“You told them I kept a copy of that video. They came to kill me.”
A slow light dawned on his face. He shook his head. “No. Nance must have told them.”
Oh. Oh. All the thoughts I’d had, the preconceived notions, rushed me. What had I done? I’d put my family in danger. “Is Harcroft with them?”
“No.”
“But he never trusted me.”
“Harcroft doesn’t trust anybody.”
“Only Nance, then?”
Wade pulled in a breath. “That we know of.”
We fell silent. I couldn’t form words. My insides jumbled and tore. I drank more water, exhaustion rolling over me. Tears fell from my eyes. I leaned over, and they plopped on my pants. “This is my fault. I failed.”
That’s when the lights went out.
Chapter 55
In the emergency waiting room the dark seemed endless. People called out to one another. Things bumped and rattled. I could hear my own breathing.
I couldn’t believe it had happened. It had really happened.
Was this what our world would be like from now on?
What about Emily’s surgery? What about Mom?
“Will you be all right?” Wade’s voice, grim. “Generators should come on soon here. I need to go.”
“Sure.”
The lights flickered on. Thank You, God. I rose, demanding information about Emily. She’d gone to surgery, they said.
“But how do they do surgery when the lights are out?”
“The docs just wait for the generators. Now that power’s back on, everything should be proceeding fine.”
Not good enough. I wanted to tear down walls until I found my daughter.
“Mrs. Shire, would you like to see your mother?”
Smart nurse knew how to divert me. “Yes.”
She pointed the way. I wound through the emergency area and slipped into Mom’s room. She was lying in bed, an IV in her arm. Tugging on a nurse’s sleeve. “I have to go. We have to get to Raleigh . . .”
Mom saw me—and her face lit up. “Hannah. Can we go to Raleigh now?”
A sob burst from me. Had she forgotten Emily had been shot?
Leaning over the bed, I smoothed white hair off Mom’s forehead. “We don’t need to go anymore.”
“We don’t?”
“No. We just need to get you well and home.”
“What about the Bad People?”
“I don’t think they’ll be after us anymore.” They’d gotten what they wanted. I thought of the millions of homes without power. The businesses and stores. Government buildings. How could anyone do this to their own country?
How long would the hospital generators stay on?
Some time later, Emily’s surgery was over. “She’ll fully recover,” the doctor told me. “We got the bullet out. She’ll have a scar, but she’ll be fine. Once she’s awake and in her room, you can see her. We’ll keep her overnight.”
The bullet, he said, had been given to police. It was evidence.
I nodded. “Tell me. How long will the generators last?”
The doctor didn’t know.
Mom was admitted also—a different room. The generators held up that night, and I spent the time moving from one room to another, checking on both my mother and my daughter. At about 2 a.m., I collapsed in a chair in Emily’s room.
When I awoke, a beautiful sun was shining. But the heaviness would not leave my heart.
The days that followed were full of police interviews. Sergeant Wade took my information and filled me in on what he’d learned. Nance Bolliver had broken and confessed her part in an anarchist organization called FreeNow. Stone—the man I killed—had been its leader.
At that news, a dark justice pulsed through my limbs.
It had been a surprise to learn through Nance that Nathan Eddington was a critical member of FreeNow, creating the code that would infect the electrical grid computers. Some time back he’d apparently bought a stuffed dog for his daughter and written the key to stop the attack on the dog’s collar. Her mother later replaced that hard collar with a soft handmade kerchief. But on the day before Phase 1, Eddington had turned against FreeNow and rushed the video to Morton Leringer. Eddington knew he’d soon be dead for his betrayal. But maybe Leringer could stop the impending attack. . .
“Be careful. Don’t tell.”
Yet another victim of homicide was found in a Redwood City apartment—Todd Nooley, also a member of FreeNow. Nooley had stabbed Eddington and Leringer while trying to retrieve the video. When Nooley failed in his task, Nance said, Tex had been ordered to kill him.
Stone had been as merciless with his own men as with the rest of the country.
The FBI task force and Homeland Security worked together in a frenzy to stop the next phases of FreeNow’s plan. With mere hours to go before Phase 2, they were able to send the “abort” code into all infected computers.