“It was more than scary. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. You should be asking them the questions. See if they can explain that away. We need to keep the pressure on. The truth will out.”

“Yeah, but what about your client?”

“Daryl Harrison earned the nickname Slider for a reason,” said Donny, summoning the inner spin doctor he had developed handling political trials. “During the long dark years when he was a valued member of the resistance that finally liberated this country from the tyrant and his enablers, they could never catch him. Not with drones, or undercover agents, or tracking devices, or dogs. News of his demise has come before, and every time he turns back up. I expect to be able to prove that what AMR pulled this morning is just another trick in their years-long cover-up. If Daryl is really dead, you can bet the murderers of his parents killed him. But what you can be certain of is that next Friday he will be back here with me, in person or in spirit, to hold AMR to account for their role in the murder of innocent citizens whose only crime was to hold contrary political opinions. I hope you will be here too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get to work.”

It was good bullshit. So good that it rallied his own morale. Not so much that he actually believed it, but enough that he thought there had to be some way he could salvage the case. He walked toward the stairs with fresh determination.

Only to be stopped again, by another verbal shirt-tugging.

“Mr. Kimoe!” said a man’s voice calling from behind him. The guy had a foreign accent.

Donny pretended not to hear, striding forward. Then it repeated, louder.

Donny glanced over his shoulder. It was the guy with the architect glasses. The woman was with him.

The guy was flashing some kind of ID. The law-enforcement kind, with one of those hologram badges that seems to flicker in the light like a handheld semaphore.

Donny pretended not to see or hear them. He ducked into the stairwell marked fire exit, and ditched them. He had seen a couple of Dallas County deputies pop through that door the month before, and was relieved the alarm was still busted—another piece of broken government infrastructure that would probably never be repaired, just like the surveillance cameras that still hung from all the streetlamps even though their network connection had been severed at the hub.

He didn’t know what the Eurocops wanted, but it probably wasn’t good, and he definitely didn’t have time for it. The sound of his beat-up wingtips echoing off the old concrete floors as he found his way to the street made him feel like a fugitive.

The feeling was unexpectedly liberating.

3