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I froze “What farm?”

“The Ryman farm It’s on all the feeds, it’s everywhere They think one of the horses went into spontaneous conversion No one knohy, and they’re still digging in the ashes and setting the periia, the girls were in there when the alarms went off, and no one knows—”

Slowly, as if in a drea, but her words didn’t matter anymore Senator Ry there grinning, his beautiful wife holding his ar to the crowd that chose hihest office in the country They looked like the happiest people in the world People who had never knohat a real tragedy was God help the to control the forums, but he needs help, and we need you to find the valid news feed into all this, we—”

“Tell Mahir to contact Casey at Media Breakdown and arrange a fact-only feed-through of the situation at the farm; tell him we’ll trade an early release on my next candidate interview,” I said, tonelessly “Wake Alaric, get hi Mahir until Rick finishes on the floor, then throw him in there, too He wanted to join the party? Well, here’s his invitation”

“What are you going to do?”

Eether She had no idea

Gri to stay here and report the news”

BOOK III

Index Case Studies

The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward

—GEORGIA MASON

We live in a world of our own creation We’ve entleet the honor of lying down in it

—MICHAEL MASON

I’ve done a lot of difficult things over the course of my journalistic career Few, in the end, were pretty;the news is reserved for the people who sit behind desks and look good while they tell you about the latest tragedy to rock the world It’s different in the field, and even after doing this for years, I don’t think I grasped how different it was Not until I looked into the faces of presidential candidate Peter Ryman and his wife and inforhter had just been cremated by federal troops outside their family ranch in Parrish, Wisconsin