Chapter 5: Landing

The man at arrivals held a white card that said RAINEY and did not smile.

He was tall, with gray at his temples, and the ink on his cuff had spread into the sleeve of his rumpled suit.

"Mrs. Rainey," he said. "Miss Rainey. Cedric Somerville."

"You carried my daughter's portfolio to a panel in April and didn't tell me," I said.

"Your father told me not to," he said.

"And you did what you were told."

"Yes," Cedric said evenly. "It's a habit I'm working on."

Hattie laughed out loud, the first real laugh I had heard from her in a week.

He took our bags without asking and led us out to a black car.

I didn't thank him.

He didn't seem to expect it.

In the back seat I turned my phone on, and it began buzzing at once.

Forty-one missed calls from a number I'd blocked.

Dozens more from numbers I didn't know.

Then a message from my father: Watch Alana's feed. She posted it by mistake and took it down in four minutes. It's everywhere.

Cedric held out his own phone.

"I'd start there," he said.

The video had been shot sideways, on a phone held at chest height.

It showed a wood-paneled office at Columbia, with a seal on the wall and Alana's hand in the corner of the frame.

Rodney stood in the middle in his dress uniform.

"Colonel Rainey," said a man in a gray suit, hurrying in with a letter. "We have a problem."

"What problem?" Rodney said. "You know what it took to set this up."

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