of narrow seats, our thighs touching. I reach over and silence her with a touch on her leg. “Let's not worry about all that quite yet.”
“I'm going to worry about something.”
“I know.”
“It's what I do.”
“I know.”
“These are the things I'm going to wonder about.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“You need to give me something else to gnaw on.”
“Like…”
“Hyacinth.”
“Later,” I tell her. “When I'm sure.”
She sighs heavily, and flops her hand down on top of mine. As the subway pulls into an underground station, she looks out the window. “I typically project three to six months for research before I even start laying out my story. I tell no one what I'm working on. Maybe one or two people at the network,” she says quietly, forcing me to lean toward her to hear the story. “But after Hachette Farms”—she swallows heavily, and her fingers tighten on mine—“after the incident with Kirkov, things changed. It all broke too big, and everyone knew my face. I couldn't do anything without someone—somewhere—trying to figure what my angle was. They didn't know the details, but they could guess as to the general shape of the piece. I wasn't a friend to Big Ag—they knew that—and research got harder. Sources were less inclined to go on the record. I had to dig deeper. I had to take more risks. I filed a couple of stories where my facts weren't quite solid, but I was close enough that public opinion did the rest for me. I couldn't stop them, but I could make them change how they did business. I could make them be more cautious about breaking the law.”
She turns her head and looks at me. It would be easy to get lost in her gaze, but there's tension in her face that keeps me at bay. “I was never more than an annoyance. A line item on a budget: damage control, media spin, that sort of thing. And I had a network of people I could rely on; people who I knew would ask pointed questions if I disappeared. It was a game we played. I wrote a story, and they did a cost analysis internally. Was it cheaper to let me have my day and go do business some other way, or was it time to shut me down? You see? It's not personal. It's barely political. It's all about money. That's all they care about.”
I recall Callis's command to follow the money. “Is that what is going on here?”
She shakes her head. “I don't know. Personal vendettas don't make any sense in the corporate world. Resolving a grudge isn't boardroom thinking, and if we're talking about an enormous corporate entity, we have to assume there's a lot of boardroom thinking that is driving decisions. Unless you pissed off an entire corporate board.”
“Isn't that what you do with your stories?”
“Yes, but not like this. They don't come to my apartment and do awful things to my cat.”
“You don't have a cat,” I point out.
“Well, yeah—” She gives me a look that says such details are somewhat beside the point.
“Look, it all boils down to controlling the market. Whatever I do with my stories or whatever direction they're heading is all about locking down market share. Destroying the competition or beating up on your personal enemies is meaningless if you don't control the market.”
“So where does the video fit into this?”
“They want us to react. They want us to be horrified and outraged. They want us to get all wound up and go off on a tear in one direction, while they do something sneaky in the other direction. It's a distraction. They're trying to keep us from thinking about the big picture.”
“Hell of a distraction,” I point out.
She nods absently, returning her attention to the window. We're still underground and the tunnel walls are a blur rushing by. “And expensive,” she says pensively. “Which means what's at stake is worth significantly more.” I can see her reflection in the window and I can tell she's looking at me.
What's at stake is Arcadia, and she knows it too.
* * *
We get off the subway at the Baquedando stop, near the Bellavista district. The wooded slope of San Cristobal rises to the north of us, and I'm immediately set at ease to be close to trees again. We wander the streets awhile, getting our bearings, and stumble upon a two-level, open-air mall. Mere drags me into a restaurant that isn't subtle in its mood lighting—orange and red lamps