“You think this could work?” His eyes were glazed over as he looked at Ashleigh. He was like soft clay in her fingers.
“It really could,” Ashleigh said. She knew Brazer was on the House Homeland Security Committee, and his party controlled the House, though not the Senate or the White House. She was determined to use his position to help her figure out what had happened in Fallen Oak and in Charleston, and why Jenny kept getting away with her horrific crimes. She suspected it was just as she'd told Brazer—some very powerful people did not want the administration to look weak on security, not while the President only had a 35% approval rating and was in danger of losing the Senate in November.
“And who would I appoint to go investigate this for me?” Brazer asked. “It would have to be someone I can trust. The early part of the investigation needs to be low-key, well under the radar. If we hit trouble, we need to be able to close it down fast, run away, and forget all about it.”
“That's why I love you, Congressman,” Ashleigh said. “You're so smart.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Who are you really?” Jenny asked Alexander. It was nearly midnight, under a luminous full moon and a clear sky glowing with constellations. They sat on the beach below his house, a blanket insulating them from the wet volcanic sand. Jenny was puffing on a sizable spliff he'd rolled for them, to help settle her raw nerves.
“You know who I am better than anyone.” He leaned back on his elbows and looked out at the slow, deep waves of the Pacific.
“I mean in this life. You know. How did you end up down here, doing this? Where did you start out?”
“Where was I born?”
“Yeah. Stuff like that.”
“It's nothing special,” he said. “It's why it's not worth talking about. My dad's an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. Total douchebag. So is my stepmom. My real mom lives in New York, or she did the last time I heard from her.” Alexander took the joint from Jenny's fingers.
“What else?” Jenny asked. “What were you like in high school?”
He laughed. “Kind of a troublemaker. I already knew just about everything they had to teach, from my past life memories. Got into a lot of arguments with my history teachers. I was just bored.”
“Me, too. Well, the bored part, not the arguing part. I was really quiet.”
“That's so unlike you,” Alexander said.
“So your life sucked in high school, too,” Jenny said. “Then what?”
“A year at Stanford. The summer after my freshman year, I decided to go backpacking through Mexico. Nobody would come with me, because they were so scared of the drug war and the kidnappings and just the unknown. That's one problem with people these days—no courage. They just want to plug their brains into a TV or video game and escape. Nobody had the balls to take a risk.”
His words actually made her think of Seth, and how he always ended up under his parents' thumb.
“So,” Alexander said, “One morning, I staggered out of a bar with a brain full of tequila. Tiny little town in the Baja. I'd told some local guys I could make the dead walk, and ended up taking bets from all of them. They thought I was just some stupid drunk gringo, and they were pretty much right. There was a funeral in town that day, this poor old woman who'd been killed by a rattlesnake. And we went to that funeral, me and the four or five guys I'd been drinking with. And...well, like I said, I was just a drunken asshole.”
“What did you do?”
“I shouldn't have. I wouldn't have if I'd been sober. But I walk into this lady's funeral, and I touch her hand. And then I make her corpse jump right out of the casket and dance around in front of her family and the whole village.”
“That's terrible!”
“I told you it was terrible.” He shook his head. “I still feel bad about that one. Everyone was horrified, screaming, praying, and I was just full of tequila and laughing. I'm not even sure if I collected on my bets. It was practically a riot.”
“That was pretty mean.”
“Yeah, well, that's why you shouldn't drink tequila, kids. But that's how the Calderon people heard about me. Papa Calderon collects astrologers, psychics, shamans. He's got a dozen or more on the payroll. I think they're mostly frauds, but I'm one of them, so what do I know? And it turns out I fit right into his plans to grow coca in the Sierra Madre.”
“So you're happy being a drug dealer?”
“I'm not. I'm a farmer. And a public benefactor.”
“Right.”
“What about you, Jenny?” Alexander asked. “Any dark or boring secrets?”