lower lip with a long red fingernail.
“Congratulations. You’re a voyeur,” Augustine said.
“I prefer ‘paparazzo.’”
The view on the screen veered and dropped to take in a slender female figure stepping off the front porch and onto the scattered gravel walkway. She was carrying something small and square in one hand.
“Definitely our girl,” Browning said. “Tall for her age, isn’t she?”
Stella walked with rigid determination toward the gate in the wire fence. Little Eye dropped and magnified to a three-quarter view. The resolution was remarkable. The girl paused at the gate, swung it halfway open, then glanced over her shoulder with a frown and a flash of freckles.
Dark freckles, Augustine thought. She’s nervous.
“What is she up to?” Browning asked. “Looks like she’s going for a walk. And not to school, I’m thinking.”
Augustine watched the girl amble along the dirt path beside the old asphalt road, out in the country, as if taking a morning stroll.
“Things are moving kind of fast,” Browning said. “We don’t have anyone on site. I don’t want to lose the opportunity, so I’ve alerted a stringer.”
“You mean a bounty hunter. That’s not wise.”
Browning did not react.
“I do not want this, Rachel,” Augustine said. “It’s the wrong time for this kind of publicity, and certainly for these tactics.”
“It’s not your choice, Mark,” Browning said. “I’ve been told to bring her in, and her parents as well.”
“By whom?” Augustine knew that his authority had been sliding of late, perhaps drastically since Riverside. But he had never imagined that Riverside would lead to an even more severe crackdown.
“It’s a sort of test,” Browning said.
The secretary of Health and Human Services shared authority over EMAC with the president. Forces within EMAC wanted to change that and remove HHS from the loop entirely, consolidating their power. Augustine had tried the same thing himself, years ago, in a different job.
Browning took control from the remoter truck and sent Little Bird down the road, buzzing quietly a discreet distance behind Stella Nova Rafelson. “Don’t you think Kaye Lang should have kept her maiden name when she married?”
“They never married,” Augustine said.
“Well, well. The little bastard.”
“Fuck you, Rachel,” Augustine said.
Browning looked up. Her face hardened. “And fuck you, Mark, for making me do your job.”
Mrs. Rhine stood in her living room, peering through the thick acrylic pane as if searching for the ghosts of another life. In her late thirties, she was of medium height, with stocky arms and legs but a thin torso, chin strong and pointed. She wore a bright yellow dress and a white blouse with a patchwork vest she had made herself. What they could see of her face between gauze bandages was red and puffy, and her left eye had swollen shut.
Her arms and legs were completely covered in Ace bandages. Mrs. Rhine’s body was trying to eliminate trillions of new viruses that could craftily claim they were part of her self, from her genome; but the viruses were not making her sick. Her own immune response was the principle cause of her torment.
Someone, Dicken could not remember who, had likened autoimmune disease to having one’s body run by House Republicans. A few years in Washington had eerily reinforced the aptness of this comparison.
“Christopher?” Mrs. Rhine called out hoarsely.
The lights in the inner station switched on with a click.
“It’s me,” Dicken answered, his voice sibilant within the hood.
Mrs. Rhine decorously sidestepped and curtsied, her dress swishing. Dicken saw that she had placed his flowers in a large blue vase, the same vase she had used the last time. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “White roses. My favorites. They still have some scent. Are you well?”
“I am. And you?”
“Itching is my life, Christopher,” she said. “I’m reading Jane Eyre. I think, when they come here to make the movie, down here deep in the Earth, as they will, don’t you know, that I will play Mr. Rochester’s first wife, poor thing.” Despite the swelling and the bandages, Mrs. Rhine’s smile was dazzling. “Would you call it typecasting?”
“You’re more the mousy, inherently lovely type who saves the rugged, half-crazed male from his darker self. You’re Jane.”
She pulled up a folding chair and sat. Her living room was normal enough, with a normal decor—couches, chairs, pictures on the walls, but no carpeting. Mrs. Rhine was allowed to make her own throw rugs. She also knitted and worked on a loom in another room, away from the windows. She was said to have woven a fairy-tale tapestry involving her husband and infant daughter, but she had never shown it to anyone.
“How long can you stay?” Mrs. Rhine asked.
“As long as you’ll put up with me,” Dicken said.
“About an hour,” Marian Freedman said.
“They gave me some very nice tea,” Mrs. Rhine said, her voice losing strength as she looked down at the floor. “It seems to help with my skin. Pity you can’t share it with me.”
“Did you get my package of DVDs?” Dicken asked.
“I did. I loved Suddenly, Last Summer,” Mrs. Rhine said, voice rising again. “Katharine Hepburn plays mad so well.”
Freedman gave him a dirty look through their hoods. “Are we on a theme here?”
“Hush, Marian,” Mrs. Rhine said. “I’m fine.”
“I know you are, Carla. You’re more sane than I am.”
“That is certainly true,” Mrs. Rhine said. “But then I don’t have to worry about me, do I? Honestly, Marian’s been good to me. I wish I had known her before. Actually, I wish she’d let me fix her hair.”
Freedman lifted an eyebrow, leaning in toward the window so Mrs. Rhine could see her expression. “Ha, ha,” she said.
“They really aren’t treating me too badly, and I’m passing all my psychological profiles.” Mrs. Rhine’s face dropped some of the overwrought, elfin look it assumed when she engaged in this kind of banter. “Enough about me. How are the children doing, Christopher?”
Dicken detected the slightest hitch in her voice.
“They’re
