Payback

24

Dean rubbed his rib as they drove, wondering if Lia actually had broken one.

“That’s the restaurant, up there,” he told Karr. He slid back in the seat and turned to Lia. “You want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I don’t see a parking space,” said Karr, pulling up near the restaurant. “I think I’ll stay with the car while you guys cool down.”

Dean thought that was a good idea.

Lia got out of the car on the other side. Karr grabbed Dean as he started to follow.

“This is why I call her Princess,” he said. “Packs a heck of a punch, huh?”

Dean followed Lia into the restaurant, where she found a table in the back and pulled out her handheld computer, scanning for bugs.

“You two shouldn’t have come, Charlie,” she told him when he sat down. “I didn’t need to be rescued.”

Dean pointed at the PDA.

“Yes, it’s clean,” she said.

“What about the window?”

She got up, sighing like a teenager who’d just been told to go clean up her room. She slipped a small device nicknamed a shaker onto the comer of the glass near the curtain. The NSA-DESIGNED device disrupted vibrations, making it impossible to use them to pick up conversations inside. While Lia was slipping it on, a waitress came over and Dean ordered two beers.

“I’m not drinking,” said Lia, pulling out her chair.

“I’ll have them both. Tell me what happened.”

“It was some sort of setup,” Lia told him. “They’re blaming it on the police.”

“You should have gotten out of there,” said Dean.

“Would you have done that?”

“Depending on the circumstances.”

“The circumstances? The circumstances are, two men came out of a building, shot some innocent protestors, then took off. Ten minutes later, a guy who wasn’t even there blames the police.”

“Do you know he wasn’t there?”

“I didn’t recognize him.”

“For all you knew, it was an operation aimed at kidnapping you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“But you didn’t know that at the time.”

“I wouldn’t be talking if I were you, Charlie Dean. You and laughing boy tried to break up a purse snatching in England a few months back.”

“That was different.”

“Why? Because it was you, not me?”

The waitress came over with the beers. True to her word, Lia pushed hers to his side of the table.

“You seemed shaken yesterday,” said Dean.

Lia’s face flushed. “That was nothing.”

“I was just—”

“I’m fine.”

“OK.”

“We’re here to make sure the election is fair, right?” said Lia. “They can steal it using the media just as easily as they can using the machines.”

Probably easier, thought Dean.

“You shouldn’t have thrown me in the car like that,” she told him. “It looked like a kidnapping.”

“The Art Room wanted you out of there.”

“The Art Room is in charge now?”

“The Art Room is in charge of the mission while it’s running,” said Dean.

She snarled. “Is that what you really believe, Charlie Dean? You?”

“I thought you were in trouble,” he told her.

“Well, I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Her eyes flashed with anger.

“You were scared in the vault,” he said.

“Well, I wasn’t scared here.”

They stared at each other. Dean realized he might be as angry as she was.

“Let’s get you back to the UN people,” he said, reaching for some money to pay the bill. “You’ll have to make up something plausible.”

Lia caught his hand as he got up. He stopped, gazing down at her beautiful face, luminescent with the reflected light.

“The cops were framed,” she said.

“I believe you.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“I’ll pass the information on,” said Dean.

He was tongue-tied. He wanted to say — he couldn’t even tell himself exactly what it was. He loved her. He was worried about her. He wanted her to be OK.

Instead, he ended up lecturing her. “We have to stay focused on what’s important.”

“What’s important?”

“You.”

“Well, thanks for that,” she snapped, walking out.