes a lot of … mental energy, seeing the things we see, dealing with the people we deal with. It burns the humanity out of you, dealing with the worst our kind has to offer. I was thinking about work constantly.”

“He resented it,” she said.

“Boy, did he,” I said.

“He’s the jealous type,” she said, sounding almost apologetic about it. “I knew that from how he acted when I couldn’t remember him.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Well. It all came to a head the night I blew the interview with Gail Roth.”

“No,” she said, putting her hand up to her chest. She looked stunned in just the right way, and if she was acting, she’d upped her game.

I nodded. “It exploded like Redbeard had put a bomb in it. I made myself look stupid in front of the whole country, and that night—that very night—we had our biggest argument ever.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “we’d been having them for a while, this progressively escalating series of problems. We’d start the fight over stupid little things and soon enough it’d double back to the same thing as always—I wasn’t there for him, ever.” I rubbed my forehead. “Of course I’d throw right back that he wasn’t there for me, ever, on the job, when I actually needed him, and … that didn’t really help.

“‘It’s like you don’t even care anymore,’ he said.” I stared blankly ahead. “He accused me of just … giving it all to the job. Of choosing it over him, every time. And … I did,” I said, nodding along with my confession. “Every time. Because there was no one else to do it, I said.” I looked right at her. “I’m supposed to be this super powerful person, but sometimes … when I watch someone like Redbeard kill people and I can’t do anything about it … I realize how powerless I really am in this world.” My voice sounded empty and haunted, even to me. “How could I walk away from that? Knowing what it might cost in lives? Knowing that what happened in LA, if left to someone else other than me, might have ended with that whole neighborhood getting blown sky high? How many people do you think would have died if that had happened?”

“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.”

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.