Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(9)
She’d scratched letters onto the palm, or she’d planted them there on purpose, a stain that would erase itself in moments but for right now shone stark against the black fabric. A secret message just for him.
He knew exactly what it meant. Emotion clogged his throat, but he swallowed past it. Looked again at her hand, her fathomless eyes, the soft set of her mouth as she waved goodbye.
He thought of her other goodbyes, and the last one.
After a long while standing there in the silent sphere, he erased the session, trapping it and her message in his memory:
worthdarkwords13
Chapter 2
Angela was not okay after that meeting. She was as un-okay as she had been in…well, a long time. Late that night, on the edge between wakefulness and rest, when her body was already paralyzed but her brain was on fire, thoughts slammed her like a hurricane. Even an injector push of sleeping chems, delivered without judgment by mech-Daniel, didn’t settle her.
Fuck it. She gave in and sloshed to the hotel galley kitchenette. Over a cup of something vaguely coffee-like, she scanned her message feed. The whole world mourned along with her, proclaimed Ursula Dioda, the show of sympathy underscored by a beehive-coiffed chatbot reaching out its arms in the universal gesture for “virtual hug.”
But the gossip wasn’t even close to done. In the next breath, right after noting how dignified Angela had been in her interview with Rafa, Ursula splashed a picture of Angela across the display and oozed, “Look at that face. So bleak! And just take a pull on her emo feed. Oh my, I’ve got goose bumps. See? That’s leadership, people. You’re looking at the future of our great confederation.”
Angela might need to have a chat with Ursula in the near future.
So far, no one had come right out and said “Angela Neko for president,” but the implication was clear. The voting public fed on emotional sincerity, or the perception thereof, and for whatever reason, they believed she had it. They’d petition for recall of the president and an emergency vote on a new leader if she wasn’t careful.
Flattering as such a groundswell might be, Angela wasn’t ready to oust her mentor. Zeke had always helped her, looked after her. Hopscotching over him would stink of betrayal.
She tapped the smartsurface by the coffee station, brought up a message app, and requested a follow-up interview with Rafa. The chances of him refusing to have her on his channel twice in one week were nil. She would be booked by morning.
And she knew exactly what she would tell him. She caught her reflection in the stainless-steel cabinetry and practiced her earnest face. “Daniel? Dead? Who would make up such a horrible lie?”
He’d buy it. They would all buy it. Because she told them to. And Mari Vallejo, that demon spawn freak of science, would go free.
Just as Angela had promised Kellen.
Which was the other reason she couldn’t sleep.
The holo hadn’t been full-sensory, and that was a mercy. She could not have endured being physically in the same room as him, not without ripping his clothes off. Over the years she’d half convinced herself that all the power she’d ascribed to him back when they were teens was just half-remembered hormones. He had never answered any of her messages in the darknet, not one. He’d cut her loose so easily back then, she must have imagined what they had was more than the reality. But seeing him tonight…if anything, her memory had underserved him.
He was still too good to be true.
Except not. Not good anymore. Somehow, gentle, pacifistic Kellen was hooked in to a group of freelance thieves and murderers. Plus, he’d developed a vicious streak of his own, implying that she was nothing more than a professional liar. Implying their relationship had been mostly physical. That was not the Kellen she remembered. What had those dungnuts done to him down in Texas? She should have never…
No, no, no, she couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. Not right now. Back up, girl. Reset. You were thinking about the game, the pieces. The whole world, and you are in control. Focus.
She sucked in a breath and chased it with coffee so hot it singed her esophagus.
There. Better.
Angela had been startled to learn that Damon Vallejo’s daughter had pulled the trigger on Daniel, but now she took the time to process that nibblet of info. Had somebody specifically turned Mari on to that contract? All the pieces just fit up against each other too seamlessly, which, in her experience, meant somebody had meddled.
Had Vallejo himself gotten involved? What message was using that particular killer meant to send? And had that message been meant for her or somebody else in Daniel’s sphere?
Precious few people knew of her link to Vallejo, that he had built the mech-clone imposter she used in place of Daniel. Zeke knew. Vallejo knew. Daniel had known.
Two years ago, at a particularly low point in her marriage, she had left Daniel. Her political career had been in a tricky spot barely a month from election day, and instead of creating a wobble in her senatorial campaign, a scandal, Zeke had acquired the mech-clone from Vallejo and had given it to her as a gift. A priceless one, as it turned out.
Meaning Angela owed people. Owed them too much. Debt, like guilt, threatened to squash her pretty much every second of her life, so she tried not to think about it. Except when something popped up like this: Daniel murdered by Vallejo’s professional-assassin progeny.
Yeah, that didn’t stink of too much coincidence.