Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 110809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“Your people?” Juno stands, fire flashing in her eyes. “We had a deal, Dragonis. Gregor promised me—”
“Gregor?” I blurt. It seems exhaustion has loosened my tongue. “Who’s Gregor?”
Juno waves a hand at me. “Not important right now. What is important.” She stabs a finger at Valen. “Is that your people step the fuck back and abide by our deal.” Moving around the desk, she crosses her arms over her middle. “In fact, I want you at the CDC lab first thing in the morning. Georgia will be your direct contact from now on. She’ll tell you what she needs from you, and you will give it. Understand?” Her cutting tone makes me squirm in my seat, but my head’s clear enough that I don’t interrupt again.
Valen isn’t ruffled in the least. In fact, he steps forward, his tall frame looming over Juno. “The agreement is still in place. We’ll deliver what we promised, and we expect you to do the same.”
Vince’s hand twitches toward his hip.
“No need, Mr. Camden.” Valen turns his head so quickly I jump. “I was just leaving.” He strides out with all the severity of a storm, taking a crackling, smarting tension with him.
“We need to talk,” Vince growls, his eyes on the closing door. “About that.”
“He’s not your concern.” Juno returns to her seat at the desk. “What did the captured thugs have to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?” Her voice is sharp, icy. “Why don’t you know?”
“I don’t know because the man who’s ‘not my concern’ killed them before I got a chance to speak to them.” He scrubs a hand across his face. “Never even saw their bodies. They were being wheeled out in bags when I got there, his people dressed head to toe in these black plastic getups, like goddamn radiation suits, taking the bodies away.”
“Wait.” I set my coffee cup on the table in front of me and lean forward. “He killed them? But he can’t do that. There are laws. There are …” My ears begin to ring, my face going hot. I look at Juno. “Don’t you have to arrest him? You can’t just let him go. He can’t … can’t do that.”
Her brows furrow. “He said it was his people. If that’s how he deals with his own, then it’s no concern of ours.”
“Like some kind of immunity?” I blink several times, my mind spinning like tires on black ice. “But this is America. You can’t just get away with murder. You can’t—”
“They tried to kill us, Georgia!” Juno barks. The vehemence in her tone is like a slap. “They tried to kill us, and they got what they deserved. End of story.”
Part of me—a part I don’t like to acknowledge—agrees with her. Part of me is glad they’re dead. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. She has to know that. And the fact that Valen killed them, that he did it and then showed up looking like nothing had happened—I don’t know what to make of it. It’s like swallowing a pill that sticks in your throat.
“It’s all cleaned up now.” Vince seems to have aged a decade in the space of a few hours. “Right down to the last speck of blood. Dragonis is thorough. Even wiped the surveillance already, though I don’t fucking know how. There’s nothing left to prove those two prisoners were ever taken into custody.”
“Holy shit.” I rub my temples.
“Any word on our injured?” Juno asks.
“Senator Unger and Representative Whitson are dead. Several others are wounded, two severely. Associate Justice Pearson is in surgery right now. They don’t know if he’s going to make it. Vice President Shellhurst wasn’t shot—”
Juno gasps and puts a hand to her mouth. “I seriously didn’t even think about him till right then.”
Vince’s scowl deepens, the lines in his forehead doubling. “But he fell in the chaos and likely broke his hip. We’ll know more later.”
“What a mess.” Juno cocks her head toward the door. “Fatima!”
She hurries in, notepad in hand. “Ma’am?”
“Write up my remarks for the morning. I want them brief and strong. President Gray’s supporters tried to overturn democracy, but we will not let anarchy reign in this nation. Not now, not ever. Something along those lines, got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s all. Thanks.” Juno dismisses her.
“But that’s not what happened.” Am I hearing Juno correctly? “Vince just said Gray wasn’t behind it.”
“Vince, let me talk to Georgia. Get some rest. We’re secure here.” Juno stands and walks over to me as Vince lumbers from the room.
She sits beside me and throws her arm around my shoulders. Warm and familiar, she still smells faintly of the perfume she always wears. It’s comforting. At least, it should be. But if anything, I feel a sense of disquiet, one that’s growing stronger as she pulls me to her.
“Listen, I know it seems harsh. But this is my first hundred days. The country is on a hair trigger with at least four states wanting to secede. I can’t let that happen. I can’t be the last president of this nation. If I don’t come out swinging, they’ll see me as weak, as a target, as someone they can push around. We could lose everything right when we’re on the cusp of ending the plague.”