I turned my face away.
He stood slowly. Then wheeled back and slapped me.
My vision exploded in fireworks of color. The skin felt like it had been ripped off the side of my face. Tucker caught me again; I hadn’t even noticed the chair had tilted over on two legs.
The man cleared his throat. “Captain Morris, your knife please.”
Tucker released the chair and stepped toward the man, handing him the switchblade from his utility belt. I stared at the gun in his holster, willing it into my hands.
“No, no, you keep it.”
Tucker hesitated, but the older man had already turned back to me. He swung my necklace in front of my face, a blur of silver and gold. Behind him, over his right shoulder, the camera stayed pointed in my direction.
“All right, Ms. Miller, we’re going to make this quick, because as you undoubtedly have heard, I have a party to attend.”
Chancellor Reinhardt, I realized. The Chief of Reformation. I nearly laughed. I’d made it into the Charlotte base after all. If DeWitt had only known I’d be within inches of the most hated man in the FBR.
“What is Three planning? Why issue this pathetic call to join the resistance and fight? And don’t say my assassination, because you’ve already tried and failed.”
I forced myself to smile. We’d heard of the attempt on his life when we were in Knoxville. What a shame that he’d recovered.
“You need to think about it. I understand. Captain Morris, was she an Article Four Violator? I forget these things.”
Tucker leaned over me, the marks from the beating I’d thought he’d endured as a prisoner still marring his jaw. A bead of sweat dripped down his brow and splashed on my swollen cheek, and I focused on the single gold star pinned beneath his name badge. With one hand he held my shoulder still; with the other, he brought the knife to my skin and slowly carved a line into the flesh, close to the three DeWitt had left.
I didn’t make a sound. But the adrenaline scored through my veins, making me shake.
“I’m going to ask you a second time, Ms. Miller. What is Three planning?”
I stared straight ahead. I thought of Chase, walking barefoot on the beach. Sneaking through my window at home. Combing his fingers through my hair.
Reinhardt sighed. “No, that’s right. Article 5 violation. That’s what Ember Miller was charged with.”
Tucker leaned down again.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I whispered.
Tucker cut me again—a swipe crossing the others—and this time I did cry out.
“That must hurt,” said the chief with a wince. “You know we’ve captured your leader, correct? Three is finished. There’s no need to continue to protect him. He didn’t protect you, after all.” The chief crouched down before my chair. “He sold you out. He told us where your posts were hidden. He told us where to find your base in the Red Zone.”
DeWitt couldn’t be the one ratting out the posts. He’d only just been captured.
“Yes,” said the Chief, as if reading my mind. “Aiden DeWitt’s been in contact with me for some time now.”
Don’t listen to him, I told myself. I thought of Sean finding Rebecca, going to Mexico. I’d miss them.
“It was luck, really. We didn’t realize Carolyn was his daughter when Captain Morris brought her to us for the sniper murders. She wasn’t in our cells for more than a week when DeWitt called me on the radio. Funny how people pop up when you’ve got something they want.”
Rebecca had told me the doctor and his wife had been hiding Article violators, and that when the MM came his daughter had supposedly been killed in the crossfire. He’d taken down five soldiers in response.
We’re not so different, you know. They took my mom, too. For harboring the enemy.
I pictured Cara as I’d last seen her—broken and beaten and woozy with pain pills, but under that I saw a different girl, one who was young and pretty, with dirty blond hair. I saw how she might laugh without bitterness, and smile warmly.
I saw the picture DeWitt carried with him.
He had traded so many lives for his daughter.
In my silence Chancellor Reinhardt groaned, annoyed. He followed my burning gaze to Tucker. “I’m sorry, it must be difficult seeing Captain Morris again after all you’ve been through. Perhaps there’s something you’d like to say to him if not to me?”
Tucker stepped back, staring straight through me without any acknowledgment of what we had been through together. He folded the knife and put it away.
I had plenty to say to him, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Nothing? After he set up a fire in Knoxville that killed so many of your friends?”
My teeth began to ache from pressing them together so tightly.
“Not even after he led us straight to the Chicago resistance? I haven’t a clue how you made it out of there alive.” He chuckled bluntly.
“I’m not sure how he made it out, either,” I muttered, jutting my chin at Tucker.
A tight-lipped smile darkened Reinhardt’s hollow cheeks.
“Some people are willing to die for their cause, isn’t that right, captain?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tucker.
My interrogator folded his hands behind his back. “I wonder, Ms. Miller, if you are one of them.” He stared at me for one bone-chilling moment with his black ferret eyes, before heading toward the door held open by New Guy. Tucker followed.
“Is that what you told the insurgents?” I asked.
They both paused.
“Yeah, I know about that,” I said. “And I know you paid off their families to keep them quiet about it. They must have been in a pretty bad spot to take money from you.”
He laughed, but behind his back, his hands were folded, and they tightened, making his fingertips turn white.
“Don’t think I haven’t heard that before,” he said, turning slowly. “Reinhardt preyed on the poor. He promised their families would be taken care of if they served their country, gave their lives in the ultimate act of patriotism. Then blamed the acting administration for the war they started. Is that the way the story goes?”
I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. “That’s about right.”
“You see, you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“You’re wrong.” My voice was hoarse.
They both paused.
“You keep acting like Three is one man,” I said, a reckless bravery controlling my words. “You’re wrong. There’s thousands of us. There’s more of us than there are of you.”
Despite everything I’d seen, despite everything DeWitt had done, I clung to this. I did because my life depended on the secrets I knew, and if I gave them up I was as good as dead.
The cuts on my shoulder stung. “We carry them,” DeWitt had said, “because they remind us we are not alone.” I was not alone. Chase was with me. My mother was with me. Jesse, and Sean and Rebecca, and everyone else who had been wronged by the MM was with me, and that filled me with a freedom he couldn’t understand.
Tucker did not turn around. As he stared at the door, I watched his fists clench and release.
“No, Ms. Miller,” said Reinhardt. “There is but one man with a thousand hands. Cut off his head, and his limbs lose their purpose.”
“I guess that’s why we keep coming after you then,” I said.
His lips pulled thin, and grew dark white. Then he inhaled loudly through his nostrils and smiled. “Yes, that’s why.” On his way out, he added, “I’ll be back later to check on you, Ms. Miller. We’ll see how much you have to share then.”
The door closed, locked in place by a deadbolt.