Black Heart (Curse Workers 3)

People turn their heads, wide-eyed, at Governor Patton in his underwear, standing in the open air. “Wrong damn trailer,” I growl, and push open the door to Patton’s.

There, just like I hoped, hangs the suit I ordered from Bergdorf Goodman, zipped up in a cloth storage bag and tailored to his measurements. A new pair of shoes and socks and a fresh white shirt, still in plastic. A silk tie is hanging around the hanger holding the suit.

Other than that the trailer looks a lot like mine. Couch, dressing area. Television monitor.

Seconds later an assistant comes in the door without knocking. She looks panicked. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t realize you had arrived. They’re ready for you in makeup, Governor. No one saw you come in, and I didn’t—Well, I’ll let you finish getting ready.”

I glance at my phone. It’s eight thirty. I lost about half an hour being unconscious and missed checking in with Agent Brennan on top of it. “Come back and get me in ten minutes,” I say, trying to keep my voice inflections as like his as I can. I watched all those videos and I practiced, but it’s not easy to sound entirely unlike yourself. “I have to finish getting dressed.”

When she leaves, I call Barron.

Please, I say to the universe, to whatever’s listening. Please pick up the phone. I’m trusting you. Pick up the phone.

“Hey, little brother,” Barron says, and I slump onto the couch with relief. Until that moment I wasn’t sure he would come through. “One government drone to another, how are you doing?”

“Just tell me you’re actually—,” I start.

“Oh, I am. Oh, definitely. I’m here with him now. I was just explaining how our mother’s a federal agent and how this was all a government conspiracy.”

“Oh,” I say. “Uh, good.”

“He already knew most of it.” I can hear the grin in his voice. “I’m just filling in details. But go ahead and let everyone know that Governor Patton is going to need to delay that press conference by a half hour, okay?”

I guess that if you tell a compulsive liar to stall a guy who’s completely paranoid, then wild conspiracy theories are the way he’s going to do it. I should be glad that Barron isn’t explaining how the governor of Virginia is aiming a laser at the moon and they all need to proceed to underground bunkers immediately. I grin too. “I can definitely do that.”

Hanging up, I grab the suit pants and shove my foot into the leg hole. They’re nicer clothes than I’ve ever worn before. Everything about them feels expensive.

By the time the assistant comes back, I’m tying my tie and ready to go to makeup.

You might wonder what I’m doing. I kind of wonder that myself. But someone has to stop Patton, and this is my chance.

There are tons of people on the governor’s support staff, but luckily, most of them are still at his mansion, waiting for the real Patton to leave. I only have to deal with the ones who came ahead. I sit on a director’s chair outside and let a girl with short, spiky hair spray foundation on my borrowed face. People ask me a lot of questions about interviews and meetings that I can’t answer. Someone brings me a coffee with cream and sugar that I don’t drink. Once, a judge calls, asking to talk to me. I shake my head.

“After the speech,” I say, and study my mostly blank index cards.

“There’s a federal agent here,” one of my aides tells me. “She says there could be a security breach.”

“I’d expect them to try to pull a trick like that. No—I’m going on. They can’t stop me,” I say. “I want one of our security officers to make sure she doesn’t disrupt me when I’m onstage. We’re going out live, right?”

The aide nods.

“Perfect.” I don’t know what Yulikova and the rest of them suspect or don’t, but in a few minutes it won’t matter.

That’s when Agent Brennan comes around the side of the trailer I’m supposed to be in, holding up her badge.

“Governor,” she says.

I stand and do the only thing I can think of. I walk up onto the stage, in front of the small crowd of supporters waving signs and the larger crowd of press correspondents with video cameras pointed at me. It might not be that many people, but it’s enough. I freeze.

My heart thumps in my chest. I can’t believe I am really doing this.

It’s too late to stop.

I clear my throat and reshuffle my index cards, walking until I’m standing behind the lectern. I can see Yulikova, talking frantically into a radio.

“Fellow citizens, distinguished guests, members of the press, thank you all for extending me the courtesy of your attendance today. We stand on the very spot where hundreds of New Jersey citizens were detained after the ban passed, during a dark period in our nation’s history—and we stand here looking ahead to legislation that, if it passes, may again take us in directions we don’t anticipate.”

There is applause, but it’s cautious. This isn’t the tone that the real Patton would take. He’d probably say some crap about how testing workers will keep them safe. He’d talk about what a glorious day we are at the dawn of.

But today I’m the one with the microphone. I toss my index cards over my shoulder and smile at my audience. I clear my throat. “It was my plan to read a short prepared statement and take questions, but I am going to diverge from my usual procedure. Today is not a day for politics as usual. Today I plan to speak to you from the heart.”

I lean against the lectern and take a deep breath. “I’ve killed a lot of people. And when I say ‘a lot,’ I mean—really—a lot. I’ve lied, too, but honestly, after hearing about the killing, I doubt you care about a little lying. I know what you’re asking yourself. Does he mean he killed people directly or merely that he ordered their deaths? Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you—I mean both.”

I look out at the reporters. They’re whispering back and forth. Cameras flash. Signs sag.

“For example, I killed Eric Lawrence, of Toms River, New Jersey, with my own hands. Gloved hands, mind you. I’m not some kind of pervert. But I did strangle him. You can read the police report—well, you could have if I hadn’t suppressed it.

“Now you might ask yourself, why would I do such a thing? And what does this have to do with my crusade against workers? And what in the world made me say any of this out loud, no less in public? Well, let me tell you about a very special lady in my life. You know how sometimes you meet a girl and you go a little crazy?”

I point at a tall guy in the front. “You know what I mean, don’t you? Well, I want to come clean with regard to Shandra Singer. I might have exaggerated some things there. If your girlfriend breaks up with you, sometimes you get upset—and you might be tempted to phone her up twelve times in a row to beg her to take you back . . . or maybe spray paint something obscene on her car . . . or maybe you frame her for a massive conspiracy . . . and try to have her gunned down in the middle of the street. . . . And if you’re really upset, maybe you try to wipe out all workers in the state.

“The more you love her, the crazier you get. My love was great. My crimes were greater.

“I’m not here asking for forgiveness. I don’t expect forgiveness. In fact, I expect a media circus of a trial followed by a lengthy incarceration.

“But I tell you this today because you, my fellow citizens, deserve my honesty. Hey, better late than never—and I’ve got to say, it does feel really good to get it all off my chest. So in summary, I killed people. You probably shouldn’t put too much stock in other stuff I said before right now, and—oh, yeah. Proposition two is a terrible idea that I supported mostly to distract you from my other crimes.

“So, any questions?”

For a long moment there is only silence.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Thank you. God bless America, and God bless the great state of New Jersey.”

I stumble off the stage. There are people with clipboards and aides in suits all staring at me as if they’re afraid to approach me. I smile and give them the thumbs-up sign.

“Good speech, huh?” I say.

“Governor,” one of them says, heading in my direction. “We have to discuss—”

“Not now,” I tell him, still smiling. “Have my car brought around, please.”

He opens his mouth to say something—maybe that he has no idea where my car is, since it’s probably still with the real Patton—when my arm is jerked behind me and I nearly lose my balance. I yelp as metal comes down on my wrist. Handcuffs.

“You’re under arrest.” It’s Jones in his sharp black federal agent suit. “Governor.”

Cameras flash. Reporters are streaming toward us.

I can’t help it. I start to laugh. I think about what I just did, and I laugh even harder.

Agent Jones marches me away from the crowd of shouting people, to a cleared spot of street where police cars and television vans are parked. A few of the cops come over to try to push back the rush of news cameras and paparazzi.

“You really dug your own grave,” he mutters. “And I’m going to bury you in it.”

“Say that louder,” I tell him, under my breath. “I dare you.”

He gets me to a car, opens the door, and pushes me inside. Then I feel something go over my head, and I look down. Three of the amulets I made—the ones that prevent transformation, the ones I gave to Yulikova—are hanging around my neck.

Before I can say anything, the door slams.

Agent Jones gets into the driver’s seat and guns the engine. Flashes go off through the window as we start to pull away from the crowd.

I lean back, letting my muscles relax as much as possible. The cuffs are too tight to get out of, but I’m not worried. Not anymore. They can’t arrest me—not for this, not when now they can arrest Patton without difficulty. Simple lies are always better than a complicated truth.

Explaining that the Patton on television, the one that confessed, wasn’t really Patton, but the real Patton had actually committed those crimes, is too confusing.

They might scream at me, they might not want me to be a member of the LMD anymore, but they’ll eventually have to admit that I solved the problem. I took down Patton. Not the way that they wanted, but no one got hurt, and that has to be worth something.

“Where’s Yulikova?” I ask. “Are we going back to the hotel?”

“No hotel,” Jones says.

“Want to tell me where we are going?” I ask.

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps driving for a few more moments.

“Come on,” I say. “I’m sorry. But I had some information that there was a plan to set me up for working Patton. You can deny it if you want to—and maybe my information was wrong—but I got cold feet. Look, I know I shouldn’t have done what I did, but—”

He pulls abruptly onto the shoulder of the road. Cars are whizzing by us on one side, and there is a dark patch of trees on the other.

I stop talking.

He gets out and comes around to open my door. When he does, he’s pointing a gun at me.

“Get out,” he says. “Slowly.”

I don’t move. “What’s going on?”

“Right now!” he yells.

I’m cuffed; I don’t have a lot of choices. I slide out of the car. He pushes me around to the back and pops the trunk.

“Uh,” I say.

Then he undoes the top two buttons on my shirt, so that he can push the amulets against my skin. When he buttons everything up and tightens my tie, the charms are trapped underneath. Now I have no chance of shaking them off.

“Get in,” he says, indicating the trunk. There’s not much in there. A spare tire and a first aid kit. A length of rope.

I don’t even bother to tell him no, I just run. Even with my hands cuffed behind me, I think I can maybe make it.

I crash down the hill, sliding more than anything else. The dress shoes are awful, and my body is heavy and unfamiliar. I’m not used to the way it moves. I keep losing my balance, expecting my legs to be longer. I slip, and my suit pants slide on the muddy grass. Then I’m up again and heading for the trees.

I’m moving way too slow.

Jones comes down hard against my back, tackling me to the ground. I struggle, but it’s no use. I feel the cold muzzle of the gun against my temple and his knee against the hollow of my back.

“You’re as cowardly as a goddamn weasel. You know that? A weasel. That’s what you are.”

“You don’t know me,” I say, spitting blood onto the dirt. I can’t help it. I start to laugh. “And you obviously don’t know much about weasels, either.”

His fist slams into my side, and I nearly black out from the pain. Someday I am going to learn to keep my mouth shut.

“Get up.”

I do. We walk back to the car like that. I don’t crack any more jokes.

When we get there, he shoves me against the trunk.

“In,” he says. “Now.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Patton’s fine. He’s alive. Whatever you think I did—”

The gun clicks once, ominously close to my ear.

I let him shove me into the trunk. He takes rope and knots it around my legs, connecting that to the chain of the handcuffs in back—tight, so that I can barely move. No more running for me.

Then I hear the rip of duct tape and feel it wrap my hands in two separate sticky cocoons. He’s taping something against my palms, something heavy—stones. When he’s done, he rolls me over, so that I’m looking at him and the highway beyond. Every time a car barrels past, I think that maybe someone will stop, but no one does.