Scout nodded to her lawyer. The woman retracted the papers she’d slid toward Grey and replaced them with a different, thicker stack. Grey looked down and saw a glossy photo of Scout, walking down a street in LA, probably shot by paparazzi. In it, she wore a red wig and a nearly identical all-black outfit to the one the bomber had worn on tape. Underneath the photo rested a pile of typewritten forms, Scout’s signature scrawled across the bottom of each.
Isabel began to cry.
“In that case,” Scout said, “I would like to formally confess to the bombing of Knox Aeronautics.”
Chapter 48Luca, the Mastermind
PRESENT DAY
Plans were always falling apart. It was in the nature of plans to unravel. That was why Luca Clearwater knew the best strategic thinkers had to build plans within plans within plans, always moving at least three different pawns across three different chessboards across multiple dimensions.
In this dimension—strangely and improbably—Luca was a star, and she was getting dolled up to go on a TV show. As the makeup artist pressed a sponge to her cheeks, dabbing on a rosy powder that made her poreless, Luca considered the successes and failures—decades’ worth—that had brought her to this dressing room backstage at HBO’sReal Time with Bill Maher. She tilted her head at the artist’s request, watching as her cheekbones were chiseled into sharp relief, like the makeup artist was sculpting her out of stone. Luca had wished she was made of stone on more than one occasion in her life. Better stone than her tender heart that broke anew with every setback, every injustice, every win Gabriel Knox achieved despite her best efforts.
Unfortunately, the woman staring back in the mirror was flesh and bone, destined—or cursed—to feel every ounce of pain until the day she accomplished her life’s mission.
It had been one thing when Gabriel was just a tech mogul with a habit for rowdy play, and Luca a recent Harvard Law grad, no longer recognizable. Stumbling into a man like him on a night out when you had cheekbones like the kind the surgeons had gifted her would’ve been easy enough. The first plan she’d ever hatched was to find where he liked to go out—it wasn’t the Serpent Room anymore, he wasn’tstupid—and arrange a meet-cute. Go fullPromising Young Womanwith it.
But then, before she could try, he launched his run for the House of Representatives. It wasn’t just that his political ambitions increased his security or put an end to his habit of carousing, thereby unraveling her revenge plan. It was that all of a sudden, Luca’s private monster had become a public problem. Ending Gabriel Knox the man was no longer enough. Luca needed to end theideaof him. With every political win, Gabriel was turning himself into a symbol, ascending from mere mortal to ideology, slipping seeds of evil into everyone who voted for him or liked what he had to say, diffusing his power across the country. To defeat a dragon that large—to meet Gabriel Knox with the level of annihilation he deserved—meant Luca had to grow, too.
Enter the Green Lions.
The makeup artist leaned to catch her gaze in the mirror. “What do you think?” She winked. “It’s rare we get a guest who can rock a cat eye as well as you.”
“You did a beautiful job,” said Luca. The powder pressed into her pores smelled slightly floral. It reminded Luca of the powder her mother used to put on before work, back before her sickness left her bedridden. Luca slid a business card out of her purse. “And I meant what I said. Those late hours and shitty health care benefits, those are things the Green Lions can help with.”
The woman beamed and thanked her, sliding Luca’s card into her jean pocket, then left her to finish with the hairstylist. It was as close to alone as Luca got these days. A consequence of the life she’d chosen, of course, the growth she’d had to undertake to match Gabriel’s power, but still, she closed her eyes in the makeup chair and savored the quiet, the feel of the brush through her hair, the tenderness of someone taking care of her. Like the touch of a mother or a sister.
She had ten minutes until they’d call her to the stage, and then she’d trade her peace for war.Real Time with Bill Maherwasn’t her usual crowd, but she was in hot demand since the bombing, trying to do as many TV appearances as possible to make Juliet’s sacrifice worthwhile. Besides, Knox’s head of comms was going to be on Maher’s panel right beside her, and there was no way she’d miss the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with him. For better or worse, Lucahad always been a creature of action. That had been true even before the experience that had changed her life.
At least Gabriel was too scared to come himself. That, on its own, was a beautiful thing. The bombing of the tower—the first building in his empire, the flagship that had heralded him as a mogul—had rocked him, especially since he would’ve been inside if he hadn’t gotten stuck last minute at a campaign stop. He probably assumed the person behind the bombing had been trying to assassinate him. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Luca was a student of Gabriel Knox; she had been for years. She paid close attention to his plans, and she didn’t want him dead.
Far from it.
If a man like Gabriel died—a man in the process of amassing a following—he became a martyr. As long as Gabriel remained uninjured—as long as no one was hurt, save some eyeroll-inducing claims of PTSD from protestors on the news—the bombing could serve as a symbol of defiance that regular people could celebrate without feeling guilty.
And theywerecelebrating. As a well-known opponent of Knox’s, her phone was ringing off the hook with requests for interviews. Her staff reported waves of copycat protests being planned across the country. Social media was drenched with a macabre outpouring of posts celebrating the tower’s fall. Some of the older talking heads on the news were outraged by the sheer maliciousness of the American public, their gleeful schadenfreude, their lust for violence. When they invited Luca on to criticize her stridency as part of the problem, she answered that people were tired of politics, of talking, of the veneer of civility while the country’s leaders practiced private violence behind closed doors. They wantedaction, out in the light.
Luca sensed it was the public’s awakened appetite, more than the bombing itself, that scared Knox. The evidence was mounting that millions of people hated him. The bombing might be a lightning-flash glimpse into the future. Even now, she was sure some of his advisers, maybe even board members from Knox Aeronautics, were asking him to drop out of the presidential race for his own safety, for the sake of the stock.
A knock sounded at the door. Luca’s eyes flew open. Was it time togo already? She realized, with a start, that the hairstylist had already left. She was well and truly alone.
“Come in,” she called, expecting a PA.
But when the door opened, it revealed a detective.Thedetective.
For a moment, Luca forgot how to breathe.
“Ms. Clearwater,” the detective said, with a hint of Valley Girl jocularity, the same accent Luca had trained out of her own voice. The detective wore plain clothes, a soft blue jersey dress. Disarmingly feminine. Luca had wondered whether the way she dressed was a trick the woman played, an attempt to get people to underestimate her, or if she really was so comfortable in her own skin that she didn’t care about making an impression. It was hard for Luca to fathom. Trading south LA for Harvard, then moving through East Coast law circles, then appearing on TV; so much of her life had depended on making the right impressions. On compartmentalizing her identity, only showing small slivers at a time. Like an iceberg, the bulk of her looming under the surface.
“Hello, Grey.” Luca tried to keep the emotion from her voice, but didn’t quite succeed. She’d watched Grey Holloway for so long, dreaded and desired meeting her in equal measure. “How’d you get in? The studio has security.”
Grey flashed her badge. “It comes in handy. But I’m not here as a cop.” Her eyes met Luca’s. “I’m here as Alice’s sister.”
Alice.How many times could a person’s heart break? When it came to Alice, Luca was on the path to finding out. She cleared her throat. “In that case… come in.”
Grey closed the door and settled on the small couch against the wall. It was sunken, so she was forced to look up at Luca, still sitting tall in the makeup chair, but it didn’t seem to bother her. In fact, Grey’s confidence unsettled Luca. She would have to play the next few minutes very carefully.
“I’m going to level with you.” Grey folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve spent the better part of twelve years trying to understand what happened to Alice and Daisy that night at the Serpent. And Luca, I’ve come to think that you might be one of the only people in the world who knows the answer.”
