The Zero Game

She’s not the only one. As she nervously searches the crowd, a sharp, nauseous pain continues to slice through my belly. No matter what else happens, I’ll never forgive myself for hurting her like this.

“Whatta I do now?” she asks.

“It’s okay,” I promise, hoping to soothe. “I have plenty of cash – maybe we can… I can hide you in a hotel.”

“By myself?”

The way she asks the question, I can already tell it’s a bad idea. Especially if she panics and doesn’t stay put. I made her a sitting duck once. I’m not abandoning her and doing it again. “Okay… forget the hotel. What if we-?”

“You wrecked my life,” she blurts.

“Viv…”

“Don’t Viv. You wrecked it, Harris, and then you – oh, God… do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“It was supposed to be one little favor – I swear, if I thought this would happen…”

“Please don’t say that. Don’t say you didn’t know…”

She’s absolutely right. I should’ve known – I spend every day calculating political permutations – but when it came to this, the only thing I was worried about was myself.

“Viv, I swear, if I could undo it…”

“But you can’t!”

In the last three minutes, she’s hit all the stages of emotional response: from anger to denial, to despair, to acceptance, and now back to anger. It’s all in reaction to one unchangeable fact: Now that I’ve gotten her involved, Janos isn’t giving up until we’re both dead.

“Viv, I need you to focus – we have to get out of here.”

“… and I made it worse,” she mumbles. “I did this to myself.”

“That’s not true,” I insist. “This has nothing to do with you. I did this. To both of us.”

She’s still in shock, struggling to process everything that’s happened. She looks at me, then down at herself. It’s not just me anymore. We. From here on in, we’re chained at the wrist.

“We should call the police…” she stutters.

“After what happened with Lowell?”

She’s quick enough to see the big picture instantly. If Janos got to the number two person at Justice, all paths to law enforcement take us straight back to him.

“What about going to someone else…? Don’t you have any friends?”

The question backhands me across the face. The two people I’m closest to are already dead, Lowell’s turned, and there’s no way to tell who else Janos has gotten to. All the politicians and staffers I’ve worked with over the years – sure they’re friends, but in this town, well… that doesn’t mean I trust them. “Besides,” I explain, “anyone we talk to – we’re painting a target on their chest. Should we do to someone else what I did to you?”

She stares me down, knowing I’m right. But it doesn’t stop her from searching for a way out.

“What about any of the other pages?” she asks. “Maybe they can tell us who they made drop-offs to… y’know, who else was playing the game.”

“That’s why I wanted the delivery records from the cloakroom. But there’s nothing there from any of the game days.”

“So all of us – all the pages – we were being used without even knowing it?”

“Maybe for the other bets, but not for the gold mine.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“That kid who hit Matthew – Toolie Williams – he’s the one who had your nametag. He was dressed up to look like a page.”

“Why would someone want to look like a page?”

“I’m guessing Janos paid him to do it… and that Janos is acting on behalf of someone else who had a vested interest in the outcome.”

“You think it goes back to the gold mine?”

“Hard to say, but they’re the only ones who benefit.”

“I still don’t understand,” Viv says. “How does Wendell Mining benefit if there’s supposedly no gold in the mine?”

“Or more specifically,” I add, “why does a company that has no mining experience spend two years trying to buy a gold mine with no gold in it?”

We both stare at each other, but Viv quickly looks away. We may be stuck together, but she’s not forgiving me that quickly. More important, I don’t think she wants to know the answer. Too bad for her, that only makes one of us.

I pull the rolled-up pages from Matthew’s briefing book out of my pocket. I can still hear the mayor’s voice in my head. Wendell was already getting to work, but there wasn’t a piece of mining equipment in sight. “So what’re they doing down there?”

“You mean other than mining?”

I shake my head. “The way the mayor said it… I don’t think they’re mining.”

“Then what else do you need a gold mine for?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

She knows what I’m thinking. “Why don’t you just call the mayor back and-”

“And what? Ask him to take a little snoop around and then put his life in danger? Besides, even if he did, would you trust the answer?”

Viv again goes silent. “So what do we do?” she finally asks.

All this time, I’ve been looking for a lead. I reread the name of the town from the sheet of paper in my hands. Leed. Leed, indeed. The only place that has the answer.

Checking the exhibit hall one last time, I take off for the escalator. “Let’s go,” I call out to Viv.