“He yelled at me, telling me that now someone would come up to see what was happening. He wanted to stop being used. He wanted to know what he was being used for. He said he wanted to go home.”

Hubbard paused again.

“Keep going,” Vann said. “If you won’t say it, Bell will. It’s all coming out, Hubbard.”

“I laughed at him,” Hubbard said. “I knew Sam was coming to link to him and then that would be the end of it. So I told him that what he was being used for was to make me very rich. He wanted to know if he’d ever been made to hurt people. I told him that he didn’t remember it anyway so he shouldn’t worry about it.

“Then he said to me, ‘I know you’re a bad man and I know you won’t let me go home so now I’m going to make trouble for you.’

“And then he cut his throat.”

May and Janis stared at Hubbard stonily. I remembered Klah Redhouse telling me how they tried not to show too much grief.

“I’m sorry—” Hubbard said, looking at May and Janis.

“Don’t you dare,” Janis spat. “You’re not sorry Johnny is dead. You were going to kill someone today. You’re sorry you got caught. But you did get caught. You got caught because Johnny stopped you from getting away with what you were doing. He made trouble for you, just like he said. My brother was slow but he could figure things out if he took enough time. He figured you out. And now look at you. My brother is ten of you.”

Janis helped May up out of the chair. The two of them left the room without looking back.

“You saw him cut his throat, but then you panicked, didn’t you,” Vann said, after they left. “You actually left Bell’s body for at least a couple of minutes.”

“Yes,” Hubbard said. “I left but Sam told me to go back in. He said if Bell told anyone about his experience that they would figure out what we had done, and sooner or later it would come back to us. I had to stay with Bell until the thing was done.” He snorted. “He said he’d come up with a cover story that would last through Saturday, and that would be long enough. For all the good it did either of us.”

“You were gone just long enough for Bell to give us a clue,” Vann said. “He was confused just enough by what was happening to let us know something was seriously wrong. Thanks for that.”

Hubbard smirked ruefully and looked up at Vann. “Now what,” he said.

“Now it’s time for you to go get arrested for real, Mr. Hubbard,” Vann said. “Go back to your body. Do it now.”

“You need to swap out the patch,” Hubbard said.

“About that,” Tony said.

“What about it?” Hubbard asked.

“We lied to you,” Vann said. “There was no patch.”

“There was a general patch that closed the interpolator back door,” Tony said. “That was true. So if you backed out you wouldn’t have been able to come back in.”

“But we knew you wouldn’t do that,” Vann said. “So we decided to press our luck.”

“There was no script-flipper either,” Hubbard said.

“If we had that, we would have led with that,” I said. “And then we would have made you watch your company burn.”

“Now, go, Hubbard,” Vann said. “My colleagues are waiting for you. You’ve got a lot to answer for.”

Hubbard left, which was not noticeable.

Nicholas Bell surfacing was. He shook himself, almost knocking over his chair, and sucked in his breath. “Jesus,” he said.

“Nicholas Bell,” Vann said.

“Yes,” Bell said. “Yes. It’s me.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vann said.

“Hold still,” I said, gently putting a hand on his shoulder. “I need to get you out of these cuffs.” I undid him. He shook out his arms and rubbed his wrists.

“Mr. Bell,” Vann said.

“Yes,” he said.

“What Hubbard said about Johnny Sani,” Vann asked.

Bell nodded. “It was true,” he said.

“I’m sorry you had to watch that,” Vann said.

Bell laughed, shakily. “It’s been a long week,” he said.

“Yes,” Vann said. “That it has.”

“I hate to say this,” I said, to Bell. “But we need to have you answer some questions. We need you to tell us everything you saw or heard while Hubbard had control of your body.”

“Trust me, I intend to tell you everything I know about that son of a bitch,” Bell said. “But there’s something I really would like to do before I do that. If I can. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Vann said. “Tell us what you would like to do.”

“I’d really like to see my sister now,” Bell said.

Chapter Twenty-five

VANN POINTED AT the stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where the speakers for the Haden march stood. “Your father looks pretty good up there,” she said, nodding toward Dad, standing next to President Becenti and Cassandra Bell, held in a portable cradle.

“He looks like an ant,” I said. “Which for my father is pretty impressive.”

“We could get closer to the stage if you want,” she said. “The rumor is, you know a guy.”

“I do,” I said. “But I think we’re fine where we are.”

Vann and I stood at the periphery of the crowd, far down the Mall from the stage and the speeches.

“No riots,” Vann said. “I wouldn’t have put money on that yesterday morning.”

“I think the Hubbard thing took the air out of those sails,” I said. News of Hubbard’s and Schwartz’s arrests was significant enough to escape the news dead zone of a late Saturday afternoon. We made sure that everyone had as much information as they wanted on the details. Saturday night in D.C. was no more filled with incident than most Saturday nights. Sunday was Sunday.

“We dodged a bullet,” Vann said, agreeing. “In a general sense. You took several.”

“Yes,” I said. “If I have learned anything this week, it’s to invest in economy threeps. I can’t afford this sort of attrition.”

“Yes, you can,” Vann said.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I can. But I don’t want to.”

We walked the Mall, her in her sling and me in a borrowed threep. She glanced back toward the stage. “You could have been up there,” she said. “Standing there with your father. You’re still famous enough that you could have given his deal with the Navajo even more credibility.”

“No,” I said. “Dad’s got credibility to burn, even after this week. And I don’t want that life anymore. There’s a reason I’m an FBI agent, Vann. I want to be useful for something else other than as a poster child.”

“The Hadens could still use a poster child,” Vann said. “Abrams-Kettering still takes effect at midnight. Things are going to get harder from here. A lot harder.”

“Someone else can do that job,” I said. “I think I’m better at doing this job.”

“You are,” Vann said. “At least this week you were.”

“They’re not all like this, right?” I said. “The weeks, I mean.”

“Would it be so bad if they were?” Vann asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It would.”

“I did say I was going to ask a lot of you,” Vann said. “On that first day. You remember.”

“I remember,” I said. “I’m not going to lie to you. I kind of just thought you were trying to scare me.”

Vann smiled and patted my shoulder. “Relax, Shane,” she said. “It gets better from here.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“Excuse me,” someone said. We looked over and there was a threep, standing with a few other people. It pointed to Vann. “You’re that FBI agent. The one that arrested Lucas Hubbard.”

“Yes,” Vann said. “One of them.”

“How cool!” the threep said, and then motioned at the group. “Would you mind? If we got a picture?”

“No,” Vann said. “Be happy to.”

“Awesome,” the threep said. Then it and the group began to crowd around Vann. One of them handed me a camera.

“Would you mind?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “Everybody crowd in.” They crowded in.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you,” Vann said.

“Just a little,” I said. “Now. Everyone say ‘cheese.’”

Acknowledgments

As always, I think it’s important to acknowledge the people behind the scenes at my publisher, Tor Books, who make such an effort to getting my books to you. This time around, these include Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor; Miriam Weinberg, his assistant; Irene Gallo, art director; Peter Lutjen, cover designer; Heather Saunders, interior designer; and Christina MacDonald, copy editor. Also Alexis Saarela, my publicist, and of course Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor.