She Who Sees Through Darkness

Part Two

She read the headlines off the newspapers of other subway passengers and learned the campaign was in deep trouble.

Their offices were up on 88th and 3rd. Debris swirled against her legs as she walked, buoyed by the wind and kicked up by other pedestrians. Horns blasted. People shouted. Katrina's eyes darted all around the crowd, scanning for threats. Useless Indigo paranoia. She wasn't important enough for anyone to want to hurt her.

Unless you counted Ford Maxwell. The portly campaign manager awaited her just outside the elevator, his flabby white cheeks now boiling red. "Why didn't you answer your phone?"

"Ran out of juice." She shrugged past him and pushed her way into the office. Rows of plastic tables filled the center of the room, each lined with phones and volunteers. Cheerful 'hello, sirs!' rose up over and over. Red, white, and blue 'Winters for New York, Winters for Governor,' posters covered the walls—in more than one case, covering cracks in the plaster.

"Are you an idiot?" Ford said. "Carry spare batteries. Herself is on the way! We need to have answers when she gets here!"

Katrina shared her cubicle with Nathan DeSoto, a campaign-finance expert Senator Winters had brought on board when her opponents accused her of taking illegal funds from the natural gas industry in March. Nathan had his nose buried in his laptop, gathering information on HIPAA.

"Thank goodness," he muttered when she sat. "Where were you last night? Ford's been looking for you all morning."

"New boyfriend," she lied, opening her laptop. "Who's our leak? The doctor? His staff?"

"Finding the leak's your job. I'm only here because the Times hinted she used campaign funds."

"Liberals." Katrina said, making it into a curse word. Well, at least her job wasn't boring.

Jerry Court stuck his head into their cubicle. The kid was a decade younger than the other staffers, but his poll-tracking algorithms had correctly predicted the outcome of every 2010 midterm race three months before the election, and Winters only hired the best. "We're screwed, guys!" He jerked his can of Red Bull at the ceiling.

"I can prove she used her own money, Jerry," Nathan said. "I've got the documents right here. We'll release them—"

"How she paid doesn't matter. What matters is that every publication in the world now knows Senator Winters had a boob job while in office. Have you checked Reddit this morning? They've posted before and after pictures. Frankly, I'm surprised it took so long for this to leak. It's obvious. Guess everyone figured she'd get her butt-ugly face touched up before worrying about her chest."

Katrina squeezed her pen. "Watch your mouth, kid. That's your employer you're talking about."

"Hey, I'm an opinions guy. And that's the general opinion of the Internet. Probably why she's trailing by three points in men eighteen to twenty-four. Whatever. Let's talk housewives, ages thirty to fifty. Core constituency. They had a few on GMA this morning—wives of big donors. All whining about how they had to explain what breasts were to their kids. One more scandal, and they'll throw their weight behind Prescott."

Katrina snorted. "Good luck getting our donors to support a man who loudly declares the Earth's four thousand years old."

"Voters are idiots, Katrina."

High heels clicked on the tiled floor. All heads jerked up. Nathan wiped crumbs off his shirt. Katrina opened a binder to look busy. Then Senator Emma Winters walked in, her blond bob swaying. "Jerry, remind me never to put you in front of a microphone." Behind her stood her son, Kyle Winters, who looked like he was about to puke all over his mother's expensive jacket.

He also happened to be Katrina's oldest friend.

"We're going to spin this." Ford walked in behind Senator Winters. "Got that, ma'am? It's going to work out fine. We blame Obamacare. Physicians making patient records public? It's perfect. We go on the offensive."

"And when the soccer moms decide I'm corrupting their children?"

"Just tell them the reason you did it," Kyle suggested. "It made you feel sexy."

The senator stared at her son like he was a badly trained puppy who'd chewed up her shoe. "Excuse me?"

Katrina imagined doing what Shawn had asked of her, saying Ma'am, I'm an alcoholic, and I can't watch Kyle when he goes to party, which is a key part of my job. No room remained in this campaign for the senator to indulge a hint of personal weakness, let alone indulge it in her personal lawyer. Instead, Katrina stepped forward. "Ma'am, what do you want me to do?"

"You? Get to the clinic. I want the leaker fired. Gone. Out on the streets. Take Kyle with you. Everyone else, my office, now. We've got to strategize—press conference at noon!"

She moved like a hurricane, sucking up the other staffers in her wake, leaving Katrina and Kyle alone and staring at each other. His hazel green eyes were cloudy, unfocused.

"Missed you last night," he said, fighting past his hangover. "It was fun. Really." He'd just gotten back in the country from a three-month jaunt in Europe. Before he'd left, he'd been making a run at responsible adulthood—investing in businesses, doing his taxes, going to bed at ten. Something had clearly happened to make Fun Kyle resurface, and to a degree she hadn't seen in years. It was one thing to supervise him at family weddings and press conferences. Fun Kyle liked bars and clubs and trouble.

"Bet it was." Katrina gritted her teeth and hit 'print' on her laptop screen. "Let's go threaten a doctor."

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