Chapter 1: Vigilantes Visit The Senator

I looked for something for Vic to drink while he held a United States senator at gunpoint.

Not champagne. Everyone else was drinking champagne because it was the only thing in the pantry besides a case of sparkling water and a bottle of grenadine that had probably been there since the Clinton administration. But Vic said champagne might clash with his antibiotics, and I wasn't going to be the one to tell him that wasn't how antibiotics worked.

The senator's pantry was bigger than my first apartment. Not the apartment I grew up in — I grew up in a house with seven bathrooms. I mean the apartment my parents rented for me in Georgetown so I could pretend to be a normal college student. That one. The senator's pantry was bigger than that apartment, and it had nothing to drink except rich-people nonsense and a tub of Tang.

I brought the Tang.

Vic was eating birthday cake and talking. He stood at the kitchen counter eating it right from the box. The senator's wife would be celebrating her birthday tomorrow. Maybe. He wore black tactical clothes with pouches and straps and guns — an AR-15 slung over one shoulder, at least five handguns visible in holsters and pockets and clipped to things that shouldn't have guns clipped to them. Brown curly hair, greasy enough to fry something in. A beard that was more of a suggestion than a commitment. He looked like a Walmart Rambo eating a three-hundred-dollar birthday cake, and he was telling a story about going door to door collecting petition signatures against a chemical company.

"Did a petition against a company dumping chemicals into the river," Vic said. "Shit like that."

Gary didn't have any cake. He was too nervous to eat. A problem Vic never had. Gary was tall and thin and balding in the way that men who work with numbers go bald — from the top down, like the stress was burning through his scalp. Long hair on the sides. Jittery. Trying very hard to look like he wasn't jittery. He looked like a scientist from the Apollo missions if the Apollo missions had been run out of a mozzarella factory in Merced.

"What kind of signatures were you collecting?" Gary asked.

"All kinds. The chemical one. A couple neighborhood things."

"What are you talking about? Chemicals?" Gary pointed at the tactical vest. "How many chemicals are in the cigarettes you smoke?"

Vic pointed a frosting-covered finger at him. "Hey. The chemicals I choose are my own business."

From the hallway, soft muffled sounds. Like furniture being moved, except the furniture was a person.

"Hey, Sloane. Where's the pop?"

"I didn't find any. I got this." I dropped the Tang on the counter.

"The fuck is this? Tang?"

Everyone laughed. Not the sycophant laugh I grew up hearing at my father's dinner parties. A real one. These people were genuinely entertained by Tang in a senator's kitchen. I liked them for it. Or I wanted to.

Amro stood by the cake, eating small careful bites with one eye on the hallway. His parents moved to America from Iran the year before he was born, and he carried something from a country he'd never set foot in — a stillness that came from stories about people who disappeared in the night and were never discussed again. He wore a form-fitting shirt and pants and jogging shoes. Not fashion jogging shoes — jogging shoes you could actually run in. Everything about Amro said he might need to leave quickly and was fine with that.

"I forgot you were here," he said to no one in particular, and for a second I thought he was talking to me. He wasn't. He was talking about the senator.

Bridget ate cake too. She sat on the marble counter with her legs swinging, cargo pants and boots and a baggy tie-dyed shirt that looked like she'd slept in it for a week. Hair almost as greasy as Vic's. She had a knife on her belt and she touched it the way other women touch a necklace — just checking it was still there. She was the kind of person who always seemed to be waiting for permission to hurt someone. Not because she needed permission. Because denying herself was part of the fun. She laughed at the Tang and she was happy. As far as she was concerned, her plan was going perfectly.

Bridget looked at me from the counter. "Was God busy?"

"Excuse me?"

"An Aldridge playing vigilante. Your family owns half the judges in the state. Was God busy, so they sent you?"

I didn't have an answer for that. Not because she was wrong.

"Well," Amro said. "Break time is over."

The study did not disappoint.

Hundred-year-old oak everywhere. Books nobody reads. A desk you could park a car on. Drapes and carpeting and that particular smell of old leather and money that rich people marinate in until they can't smell it anymore. Everything in this room was designed to communicate a single idea to anyone who entered: you are smaller than the man who sits here.

I'd been in rooms like this my whole life. They all said the same thing.

And in the middle of it all, Senator Marz sat. Duct-taped to his expansive oak chair. His shirt stained with his own blood. Duct tape over his mouth. Breathing calm and steady through his nose. He was in his boxers and a thin tank top. Very undignified. But if ever there was a man in a position to disregard what others thought about him, this was it. He'd been resolving impossible problems for forty years. He was already resolving this one.

A television on the far wall showed pregame coverage. Some analyst drawing arrows on a screen, talking about Sunday's game with the intensity of a man planning an invasion. The senator probably had it on before we arrived. Nobody turned it off. Nobody cared.

"I'm sorry, Senator," Amro said. "I forgot you were in here. We were enjoying your wife's cake. I'm sorry she won't get to enjoy it." He paused. "I'm going to remove the tape on your mouth. Please don't scream. It touches Bridget's 'tism, you see. But do what you have to, I guess."

Everyone had moved into the study. But Bridget moved to the door. She really did hate screaming. Amro stood in front of the senator. Vic unslung his rifle and sat on the desk behind the senator's chair, making the thing click and clack. Everyone knows rifle sounds. Gary stood by the door with Bridget, both of them ready to leave when the time was right. Gary checked his watch.

And I stood against the opposite wall. Watching. Waiting. Remembering the deal.

Amro ripped off the tape and stuck it to the chair. Senator Marz looked at him the way a senator looks at someone. Like he owned Amro's ass and this was just a billing dispute. Amro may have had the upper hand, but Marz had been sitting in rooms with powerful people since before Amro was born. The powerful never think it's going to happen to them. They're usually right. This was the exception, and the senator was treating it like a clerical error.

He let silence do his talking.

"I promise we won't take up much more of your time," Amro said.

No response. The senator hadn't made a sarcastic comment in forty years either. He knew what silence was worth.

Amro gave him to the count of thirty. I counted too.

"How about if I start." Amro walked to the back wall and grabbed an empty chair. He brought it to rest facing the senator, close enough that their knees nearly touched. One of the senator's eyes was swollen shut, but his other eye was sharp and calm. Like he was about to chair a meeting and was mildly annoyed that it was running behind.

"Sloane, can you have a seat?"

Me. Why does he want me to sit in front of the senator? Why is he even using my name? What possible good can come? I sat down. Our knees a few inches apart. The senator smelled like copper and aftershave.

"Senator, may I present you Lady Sloane Aldridge."

I looked at Amro. My full name. To a United States senator. A man who probably golfed with my father. Who probably came to the house for Christmas parties and shook my hand when I was eleven.

The senator looked me up and down. "And?"

"Quite right. I'll get to the point." Amro stood behind my chair. "Sloane is new around here."

"Is that a fact?"

"It is. And as you can imagine, an outfit like this diversifies the roles. We all bring our specialties, but in the end, there are certain skills everyone needs to possess. Well, not skills so much as — oh, let's call it team spirit. A willingness to go all the way. You know what I'm talking about. The need to make sure someone isn't going to bring your whole outfit down when it's time to cross the line. You know what I'm talking about."

The senator locked his eye on Amro. Didn't speak. Didn't move.

"That's okay. It was a rhetorical question. But it still leaves me with a problem. How do I tell if Sloane is in too deep?"

Vic spoke next. "How do we know she isn't just some Karen slumming around for the summer because she feels bad about the silver spoon up her ass?"

What is this? Why is this about me?

"What would you do in this situation, Senator? How have you handled this in the past? You have a new team member, but you're about to do something terrible in front of your employees. How do you know that you're going to get away with it?" Amro moved to where I could see him. "Look at Sloane. What would you do to make sure you didn't have to kill her too?"

"Amro, I —"

He put his finger to his lips and calmly shushed me. "You have done fine. Let me talk to the senator." He turned back to Marz. "So what do you think? Let's say you just hired Sloane, and you just flew to wherever you fly and were about to walk into a room and order someone beaten to death. And you had to decide if you were bringing Sloane in with you. What would you do?"

Everyone watched the senator sit in silence. Vic clicked the rifle safety on and off. No words from the senator.

"Woof," Amro said. "No free tips from the master, I see. Maybe you can keep the process to yourself, but still share the results. What do you think?"

"What do I think about what?"

Vic racked a round into the chamber.

"What do you think about Sloane? Is she willing to go all the way, or is she just pretending to care while it makes her feel good?"

Amro waited twenty seconds in silence. I counted those too.

"Nothing? I guess you want to corner the market on this kind of thing. Well, that's okay. I actually have a plan of my own for this situation."

"I figured you might."

"It's pretty good, if you ask me."

Vic walked over. He pulled a patch off the front of his vest, revealing a handgun. Velcro straps pulled, and the gun came free. Vic looked at me as he placed the gun between my feet.

"I think I'm going to go," Gary said. He walked out of the door and disappeared. Bridget stood in place. Vic walked to the door and left.

"You were immune to my charms, Senator," Amro said. "Let's see if Sloane here is more charming." He faced me. "We will wait for you in the back. Same plan. Whatever you decide to do, we will all leave together. Don't be afraid of us. This test is about your future with us. We mean you no harm. Come find us soon. Don't dally for too long." He picked up the handgun and made sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he placed it back between my feet. "All you have to do is pull the trigger."

Amro walked to the door. "Don't dally." He left. Bridget watched for a few seconds, then she was gone too.

I looked at the clock on the wall.

11:17.

I didn't stand or reach for the gun.

The television across the room was still going. A man in a suit was predicting the spread with the kind of confidence usually reserved for cult leaders and weathermen. The senator and I both watched it for a moment, which was strange. Like we were two people in a waiting room who hadn't been introduced.

The senator looked at me. One eye swollen, the other clear and measuring. He'd been looking at people like this for four decades. He'd sat across from presidents and generals and lobbyists who could buy countries, and he'd taken the measure of every single one of them. Now he was taking mine. A twenty-year-old girl in a room she shouldn't be in, with a gun between her feet that she hadn't touched.

"Oh, Lady Sloane." His voice was steady and dry and carried the particular patience of a man who has never once been the least powerful person in a room. Until tonight. "What do you want from me?"

"How the hell should I know."

And I meant it.