heard it in their murmurs. Bands of anger and resentment locked me in place, and the longer I stood there, useless and silent, the deeper I sank into the humiliation.
Someone with an ax to grind had clearly loaded fake text into the teleprompter instead of the new material Mel had given them.
Say something. Do something.
I should have realized it the second the language about the provisional voting measure had appeared on the screen and wrapped things up as naturally as I could. Instead, I’d frozen like a total novice and left myself open to the worst kind of speculation from the nightly newscasts. I could practically hear them now, dissecting the pause, replaying the moment over and over again, asking, Is the girl well?
I leaned forward and managed to squeeze out, “Thank you again. Enjoy your day.”
Rather than settle the crowd, the words only seemed to stir them. Even the sleeping girl suddenly sat up, curling her legs back under her, glancing at the dark-haired boy beside her.
The dean stepped up to the microphone again, casting a nervous look my way. “Well…thank you, everyone. Please enjoy the refreshments and sunshine.”
The last thirty seconds had felt like thirty minutes. Fake threat or real threat, it didn’t matter: the wheels of the emergency protocol were now turning. Agent Cooper walked straight to me, his tie fluttering with each quick, clipped step. The words on the teleprompter were reflected in the silver lenses of his sunglasses before someone cut the power and blacked out the screen.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. To anyone looking on, it probably seemed like he was just escorting me off the stage. They might not have noticed that Agent Cooper was pressing me hard into his side, that his other hand was just a few centimeters away from the gun in his holster. The sun had baked heat into the sleeve of his dark suit and it burned everywhere it touched me.
“It’s all right. It’s all right.” He repeated the words over and over again as the police officers turned to the university staff and began to wave them off the steps of Old Main. Most of the students and their families had risen to their feet and were milling around, talking to one another or moving toward the nearby table of food and drinks.
“I know,” I said pointedly. My heel caught on a crack in the old stone, sinking into it. Instead of giving me a moment to ease it free, Agent Cooper yanked me forward, shredding the leather off it and leaving me stumbling toward Mel.
“Wait here,” he said. “Martinez will come get you. I’ll get the car.”
That was the extent of our security protocol: shelter in place until safe transport could be secured. I nodded and Agent Cooper was off, heading toward where the car was under joint custody of the newly reinstated Pennsylvania State Police and the United Nations’ new federal police force, the Defenders.
I spotted Martinez a short distance away, not heading in my direction, but interrogating the shrugging woman in the tech booth.
Mel’s voice rang out behind me, cutting into my thoughts.
“—unacceptable! I asked you to guarantee a level of security, and you didn’t deliver!”
My heels clicked against the stone as I pivoted and cut a straight path toward her. Mel turned away from the pale-faced university staffer, who’d been nodding, nodding, nodding, simply absorbing the publicist’s lecture. Her face was strained with barely muted anger.
Because of her job, Mel had been trained to be changeable, to shift between many roles depending on who she was with or what she was doing. To me, she’d been a coach, a defender, a guide, and a protector. Incompetence, especially when it came to safety, never sat well with her. This security breach, combined with the car incident, had clearly rattled her.
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “Just someone looking for a reaction—”
“It’s not fine,” Mel said, her hand closing over my shoulder. She drew me behind the nearest pillar, out of the lingering news cameras’ line of sight. “You were supposed to launch the voting order. That’s why I pitched this event to the press!”
I took a step back, lips parting as I searched for the right words.
“I told them you were ready for bigger announcements, but if that’s not the case—” she began.
“No!” Somehow I managed to throw off the shock that had blanketed my mind. “No, I am ready. It’s just, it didn’t seem like—It wasn’t—”
Right.
I couldn’t get the word out, not