Empire (Empire 1)

She reached over to the papers, turned on the shredder beside the desk, and turned them into confetti.

“Very dramatic, but they’re on disk, aren’t they?” said Cole.

“Not for long,” she said. “And yes, I do know how to overwrite files so that they are truly and completely erased.”

“But you know and I know,” said Cole. “And we’re both going to keep watching, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think of this as something dangerous.”

“Yet you didn’t talk about it to anybody.”

“I thought they’d think I was crazy. Everybody talks about Torrent like he’s God.”

“The savior of America,” said Cole. “But it might not be assassination. Declaring you mentally unfit and taking your children away would do the same job, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re scaring me,” she said.

“I’m sorry. But I’m not joking. You’ve planted the seed in my mind. I’ll watch. I promise you. I love this country. I don’t want a dictator. But I don’t want you to talk to anybody else about this. And I don’t want you to do any more research. You had to call people to get this information. You had to go to websites, you had to write to people, correct?”

She nodded.

“So you might already be on a list somewhere. Even if it’s only inside Torrent’s head. For what it’s worth, though, I think there’s a good chance you’re completely wrong. Which means you’re safe. But then it’s just as important not to say these things out loud to anyone else because if Torrent’s innocent, then this is . . . really kind of vicious slander.”

Cecily nodded again.

“Cecily, let’s both watch him. Let’s see how things play out. What he does with real power, when he gets his hands on it.”

“All right,” she said.

“Meanwhile,” said Cole, “I really have missed you guys. I really do like your kids. Can we be friends? Paranoids together, yes, but also friends?”

“Mark and Nick adore you.”

“And vice versa,” said Cole. “I’ll visit now and then, and sometimes we’ll watch Torrent on the news and exchange knowing glances. With any luck, we’ll laugh about what we were thinking tonight.”

“Were we thinking it? Or was I the only one?”

“Oh, you’ve got me thinking it, all right. You got the song on my mind, too.”

They left the office. Cole insisted on rinsing the ice cream dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. “First time I’ve done dishes for anybody who wasn’t my mom,” he said. “I mean anybody I liked who wasn’t my mom.”

“I’ll have cookies for you next time.”

“Good, because it’s my life’s ambition to be fat.”

She gave him a hug at the door and he hugged her back. “I can’t help it,” she said. “I feel better now, because somebody else knows.”

When he was gone, she locked the door, went downstairs, got all the confetti from shredding those papers, and ran them down the garbage disposal in the kitchen.

At the Democratic convention, Torrent was nominated for President on the second ballot.

A week later, at the Republican convention, he was nominated by acclamation.

He became the first President since Washington to be elected with all of the electoral votes. And the largest popular vote in history, of course, since it was only divided with a handful of fringe candidates. But there was a huge turnout at that election. As pundits delighted in pointing out, if Torrent had gotten only half the votes he got, he still would have had the largest

vote total of any presidential candidate in history.

People believed in him. They were ready for peace. They were ready to be united.