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“You aren’t worried about the safety of your younger daughters?” I asked.

“They aren’t at the ranch. They have the best security in the world. They’re safe. If I can prevent people from going out and killing other people’s pets because of what happened to Rebecca and my parents, well.” She managed to muster a smile. “It’ll be worth the strain.”

Senator Ryman reached for her arm. “Emily ”

“Accepted.” I sat next to Shaun, ignoring the senator’s stricken look. “We’ll be setting up interview times with both of you later this afternoon. Now, I assume there’s a reason we’re all here?”

“The senator would like to discuss the tragic evidence of tampering that your crew discovered at his family ranch, Miss Mason,” said Governor Tate smoothly, all traces of his earlier aggravation gone. The man was a natural politician; I had to give him that, even if I wasn’t willing to let him have anything else if I could help it. “Now, I realize this may seem as if I’m questioning your journalistic integrity—”

“Hey, Rick, ever notice how dickheads only say that when they’re about to question your journalistic integrity?” asked Shaun.

“Oddly, yes,” Rick said. “It’s like a nervous twitch.”

The governor shot them a glare and continued. “Please understand that I don’t ask this for personal reasons, but simply because we need to determine the truth of the situation.”

I looked at him. “You’re wondering if somehow, to drive up our ratings, we smuggled evidence of terrorist activity through the checkpoints and managed to plant it while our own cameras were broadcasting over a live feed to an audience that can be conservatively estimated, judging by yesterday’s ratings, as being somewhere in the millions.”

“I wasn’t intending to put it in quite those—”

I held up my hand to cut him off, turning to face Senator Ryman. “Senator, you know I’ll ask this again when I’m permitted to film the exchange, but in the interests of killing this line of questioning here and now, I’m going to sacrifice spontaneity in favor of clarity. Have the lab results come back on the syringe?”

“Yes, Georgia, they have,” said the senator, jaw set in a hard line.

“Can you tell us what those results were?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant to the original question,” said Tate.

“Senator?” I said.

“The contents of the syringe were determined to be a suspension of ninety-five percent live-state virus, common designation ‘Kellis-Amberlee’ or ‘KA’, isolated in iodized saline solution,” the senator said. “We’re waiting on additional information.”

“Like the viral substrain?” I asked. “Right. Governor Tate, my crew and I were several hundred miles from the ranch at the time of the outbreak at the Ryman family home, and security records will support this. Further, with the exception of Mr. Cousins, we were all traveling with the campaign for months prior to the outbreak. Mr. Cousins was traveling with the convoy of Congresswoman Wagman, who should be able to vouch for his whereabouts. I’m not a virologist, but I’m fairly sure it takes special equipment to isolate the live virus without risking infection, and that said special equipment would not only be delicate, but would require special training to operate and maintain. Do you see where I’m going with this, Governor Tate, or should we draw you a diagram?”

“She’s right,” said Emily. Governor Tate looked toward her, eyes narrowing. She met his gaze and said, “I took virology courses at college; they’re required for an animal husbandry degree. What Peter is describing is lab quality. You’d need a clean room and excellent biohazard protections just to isolate it, much less load it into any sort of a a weapon. They just didn’t have the resources. You’d need something a lot more secure than a pressure cooker in a hotel room to do something like this.”

“Furthermore,” I said, cutting Tate off before he could speak again, “even assuming we could somehow come up with the resources to do something like this, and had some sort of ‘silent partner’ we could get out to the ranch while we were occupied at the convention, we’d have to be idiots to turn around and be the ones who found the proof that the outbreak was man-made. So now that you’ve insulted our patriotism, our sanity, and our intelligence, how about we move on?”

Governor Tate leaned back in his seat, eyes narrowed. I kept my own eyes wide, playing off just how disturbing the unbroken, too-too-blue of my contacts is to most humans. He looked away first.

Satisfied, I turned toward Senator Ryman. “So now that we’ve had that little throwdown, what else did you feel needed to be handled behind a firewall?”

To his credit, he looked embarrassed as he said, “We were wondering, given the circumstances, if, well if it might not be the best idea for the four of you to go home.”

I gaped at him. Rick did the same. Buffy, who had been uncharacteristically silent through the entire exchange with Tate, continued staring at her hands.

In the end, it was Shaun who spoke, slamming his feet flat against the floor as he stood up and demanded, “Are you people f**king insane?!”

“Shaun—” said Senator Ryman, raising both hands in a placating gesture. “If you’d just be reasonable here—”

“Pardon me, sir, but you gave up your right to ask me to do that when you suggested we run out on the story,” Shaun snapped, voice tight. Out of everyone in the room, I was the only one who understood how much that degree of self-control was costing him. Shaun’s temper doesn’t show itself often, but when it does, “duck and cover” is the best approach. “Don’t you think we owe it to our viewers to finish what we started? We signed up for the long haul! We don’t get to cut our losses and run as soon as things start getting a little bit uncomfortable!”