Page 50 of Fire
Yet she, more than anyone, knew that words didn’t fucking matter unless they were said at the right time, in the right way, to the right people, with the right support. Alice didn’t have any of that.
She could get it, though. Which meant she had to go back.
* * *
Aside from buildinga career in PR for the ASC, being part of a hunting family meant that Alice had become very good at lying. Despite those years of experience at the fine art of deception, Alice was terrified that Jonah would be able to tell, simply by looking at her, what she knew, the revulsion she felt seeing him.
Even though it seemed that her disillusionment shone like a spotlight from every fiber of her being, the first time she saw Jonah after returning to work, he just smiled at her and handed her a briefing. “The commissioner might be an issue,” he said. “But the senator won’t be a problem. He’s staunchly on our side.”
She forced a smile on her face. “Good to know, sir. Thank you.”
Jonah frowned. “Are you feeling well, Alice? I know you had some... health issues before you went to Florida.”
She kept the smile even and free of tension. “That wasn’t nearly as much of an issue as my contact thought it was. And the other thing was... just a little too much fun, sir, nothing more serious.”
“Work hard, play hard, I suppose.” He smiled. “Dixons tend to do both to somewhat unhealthy extremes, but you’ve always managed to tread the middle path. Let me know if you need more support for the dust-up with Allens and Menendez. I will need that report by Tuesday.”
“Yes, sir.” Alice’s voice remained level.
She went to her office, a short hallway from a man who had methodically tortured a child, and shook for a minute. Then she made her hands still, her breathing steady, and her mind stop spinning. She had work to do.
In the months that followed, Alice did her job of maintaining good public relations for the ASC while secretly digging to the rotten heart of the organization. Because controlling public relations meant knowing the intimate details of the shit in danger of hitting the fan, she had more access to files than most in her department.
She found financial records, torture tapes, monster death rates inside Freak Camp, and learned, reading between the lines, of several horrifying cases of non-freak civilians who ended up within the walls of FREACS and never left them again. Worst were the clinical reports of experiments done on the monsters within the camp. Those made the bile rise in her throat and gave her nightmares to match the ones caused by the original video.
She found Jonah’s stash of personal blackmail tapes and learned why the senior senator from Montana was so reliable in his support of ASC initiatives.
Somewhere in her hunt for information, she realized that the gaunt boy seen over and over in the 1999 videos was Jake Hawthorne’s monster.
Alice made obsessive copies of documents, video recordings, names, dates, and financials. It was damning enough, if she could ever get it in front of the right eyes (and maybe during the next election year). She worked tirelessly on building the trap that would burn everything to the ground.
Then the Cleveland massacre story broke.
* * *
Five monthslater
On C-SPAN, Congress was filibustering a bill to close Freak Camp, and Tobias could not look away.
He stood with his arms folded in their motel room lined with ratty, flower-patterned wallpaper, watching each man and woman stand up in the congressional chamber to declare their stance, some passionately and some in a dry, rehearsed cadence in line with every speech they’d ever made.
Jake, Tobias knew, couldn’t stand “those slick-suited motherfuckers,” but Tobias needed to see this. It was the culmination of months of protest, of formal denunciations, of pledges of accountability, evenjustice. Tobias’s breath caught at times as he saw the momentous stakes before them, the potential for change in the laws he had always known to govern the universe.
But naturally, nothing about the process was quick. Tobias was good at being patient. Jake, on the other hand. . .
“Hey, tiger, let’s go for a run.”
Tobias glanced at Jake. “You go.”
Jake blew out his breath. “You know, you’re gonna turn into a motel lamp if you stand there long enough. How many hours have they been at this?”
Tobias checked the time, added the hours in his head. “Nearly twelve.”
“How much longer do you think they’ll keep going?”
Tobias shrugged. “Maybe twelve more? They’re tag-teaming.” From all he’d read, the bill was unlikely to pass. This filibuster was led by the national security hawks deep in the ASC’s pocket, who didn’t want the bill to even reach the floor for a vote. He still needed to hear every argument, both those for and against shutting down Freak Camp. He needed to see what points had an impact, which ones could sway the vote.
“So, you can catch up later on whatever you miss in the next hour. Come on, Tobias. Catch some rays with me.”
