There were thousands of them, lit by the glow of the streetlights. A police line held them back, kept the road free for the convoy. The Beast’s inches-thick armored glass and hermetically sealed cabin deadened the sound of their screams. Even so, their rage was palpable, visible on faces contorted in anger, in the violent gestures of signs that yelled: “TERRORIST!” “PRESIDENT TRAITOR!” “BABY KILLER!”

She flinched as something wasflung at them; it burst in mid-air in a splatter of yellow and someone in the front of the crowd crumple over in pain.

An egg, she realized. A protester had thrown an egg at the Beast. And one of their drone escorts had intercepted the unknown threat in mid-air and tazed the poor idiot who’d thrown it.

She looked back inside the limo, saw Cindy Stockton staring out the window, a look of sorrow on her face, her husband’s hand in her own. Pryce turned to John Stockton, searched his face for anger, for resignation, for regret, perhaps.

She found something else there instead. Resolve.

He’d asked her to ride with him. Why? Was he about to explain Barnes’s suicide confession?

Was John Stockton about to confide something in her that he’d hidden from her up until now? Was he going to explain to her how it had been necessary? The reasons behind it all?

She understood realpolitik. Principles were important, but all of them cracked at the extremes. At some point, under some circumstances, everyone became a pragmatist.

But this… the things Barnes had said. That was too much. Way too much.

Was John Stockton going to give her context that changed it all? That reframed it into something she could understand?

God, she hoped so. Because as it was…

The President looked up at her, met her eyes.

Here it comes, she thought.

“Barnes was murdered,” John Stockton said. “I’m sure of it.”

Pryce blinked in surprise. Her chest caught in her throat.

“I want you focus on Barnes’s murder.” Stockton said. “Assume it was an attack by a hostile power. Treat it as a national security issue, and give it your absolute highest priority.”

Carolyn Pryce opened her mouth to speak.

Kaori’s ill-thought-out message flashed through her mind.

Becker? Then Holtzman? Then Barnes? I’d find this all pretty damning.

She snapped her mouth shut.

John Stockton was staring out the window again, a look of utter resolve on his face.

And for the first time, Pryce wondered just how far the President’s resolve went.

Just how far indeed?

Breece hiked the eight miles back to the parking lot where he’d left his car, then got on the interstate and told the car to drive west.

The way Barnes had died kept cycling through his head. The way the hacker just owned him, completely.