“Easy,” I said. “He was a smug fucker who wanted us to know how awesome the world would have been if we’d let him take it over, and he was stalling for time, because he knew that if he managed to inject himself, we’d never find out whom he was working with. He wanted us to think he was the mastermind. It was all him. But it wasn’t. It never could have been.”

They asked me why not.

“Because that asshole was never smart enough to kill my sister.”

They didn’t have any questions after that. What could they have asked? George was dead, Tate was dead, and I’d put the bullets in both of them. Before the Rising, a statement like that would have been an invitation to a murder charge. These days, I’m lucky no one tried to give me a medal. I think Rick probably convinced then-Senator Ryman that even the suggestion would result in me assaulting a federal official, and nobody wanted to deal with that. Although I might have welcomed the distraction.

Speaking of distractions, there was something poking me in the knee. I cracked one eye open and found the pigeon was now industriously pecking at my jeans. “Dude, I’m not a breadcrumb vending machine.” It kept pecking. “Has Becks been putting steroids in your birdseed or something? Because don’t think I don’t know she’s been feeding you. I found the receipt from the last time she hit the pet store.”

“Since I haven’t made any attempts to hide it from you, it would be a little bit upsetting if you didn’t know,” said Becks, from about three feet behind me. “As it is, you noticed the receipt and not the twenty-pound bags of birdseed in the office coat closet. That doesn’t say much about your powers of observation.”

“But it says a lot about my attention to detail.” I twisted around to face her, sending the pigeon fluttering off to find a safer place to perch. “Is there a reason the sanctity of the roof has been violated?”

Becks crossed her arms across her chest in a gesture that was only semidefensive. I don’t know why she looks at me that way. I’ve never hit her. Dave a few times, and I broke Alaric’s nose once, but never her. “Dave says you’ve been up here for three hours.”

I blinked. “I have?”

I thought you needed the sleep, George said.

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered. You’d think having my dead sister living inside my head might have some helpful side effects, like, say, insomnia, but no such luck. I get all the negatives of being insane, with none of the bonuses.