All took death badly. Wasn’t being at least as bad? Here’s the liver. Not the organ, but the woman who lives. One day, she doesn’t want to be. No one lets her go. It’s a tough exit, little lady. You’ll regret it, sister. No chicken she. No shrinker. Or shirker. She makes her plan, she fights her nights, like this one—“like mine,” Mabel whispered into the stairway. It takes a life of living to get to not being. What if I want it now? Rewrite, send me Rewrite. Mabel dipsy-doed on the stair. Okay, she couldn’t sing, but anyway: I could have danced all night. I could have spread my wings and done. Done and done.

Would anyone here, she asked the dining room, care to think?

What was his sin, damsel? Tell us his wrong.

She approached the kitchen table.

He erred not.

No? Then how your travels?

She’d get to that. She was sleepy enough now. She climbed those always stairs. She entered the master bedroom. She climbed in. She fell asleep by the diode light of the REMstar.

The story didn’t run. They needed Vera back on night cops full-time. The situation in the Trinidad neighborhood was ongoing. Harriet and Anne were systematically combing the Sissy report; they’d cull nuggets if any were left. The pilot piece was interesting, but it wasn’t all there yet. There might be a magazine story in Media Exploitation Component Services; Harriet would take a look.

Trinidad would settle down. At some point Vera could team with Anne on a profile of this Will Holmes. It was easy to misunderstand his role, especially for someone like Vera, new to all this. The word Harriet got back on this guy was that he was some geek trying to make out he was more than he was. That might be wrong. They could check further.

Vera met up with Gordon Bray one more time in the parking garage. It was a few days after the meeting in Adam’s office. Gordon was in his car, not the Vespa. He eased down the ramp and stopped when he saw her about to unlock her bicycle.

“Vera.”

She waved, working the combination.

He stayed.

The lock came open.

“These stories,” he said. “Tough.”

“Yes.”

“You did great work.”

“Thanks.”

“Next time.”

“Next time.”

One by one, Will fired them. First the bozo that came up with the idea. Then his chief supporter, the linguist who’d wanted to get Security to escort Vera Hastings off the premises. Moron hadn’t learned a thing from that day. Why use a hammer when a fist will do? Third was the idiot who thought national security was involved.

Hadn’t they always done what needed to be done?

Mostly, Will said. Not always.

They all thought they’d stopped the story about MECS with this caper. Underage prostitutes had nothing to do with Vera Hastings’s being taken off the story.

They didn’t believe him.