Lennon bit back a laugh.

“Yeah, I was born here. Eighteen. Is this an interview?” Maisie listened for a moment, and then handed the phone back to Lennon.

“Holy shit,” Constance said. “You know who that is, right? You know who her father was?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Are we talking privately right now?”

“As far as I know.”

“Just listen for a second. I don’t know how much you know about Isaac Rojas, but I did a lot of research on him back when the zone first went rogue. Back when people inside could still contact us?”

“Right,” Lennon said, glancing at Maisie and quickly away.

“That was a scary asshole, Lennon. He was about to go away for a double homicide when the virus hit. And he only got worse once the city was roped off and the jails emptied out. We think that we can attribute literally hundreds of murders to him. We had reports of him torturing people. He did whatever he could to seize control of the zone, and everyone knew that Dr. Lopez was just a friendly face to put on a dictatorship. I don’t know a thing about his daughter, but you need to proceed with caution.”

He swallowed, forcing himself not to look at Maisie again. It didn’t seem fair to judge her by her father, but Constance did have a point. He barely knew Maisie. Or any of them.

“Got it. Will do. You’re going to run with the video? Now?”

“Of course I’m going to run the video.”

“Thank you, Constance. I appreciate it.”

“You’ve talked to your father?”

“Let’s just focus on the video for now, okay? I’ll sit down with you as soon as I get out of quarantine on the other side.” He knew better than to give up any information about his father to a reporter without consulting the campaign first.

“All right.” She sounded amused. “I really hope this works out for you.”

“Me too.”

“Bye, Lennon.”

He couldn’t help but notice that her bye sounded very final, like she thought it might be the last one.

He hung up the phone and passed it back to Hadley. “Okay. We’re good. Should be on soon.”

“In the meantime, we need to figure out how the hell we’re going to get through Spencer territory,” Maisie said. “I need a map, I guess?” She sighed. “But I’m not sure how helpful that will be. All our maps are years old. We don’t even know which roads still exist. We always meet the shipment truck in the neutral zone at the border.”

“Let me call one more person, and I can fix that problem,” he said.

“How?”

“There’s plenty of aerial footage of the zone. They haven’t released images to the public in years, but some people who work for my dad have it. If we get them to send that to us, we can combine it with the old maps and figure out the best roads to take.”