2024-01-22 23:27:02
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310 One Of My Own
Nobody answered."I'll help you," Victor said. "I am the man who declared this city a military zone and made it stick. I am the man who cancelled the election and then won the one they forced on me anyway.""Every officer on your lawn answers to me. Every licence in Springfield is signed by me. Every judge in this district sits at my pleasure, and there is not one person in this country who will pick up a phone for any of you."He let that settle."And you drugged one of mine."Krast broke first. He went for the back door, shoving through the crowd, made it four steps before Maverick Grimes caught him by the collar and put him face down on the carpet with one hand."The clubs are gone," Victor said, not bothering to look. "All four. Padlocked forty minutes ago, before I got out of the car. Everything in your accounts belongs to the city as of tonight, and everything you own is being catalogued while we stand here."Krast made a noise into the carpet."You will not be charged. Charges
309 Do You Know Who She Is
For three full seconds, nobody said anything.Then Marlene made a small choking sound and grabbed the woman beside her."That's him," she whispered. "That's the Mayor. That's Victor Cromwell."The name went through the hallway like a current. Phones came down. Someone at the back stood off the sofa.Brody was still holding the door handle. His mouth opened and closed twice before anything came out."Mayor General. Sir. Mr Cromwell. Sir."He stepped back so fast he trod on his brother's foot."Come in, please. God, what an honour. What an absolute honour." He flapped his hand at the room. "Move, all of you. Clara! The good chair. Get the man a drink."Clara came forward smoothing her dress, wearing a smile Kate had never once seen aimed at her."Mr Cromwell, forgive the mess, we've had a party, we weren't expecting anyone." Her voice climbed half an octave. "Can I get you something? Tea? There's wine open. Brody, take his coat.""Sit down, sir, please.""There's food left, if you're hu
308 Fifty Thousand Dollars
The stairs creaked under his weight. He climbed slowly, breathing through his mouth. Below, the party went on—somebody laughing too hard in the kitchen. Nobody looked up. Nobody was going to.The box room was dark except for the streetlight through a gap in the curtain. Kate lay on top of the covers, one arm flung out, her boots still on.Krast shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed. The frame groaned. He put his hand on her leg."You and me are going to get along," he said. "You'll see."His hand moved up.Kate's eyes opened.What Clara put in the glass would have flattened most women twice her size. But Kate had spent a year in the country's hardest training, and her body was already burning through the fog.She surfaced to the sound of the door, the smell reaching her a half second before the hand—cologne over sweat and whiskey.Krast never understood it. One moment leaning over her. The next, something drove into his stomach like a car door, the air left him in a wet bark, a
307 A Good Match
The first thing Kate noticed about Dorian Krast was the smell: cologne laid thick over stale sweat and last night's whiskey.He was in his forties, balding, with a belly straining a purple shirt, and his pink-rimmed eyes travelled the length of her body twice before he'd crossed the carpet."Well," Krast said. "They told me she was fit. They didn't say she was fit like that."The room laughed as though something clever had happened. Brody clapped his shoulder and told him to take the good chair."Dorian runs the Velvet Room," Brody announced, like a man delivering excellent news. "And three others out on the strip. Own premises, all of them. Cash business."The aunts made appreciative noises. Marlene said it was so nice to see a young man doing well for himself, and nobody pointed out he was closer to Brody's age than Kate's.Kate set her tray down. "Can I ask what's happening here?""What's happening," Clara said pleasantly, "is that Dorian came all the way out here on a Saturday. So
306 Coming Home
A year is a long time in a city that has decided to become something else.Fort Cromwell stood finished now, all forty-one floors, a black monolith at the heart of Springfield with its own power grid and water and a shadow that fell across four city blocks at sunset.The scar where four decks had burned was rebuilt so seamlessly tourists took photographs in front of it. The official record still said terrorists. No one had contradicted it.Crime had collapsed. Military police walked every district in pairs, and districts that once belonged to gangs now belonged to factory shifts, grocery runs, children walking to school alone.Foreign delegations came monthly to study the model. The national press had stopped using the word dictator around the eighth straight month of falling murder rates.And on the underpass wall on Ninth Street, forty feet long and repainted every time the cleaning crews got to it, the Raven and Roadkill stood back to back in spray paint, surrounded by a hand-lette
305 What She Doesn't Know
Victor made it back up to the terrace level as the eastern sky began to grey.Somewhere in the city below, the sirens were finally starting—fire crews converging on four gutted decks of the mayor's own tower, a story that would need writing before the morning bulletins.Victor leaned against a scorched column and closed his eyes.He let himself have exactly ten seconds of feeling every single one of his years.Then he heard the footsteps behind him. Uneven. Dragging. A young woman's breath, hitching around what sounded like at least two cracked ribs."Sir?"Victor opened his eyes.***Kate Harper came up the terrace steps holding her left arm against her ribs like something borrowed, and stopped dead when she saw him."God," she said. "You look like absolute shit."It came out before she could stop it—no *sir*, no protocol, nothing but the flat honesty of a girl who had spent the night being thrown through a building and had run out of the energy required for manners.Her face caught
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