Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(95)
“Put a cow down with a .45 once, when the CASH knocker didn’t work.”
“You planning on a clean slaughter this time?”
“I dunno. Might get messy.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He told her. The scene that had been playing in his mind since Angela had laid that first revelation on his ears.
“I had a bad thought, Miss Mari,” he said. “Pure bad, and I can’t stop thinking it. What you just said, well, I think it even stronger now.”
“Tell me.”
“I keep seeing myself showing up at the inaugural shindig, and I find that fucker. Medina. I hit him bloody till he apologizes, to the country and to my family and to her, for what he did, and then I stand over him with your gun in my fist, and I tell him this part’s for my other girl, the one she never told nobody about, and I put a bullet in his head. That scene comes on, and fuck, it feels real. Feels necessary. You know what I’m saying?”
She let out a long exhalation, almost a whistle. “Lord, do I, and I feel it right along with you, believe me, but that’s your darkthing talking. You gotta shut that thing up.”
“I know.” Somehow he’d just known she’d get where he was coming from. A killer like her ought to. She called it a darkthing; he called it monster. Tomato, to-mah-to. Maybe it was like God, everybody had one but called it different things. Demons, short fuse, bad temper, darkthing, monster.
“Seriously,” Mari said. “I know Senator Neko’s about to get her little-dictator on, but not even she can save you if you go down this path. You assassinate the president of the unified continent at his inaugural ball in front of a zillion folks watching, that’s a problem.”
“I know.”
She was quiet for a bit, and he heard voices in the background. Maybe just one voice. Maybe just Heron. That was okay. He didn’t have a lot of secrets from his best friend and didn’t mind passing this latest along. Kellen had mostly expected Mari to rat him out anyhow. Those two were tight.
“So we’ve been scheming and have some plans in the works. For right now, you sit,” she said when she came back online. “You just settle and sit, and we’re on our way.”
There wasn’t a click to say when the connection died. He didn’t bother to tap the com. He sat, like he’d been told, in a void of snow, bleeding cold through his jeans and fire through his brain.
Yoink climbed up on his lap. He stroked her fur and, in the words of Zeke Medina, he got his shit together.
? ? ?
Because the universe has impeccable timing, he had just finished telling Angela about his long night by the road, petting Yoink and thinking, when back behind him, all the air on the mall moved. Swirled. At first Angela thought the disturbance might be her helicopter leaving, but that should have happened some minutes ago. And this flurry was bigger. A lot bigger.
Closer, too, right up in the face of the capitol building, forcing the security line to move the hell aside, Heron Farad’s spaceplane landed. VTOL jets blistered the fake grass, ears popped beneath its roar, and eyes blinked against its landing lights.
It was fucking beautiful.
Fez, Rafa, and the media mavens circled, must have gotten a megawatt shot of what came down the ramp. First Yoink, then Mari in a slinky orange dress, followed by Garrett and Chloe, who had done herself up as a cross between the Malawian pop goddess Diva Berenice and Dolly Parton and was doing a fantastic job approximating a real person, and last but sort of least, Damon Vallejo, whose hair had recovered all the swank.
Angela swallowed back a really uncomfortable wad of emotion. Her instinct was to cover it, fix it, but fuck that. No secrets, no lies—wasn’t that what she’d been telling herself? She was transmitting. Live and balls-out, just like Rafa said.
Fine, world, this is me. I feel things. I feel sad sometimes. I feel shitty lots of times. I get angry, I get wild. Tonight I feel…cared for. Backed up. Part of something. A vanguard of the storm.
Liberated. Loved. And I’m not sorry for any of it.
She skipped back down the stairs and approached them, thanked them. When she got to Mari, she whispered to the taller woman, “Is Dr. Farad all right? Back in the plane or taking care of Mama Adele, or…?”
Something shifted in Mari’s face. It was slight, but Angela knew faces, knew what bone-deep sadness looked like, even when somebody was trying very hard to stop it. “Nah, not him.”
“Your aunt Boo?” she asked. Impulsively she reached out and touched Mari’s upper arm and didn’t even cringe from the touch. It was okay.
Connection. Family. The opportunity to be a part of something that mattered. Kellen and his people had given her so much. And Angela, her government, everything she stood for, worked for, had only ever taken.
Well, she was going to balance out the scales tonight.
Mari pressed her lips together and swallowed. “We got a lot to talk about, but right now, I’m supposed to tell you that Chloe’s completed your checklist, and my daddy’s been cooking up a little extra something with Dan-Dan.”
Angela leaned forward, and Mari filled her in. Just two sentences, but holy shit. Angela was going to have to hug that crazy little genius fucker, Vallejo.
Yoink trotted down the ramp just as Mari was done laying down the details. The wee cinnamon-striped kitty slipped past the rest of them because she had to be first. As she approached Angela, she peered up, laid one ear back, and strutted onward, leading the way.