Chapter 8: Walk-On

I did not go home.

I went out through the gym's kitchen door while Brant was still reading the text.

I did not stop running until I reached Jo's car.

She had parked it two blocks away with the engine on.

"They're at my apartment," I said.

"You don't have an apartment anymore."

"I have a very nice hardware store."

"Get in."

She drove us to a motel on Route 40 where the clerk took cash and did not look up.

We sat on the edge of the bed with the television off.

"He's going on live tomorrow morning," I said. "He'll say my name."

"So we go to the show."

"We?"

"A friend of mine works the medical post at that studio. Night-shift paramedic. She owes me nine favors."

"Jo."

"She'll put you on the staff list as the second medic."

"What do I do when I'm in?"

"You watch him lie." She turned to me. "And when the moment comes, you decide."

"Decide what?"

"If you want to ask him a question."

I looked at the wall.

"If I stand up on live television, Ellen will say I broke the order."

"Ellen told you to be silent about being Lantern."

"Yes."

"Did she tell you to be silent about being right?"

I thought about it.

I thought about Morris's letter, and about the bus ticket joke, and about a hundred cameras.

"I won't say what I am," I said. "I'll ask what he doesn't know."

"That sounds like my grandfather."

"He'd hate it."

"He'd love it. He just wouldn't say so."

At seven the next morning I walked into a glass studio building in a green medic jacket two sizes too small.

The paramedic at the post winked at me and handed me a bag.

"Don't touch the patients," she said. "Don't touch the cast. Don't touch the donut table."

"Why the donut table?"

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