When he finally got to Brownsville, he hit the last checkpoint. The one no one was supposed to be able to cross, six short blocks from the border and the freedom it represented. Between there were the old warehouses and commercial buildings that had been taken over by the Motherland Guard. One of which, a windowless former Kmart, was where they were holding Joyce.

The story was they had a new interrogation technique they were trying out. The Blue Light Special.

Joyce had fled the country on the day they seized power. Donny was supposed to go with her. Not as lovers, but as friends. She liked the idea of a lawyer helping her get across. And maybe she wanted more, but she could be hard to pin down on such matters.

Donny had even driven to her place that morning, all packed and ready to go. But by the time he got there, he had changed his mind. Or more accurately, the world had changed it for him. He had a duty to stay back and fight the regime in court. Fight to eke out what justice he could for the regime’s enemies and victims. Lawyers in exile are useless. Joyce said you should write a book, a history of how we got here, but Donny said first we have to fix the future.

That same day, as Joyce went to cross at Brownsville, which she had been told was the safest, Donny was in court with Miles, trying to challenge the President’s increasingly brazen use of his emergency powers with the domestic deployment of military forces they called police but anyone could see were soldiers and private military contractors. She didn’t get across. She was detained at the border, even though she had one of the new passports.

The things she had written had gotten her on the list. As did some of her friends who had already been detained. Male academics, Donny later read in one of the memos that cleared the interrogation enhancements, were the easiest subjects to get to rat out their friends. The theories for why that was varied.

They had detained her three days before Donny even got the news. And that he only got because Judge Broyles let him know, in confidence. Probably the day after Broyles signed the order allowing her interrogation to proceed.

They had had her three weeks before Donny could get the order for her release. And even then, it wasn’t entirely clear her release was due to Donny’s efforts, or because they just decided they were done with her. But they said Donny could come pick her up.

Donny had told her not to try to take her pistol across with her, but Joyce was ornery that way.

“I’m here to retrieve a prisoner,” said Donny. “My client.”

He handed the guard a business card. You would be surprised how often that works.