Jonathan took a step forward, reaching beneath his jacket and pulling out his gun.
Lily shook her head frantically. Jonathan could probably stop Greg, even without the gun; Greg was bigger, but Jonathan was combat-trained. But then what would happen? Greg would fire Jonathan without a thought, hire Lily a new bodyguard. Jonathan might even go to prison. And then what would happen to the woman in the nursery?
Or to me?
Jonathan took another silent step forward, raising the gun, his eyes fixed on Greg.
Lily drew a hitching breath and gasped, “No!”
This only served to egg Greg on; he began to thrust faster. But it had also stopped Jonathan. He paused, gun in hand, on the bottom step into the living room.
Lily gave him a small smile through gritted teeth, a smile meant to tell him that she would get through it, that she was looking beyond the next few minutes. She rolled her eyes to the left, toward the nursery. The separatist.
Jonathan hesitated for a long moment, eyes gleaming and hand clutching the banister. Then he tucked the gun back inside his jacket and disappeared into the shadows of the hallway, as silently as he’d come.
TWO HOURS LATER, Lily hobbled slowly toward the nursery. She’d meant to check on the woman much sooner, but in the end she broke down and took a hot bath. Even after an hour soaking in the tub, she could barely walk. She would have taken some aspirin and gone to bed, but she didn’t like the idea of the injured woman sitting in the dark nursery alone. Lily didn’t know whether Jonathan had gone to check on her; he appeared to have disappeared from the property again.
Greg had gone to Washington for his crisis meeting at the Pentagon. Above the stone wall around the garden, Lily could still see the orange bloom of flames, the thick smoke that obscured the moon. They hadn’t been able to get the fire under control yet, and Pryor was still burning. Had Dorian Rice built the bomb herself? Where had she learned that kind of thing, young as she was? The Blue Horizon recruited many veterans, both men and women, who had returned from the oil wars to find themselves unemployed. But Dorian looked too young to have done a single tour of duty.
When Lily reached the nursery, she slid the dimmer switch on the wall panel up slowly, not wanting to scare the woman if she was asleep. But Dorian was awake, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, looking lucid for the first time. Lily set a bowl of broth and a glass of water on the table in front of her, and Dorian nodded thanks. She had sharp eyes; they tracked Lily’s every movement and grimace as she limped across the room.
“Looks like we’ve both been through it today,” Dorian remarked. “Where are we?”
“My nursery.” Lily reached the loose tile, but now she faced a logistical problem: squatting was simply not going to happen, not tonight. She was reduced to pawing at the tile with her toes. After an interminable period, during which she could feel the young woman’s eyes pinned to her back, she managed to work a toenail beneath the edge of the tile and flip it up and over. She bent one knee and stuck her other foot out, gracefully, like a ballet dancer, flipped two books out of the hole, and pushed them over to Dorian, who picked them up off the floor and flipped through them appreciatively.
“Where’s a woman like you get real books?”
Lily bit her lip, not sure how much to tell. What if this woman were taken for interrogation?
Dorian grinned, showing a missing incisor. “You’re already in plenty of trouble, honey.”
“There are a few other wives in the neighborhood who like to read. One of them has family in California with some kind of collection. They bring her books whenever they come to visit, and we pass them around.” Michele could also procure pharmaceutical-grade painkillers for anyone who needed them. Lily wished she had some now.
“Does anyone know I’m here?”
“Jonathan does. He went to let some other people know.”
“I won’t be here long, then.”
“You can stay as long as you like.”
“Dangerous for you. I bet Security’s all over this town.”
“Yes.”
“When they don’t find me, they’ll start searching houses.”
Something new to worry about. But Dorian didn’t look particularly worried, so Lily shrugged and tried to look nonchalant as she sat down carefully in her favorite armchair. She tightened up everything in preparation for the landing, gritting her teeth, but when her ass met the cushion, it still started all over again. She should have taken the aspirin.
Dorian yawned. “I’m getting sleepy. If you decide to call Security, do me a favor and shoot me in the head first.”
“I won’t call anyone.”
“Good. Because I’m not going back into custody.”
Lily swallowed. She thought again of the blank door, that day in Manhattan, the group of uniformed men hustling the man in the suit inside. She had never found a single article or news report about what went on behind that door. “What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Custody.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful. They serve you steak and whisky, and when you go to bed, there’s a little mint waiting on your pillow.”
“I’m only curious.”
“Why do you care?”
“My sister—” But Lily found she couldn’t finish that thought. Did she really want to know what had happened to Maddy behind that door? “Nobody talks about it.”
Dorian shrugged. “It’s bad. For women especially.”
“Women have a bad time everywhere.”
“Oh, get off it, rich lady. Sure, you walked in here limping and shuffling, but we’ve all done that walk. You should be thankful he was the only one.”
Lily swallowed again. The throb between her legs, the raw-rubbed skin, suddenly felt much worse.
“I need to sleep. You can go.”
“I’ll stay until you’re asleep.”
“There’s no need for that.”
Lily leaned back in the armchair, crossing her arms.
“Fine. Christ.” Dorian closed her eyes. “Wake me up if he comes.”
Who? Lily almost asked, then answered herself: No names. She lit the small scented candle that sat on the table beside the armchair, then whispered to the house to turn off the overhead light. Shadows flickered on the walls, highlighting Lily as a matronly figure, an old woman in her rocking chair.
We’ve all done that walk.
She watched Dorian fall asleep. Her mind kept on trying to turn to Greg, to go over the evening, but Lily wouldn’t allow it. She would think about these things tomorrow, in the light of day … not now. But the images, the sensations, kept on coming, until she thought she might bolt from the chair and scream.
What would Maddy do?
But that was easy. Maddy wouldn’t have shied away from remembering. Maddy would have gone all the way through it. Maddy had always been tough, and Lily, who had been delighted at the idea of a younger sister, quickly became disenchanted when she realized that Maddy was never going to want to play any of the same games as herself: no dress-up, no beauty parlor, no cooking in the fake kitchen that sat in the corner of the living room. Maddy liked baseball, insisted on wearing pants. By the time she was twelve she was the best pitcher in the neighborhood, so good that the neighborhood boys not only allowed her to play in their impromptu baseball league but always picked her first.
But being a tomboy was only part of it. Maddy was much smaller than Lily, tiny and pixie-like, but she had no tolerance for bullshit. She was unable to keep silent, even when silence would save her trouble or pain. Their elementary school had had two bullies, and by the time Maddy started sixth grade, she had dealt with both of them. In eighth grade, she took several suspensions for arguing with the canned government information being peddled by her history teacher. Maddy was born to be a defender of the weak, of the helpless. Maddy was the first to tell Lily that millions of people were living outside the fences that surrounded Media, people who didn’t have enough food, people who owed so much money that they would never be free of their debts. Until then, Lily had had no idea that not everyone lived the way their family did. Dad told her the truth as well, but many years later, when Lily was fifteen. Even though Maddy was the youngest, Dad had clearly told her the truth of things long before.