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Teeks in Houston Teeks of sending Rick on every assign him on, while Shaun and I locked ourselves in our hotel rooainst an adversary we’d never volunteered to fight Whose side was Ry he wasn’t a part of Tate’s plan; no sane ain, Shaun and I were adopted to satisfy the Masons’ desire to prove the zo, and they’ve never stopped us froed it, living for the ratings, because when they lost Phil, the ratings were all they had So who are we to judge the sanity of parents? We sat up until al plans,for a way out of a maze we didn’t see before ere already lost inside it

Shaun pretended he didn’t knoasn’t sleeping, and I pretended not to hear hiical tape; that’s what I’ll always think of when I think of Houston Caffeine pills and surgical tape

I tried to talk to Ryman twice; he tried to talk to me three times None of our attempts synchronized I couldn’t trust hi with Tate; he couldn’t understand e’d pulled away, or ere overworked and snarly with exhaustion Even Shaun was visibly withdrawn He’d stopped going out in the field with Steve and the boys when he didn’t need to file reports, and while he was stillit with anything like the flair and enthusiasm Ryman had co we could do about it Until we knee could trust hi on—e suspected, e knew, anything And until we told hi on, we couldn’t be sure we could trust hi back on itself, and I couldn’t see a way out of it So we pushed his were over

After Houston, it was ti across the country like nothing had ever gone wrong Not nothing; Chuck was gone, replaced by a pale-faced drone who scuttled around doing his job and avoiding anything that resembled socialization Our security detail tripled while ere er allowed to ride out unescorted He took an al his babysitters to follow hierous terrain he could find, and so The Irwin co him up for a Golden Steve-o award this year, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win

We spent aour way across the western half of the country while the other candidates stayed in the air and themajor metro areas would have better anti-infection o The devil-e points, enough to keep him in the news even as the edy died down “Man of the People Keeps the World Grounded”—huold A few outlets made the requisite noises about how Ryed hi, but the facts of Rebecca and Buffy’s deaths were enough to pretty much silence them Maybe you could blame the senator for Eakly if you reached, but you couldn’t blame him for terrorist action or assassination attempts America is the land of the free and the home of the paranoid, and yet, blessedly, we haven’t fallen that far Yet

Six weeks after Memphis, ere overworked, overtired, and about to hit the crowds in one of the country’s toughest, most essential markets: Sacramento, California

You’d think Shaun and I would be excited about a stop in our state’s capital, being California kids bred and raised You’d be wrong California is essentially a bunch of sether by political connections, water rights, and the stubborn refusal of any segment to cede the cash-cow name “California” to any of the others The California secessionist —not the state quitting the country, but the various parts of the state quitting each other Sacraood weather, the good press, and the big tourisovernment and a lot of hard to defend farmland To say that there’s a little resentment there is to understate the case just a little Whatever fellow-feeling Sacramento had for the rest of the state died when it stopped hosting the annual state fair and started hosting the annual “everybody hide in their houses and pray they don’t die”-a-thon in its place

The air was hot and so dry it seemed to suck the moisture out of my throat as we stepped out of the Sacra zone where we’d bethe senator’s convoy It was late afternoon, and the sun was bright enough to stab at ered, catching lance Silent, I shookthe strain, Shaun as , Shaun would spend the rest of the afternoon fussing over me There was too much to do for me to let hi with Governor Tate and ht behind the commercial air rather than via private jet; unfortunately, aus to wait on the tarers to see whether our aircraft was about to be declared a closed quarantine zone I’ll ad it would be At least then we’d be able to get so back to our hootten to where he only went to bed when I put him there