“Blackmail.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Take a couple weeks to think about it. I’m a patient man.”
He reached forward and flicked a finger across the car’s control panel and—so smoothly it was almost imperceptible, we accelerated, the landscape bleeding past in a blur of color. Even at this speed, the car cornered tightly, veering back onto the highway, flying toward home.
We were running out of time, and he hadn’t told me the one thing I needed to know. I hated to ask him for anything. “So if you’re tracking us, you must know,” I said, so quietly he had to tip his head toward me to catch the words. “You know who else was at the corp-town. Who did it.”
“Who killed all those people, you mean? Who set you up?”
Assuming it wasn’t you, I thought. “If you know, how can you just… do nothing?”
Ben smiled thinly. “I know you were there, and I’m doing nothing about that,” he said.
“It’s not the same.”
“I already told you,” he said irritably. It was the first real emotion I’d seen from him the whole trip. At least, I assumed it was real. “It’s my job to protect you. All of you.”
“Then what the hell is the point of the tracking?” I countered. “You said it was to keep us out of trouble—what, that doesn’t include trying to kill hundreds of people?”
“You don’t think I’d do something if I could?” he shouted—then abruptly fell silent.
“Then do it,” I hissed. After everything I’d seen the last few days, I didn’t have any sympathy left. Certainly not for him.
He didn’t respond.
“You don’t know who it is, do you?” I said suddenly. Just guessing—but I saw on his face it was true. “Your precious spy gear crapped out on you.”
“No technology is foolproof,” he said steadily. “You’d do well to remember that.”
I didn’t bother to answer. He no longer had anything I needed. We drove the rest of the way in silence.
“A pleasure, as always,” Ben said as the car stopped at the southern boundary of Quinn’s estate. He reached across me to open the door. I jerked away just before his arm could brush my chest.
I got out of the car, resisting the temptation to slam the door on his fingertips.
“And remember, Lia.” He scratched the back of his head, letting his fingers rest on the spot where his skull met his neck, the spot where, somewhere inside my own head, a microscopic GPS chip was broadcasting my location to his bosses. And to my father. “We’ll be watching.”
I didn’t want to go back to the house. I wanted to stay there, in the green empty, the concrete strip of road to my left and the estate grounds to my right. I wanted to pretend that I was stranded on the side of the road, come from nowhere, with nowhere to go. No one waiting for me. No one watching me.
I hadn’t been this free since before the corp-town attack—free to wade through the overgrown grass, find the rambling path that would take me to the house, or to turn in the opposite direction, to the road, and start walking. Toward Lia Kahn’s home, Lia Kahn’s father, Lia Kahn’s past.
Or just walking toward nothing. Filling myself up with nothing, an emptiness that could blot out the faces of the dead, call-me-Ben’s voice, my father’s hands on my shoulders, his lips brushing against my hair.
I belong here, I thought, trying to convince myself to climb the grassy slope. I belong with them.
Jude was up there. Jude, who might have set all this in motion. And when I got to the house, he was waiting for me.
“Took you long enough,” he said, leaning against the doorframe of the main entrance. Even Jude looked small beside the columns of marble and steel.
“I’m fine, Jude,” I said with a sneer, trying to gauge something from his expression. But there was no guilt, no shame, only judgment. I couldn’t have been killed, so why was I making such a fuss? “Thanks so much for your concern.”
“They’re waiting for you inside,” he said.
“Who?”
“Your many friends and admirers,” he said, with a go-figure shrug.
“Riley?” I asked.
Jude nodded.
“Is he… okay?”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t.”
Jude grimaced. “He’s here, he’s fine. He’s inside with the rest. Seems everyone wants to know about your adventures.”
“But not you.”
“I know enough,” he said. “I’ve been watching the vids. It’s not pretty.”
“No,” I said. “But I guess mass murder usually isn’t.”
Jude shook his head, a look of impatience flashing across his face. “I don’t mean that. I mean that vid of you—”
“Not me!”
“Right. Whatever. That vid of someone who looks like you pumping poison into the system. The whole world thinks we just declared war on the orgs. It didn’t occur to you to voice me when any of this happened?”
“So that’s what you’re mad about. Can’t stand that we actually handled something without you.”
“Handled it.” Jude snorted. “Right. I’ve already talked to Riley. He wanted to come to me. You stopped him. You let him go back to that place alone. It didn’t occur to you I could have helped?”
“Could you have?” There was something strange about talking to Jude. The conversation felt familiar and profoundly alien all at once. It was the same disconnect that came from looking around at the place I’d been living in for the last six months. Like nothing was the same anymore. I wondered if this was how my father felt when he looked at me. Like he was staring at a two-dimensional copy of something he’d once cared about.
Jude smashed a fist into the doorframe. His face stayed calm. “Go ahead. Ask me.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
I was too tired for the game. I gave him what he wanted. “Did you set me up?” I asked flatly. “Did you kill all those people?”
He didn’t flinch. “You going to believe me if I say no?”
“Say it,” I suggested, “and we’ll find out.”
“If you think I could do something like that, I’m not going to waste my time convincing you otherwise,” he said.
“Not much of an answer.”
“Why even stay here if that’s what you think of me?” he asked. “Why don’t you just go?”
Go where? I thought. “Fine.” Calling his bluff. “I guess we’re done here. I’ll pack up and be out by morning.”
“Wait,” he said quietly. “Ask Riley.”
“Ask him what?”
Jude picked at a loose stone in the doorframe, scraping out the sediment between the stone and wood. He turned half away from me, his shoulders hunched, his head angled toward the door. “Ask him, and he’ll tell you I wouldn’t do this,” he said, careful to keep his eyes on the wall. “If you really think…”
I didn’t know what I thought anymore. “What am I supposed to think?”
He started to speak but choked off the words. Then he shook his head. “Think whatever the hell you want.”
“Jude—”
Suddenly, he whirled from the wall, facing me head-on. “I wasn’t the only one who knew you’d be at Synapsis.”
“What?”
It was like he was fighting a war with himself, the part that didn’t care what I thought battling the part that needed me to believe him.
“You think it had to be me, because I sent you there,” he said. “That I was the only one who knew. But I wasn’t.” He sounded like a child, denying that he’d thrown the ball, broken the window. I waited for him to blame it on his imaginary friend.