Mom looked at me like I was nuts.

My field of vision lit up with something other than a maintenance alert. It was Klah Redhouse. I told my parents to hold on and I took the phone call.

“You okay?” Klah asked. My punchiness was apparently evident by voice alone.

“Ask me that tomorrow,” I said.

“I did what you asked and looked through the Nation’s medical records,” Redhouse said. “I got clearance from President Becenti.”

“What did you find?”

“There were two people who matched what you were looking for,” Redhouse said. “One of them was a woman, Annie Brigmann. She died three years ago. The man she was driving with fell asleep with her in the car and drove off the road. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The car rolled over her.”

“The other one?”

“His name is Bruce Skow,” Redhouse said. “I tried to look him up. He went missing from his home about three months ago.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. I looked over to my assassin, took a picture of his face, and sent it off to Redhouse. “Tell me if that’s him,” I said.

“That looks like him,” Redhouse said. “You know him?”

“He’s in my parents’ house right now,” I said. “Dead.”

“That can’t be coincidence,” Redhouse said.

“No,” I said. “No, it can’t.”

“What do you want me to do with this?” Redhouse asked.

“I need you to wait for me,” I said. “It won’t be long. I just need a little time.”

“You have earned credit,” Redhouse said. “You’ve got time.”

“Thanks,” I said, and disconnected. I could hear the sirens coming up the driveway.

Chapter Nineteen

AN HOUR WITH the Loudoun County sheriffs, who seemed delighted to buy into the “home robbery gone wrong” story. I left just as the media, and Dad’s media people, started to arrive. That was something they could handle. At some point I would need the FBI to take possession of Skow’s body, because I needed to confirm what was in his head. I would worry about that later.

My threep in D.C. was where I had left it, and had a police guard, although whether it was a guard or a cop waiting to arrest me wasn’t clear for the first couple of minutes. A diagnostic showed that the damage to the threep from the bullet into the back was worse than I originally thought, and I had a couple of hours before it locked up entirely. I reflected on the fact that in a single day I had managed to seriously damage three separate threeps.

An hour arguing with Trinh and the Metro police about having Rees’s body released to the FBI. The point that Rees had just attempted to assassinate an FBI agent did not seem to convince Trinh all that much. Finally had to resort to having people over my head at the Bureau go over her head in the Metro police. By the time I was done Trinh no longer wanted to be my friend, ever. Suited me.

Another hour with the FBI recounting the Rees attack, making up a suitable lie about leaving the scene to check in on my parents and otherwise catching up my place of employment with the day’s events. I focused on the Rees attack, rather than the whole day. Did not volunteer to speculate on causes, and no one asked me to. For now Rees’s attack was being treated like a single event, unrelated to anything else me and Vann were doing. This also suited me.

Finished up just as my threep ground to a halt. Managed to get to my desk. I would have to schedule for the local Sebring-Warner dealership to pick it up for repair tomorrow. In the meantime I checked the inventory for visitor threeps I could use.

There were none. We had called in reinforcements for the march. Visiting agents were borrowing the five threeps we had on hand. Fine, I thought, and started looking for rentals.

There were none. The march meant that every rental threep in the District, Maryland, and Northern Virginia was rented through Monday. The closest rental threep available was in Richmond. It was a Metro Junior Courier.

“The hell with this,” I said, and finally exercised my rich-person privileges. I called up my Sebring-Warner salesman on his personal number and told him that if he could get to his store and have a threep ready for me in forty-five minutes, I would pay full price plus an extra five thousand as a tip for dragging him out of whatever Adams-Morgan singles pit he was currently casting about in.

An hour later I walked out of the D.C. Sebring-Warner dealership in a 325K—a few steps down from the 660XS but at this point it seemed likely I would have it for about a day before I completely trashed it in the line of duty—and took a cab to Georgetown Hospital, calling Vann to let her know I was on my way, and in a new threep.

I found her in the emergency room, arm in a sling, arguing with an orderly.

“We need to have you in the wheelchair until you exit the building,” he said.

“I was shot in the shoulder, not the legs,” she said.

“It’s hospital policy.”

“I can’t move this arm, but the rest of me works fine, so if you want to try to stop me, see where it gets you. The good news is, you’re already at the hospital.” She walked off, leaving the annoyed orderly behind.

“Vann,” I said.

She looked over at me, taking in the new threep. “Shane?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Prove it.”

“I royally pissed off Trinh tonight,” I said. “I think she hates me more than she hates you.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Vann said. “But if you got her even halfway there I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I don’t drink,” I said.

“Good,” Vann said. “Then you buy me a drink. Come on. I know a bar.”

“I don’t really think you should be hitting the bars tonight,” I said. “You have a hole in your shoulder.”

“It’s a scratch,” Vann said.

“A hole in your shoulder from a bullet,” I said.

“It was a small bullet,” Vann said.

“Fired by someone trying to kill you.”

“All the more reason I need a drink.”

“No bars,” I said.

Vann looked at me sourly.

“Let’s go back to my place,” I said.

“Why would I want to do that,” Vann said.

“Because we have to catch up,” I said. “And because there are agents there watching over the place, so you won’t be killed in the night. I have a couch you can sleep on.”

Vann continued to look unconvinced.

“And we’ll stop on the way to get a bottle of something,” I said.

“Better,” she said.

*   *   *

I entered my town house with my public ID up so that my housemates wouldn’t panic when they saw me. Tayla came over and stopped when she looked at Vann.

“They let you out,” she said.

“It’s more like I didn’t let them keep me in,” Vann said.

Even without facial expression I could sense disapproval radiating from Tayla, but then she let it go. “You two need to access the news,” she said.

“I’m not sure about that,” I said.

“They have a video message from Brenda Rees,” she said. “It went live on the net just before she shot at Agent Vann.” She pointed to the living room. “We have a monitor there for guests.”

“I have my glasses,” Vann said, but we went into the living room anyway, fired up the monitor to the news channel, which had a copy of Rees’s video. In the video she talked about the injustice of Abrams-Kettering, how it was causing suffering among so many of her clients, and how everyone was to blame. “There are no innocents among the non-Hadens,” she said. “They allowed this to happen. Cassandra Bell said it, and I believe it: This is a war on a disabled minority. Well, I am now a soldier in this war. And for me the battle starts tonight.”

“Do you believe this?” Vann asked me, as we watched the video again.

“Hell, no,” I said.

“You caught the reference to Cassandra Bell.”

“I did. Another act of violence, ostensibly perpetrated at her behest.”

“Anyone killed tonight?” Vann asked.

“Aside from Rees?” I asked. Vann nodded. “No. There were some people who were stampeded and other injuries, and property damage from the grenade. But the only person she shot at was you.”