Page 21 of A Friend in the Glass

He didn’t recognize the number; he answered on the third ring.

“Good morning! May I please speak to Samuel Auden?”

“Who is this?”

“Good morning, Mr. Auden! My name is Sara, and I’m a student at Columbia Law School! I’m calling today because I’m volunteering for the Restore Our America Committee, and I wanted to ask for your support in bringing back the glory of our great country by donating to Congresswoman Nasta’s reelection campaign!”

“Pass,” Sam said.

Sara was working on what felt like her fifteenth exclamation mark, saying, “Thank you anyway! While I’ve got you on the line, could you confirm your contact—”

He hit End.

Rufus was fixing his beanie while watching Sam. “Who was that?”

“Who the fuck knows? She needs a fucking Quaalude, whoever she is. That election isn’t for almost a year.” Sam glanced around. No sign of Brady, although it was impossible to check every face in the crowded space. If Lew had his guard dog on patrol, Sam guessed it would be downstairs, in the exhibition hall. Which, of course, was where they needed to start their search for Evangeline Ridgeway. He let out a sigh.

Rufus lowered his voice to a false baritone and mimicked Sam’s “Pass.” He caught Sam’s stare and tried to pass off a smile that was anything but innocent.

Sam rolled his eyes and started throwing elbows to clear a path to the escalator. He held his own pretty well; the only setback was the old lady who got him in the knee with her cane, but it had been a dirty hit—she’d cheated and gotten him when he wasn’t looking.

The crowd thinned as they rode down to the exhibition hall. Sam adjusted the badge hanging around his neck. “Do you still have the program from yesterday?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.” Rufus yanked the program free from his sweatshirt. He worked the wrinkles out a little before offering it.

Sam flipped through the day’s events. “She’s not on the schedule today, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find her. Once you take all the old white men out of the equation, there are like six people left.”

“Sausage fest is the term you’re looking for.”

“God,” Sam said as he stepped off the escalator. “Now I’ve got that in my head.”

They moved around the perimeter of the hall. Booths and tables in orderly rows filled the center of the large room. And while the people manning the booths and tables looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to explain how their laser or their railgun or their new bullet jacket would be the perfect thing for Iraq or Afghanistan or, hell, Detroit if it came to that, the men and women circulating through the hall scarcely seemed to notice the displays and the charts and the catchy banners. The people at this convention—and at a hundred other conventions like this—weren’t there for the booths and the banners. They were there for the other people like them. So Sam watched faces. And he inspected the Conasauga booth, where a young woman with dimples and a paisley scarf around her neck was smiling and nodding at passersby and looking giddy at the mere possibility of a chance to talk about tactical vehicles. But he didn’t see Evangeline Ridgeway.

“Ok,” he muttered at the end of their circuit. “Now what?”

Rufus snagged the program back from Sam, moved against a wall where he’d be out of the way, and flipped through the pages. “You said she wasn’t on the schedule, but maybe she’s rubbing shoulders at a bar or something.” He took out his phone and checked the time. “Or having coffee, I should say. Hey. Check Twitter—see if she posted anything patriotic that might also suggest a location.”

With a grimace, Sam opened Twitter and found Ridgeway’s handle. She had retweeted several posts from pro-military accounts—including one from a veterans advocate Sam actually recognized. She’d also included an angry tweet about her latte because it was too milky, and she’d tagged the coffeeshop in the kind of petty vindictiveness that social media rewarded. And then, from a couple of hours before, a tweet that saidLookingforward to @urgenta’s presentation on their THUNDER platform and updates. Keeping America Safe!

“You know what?” Sam said as he flashed the message at Rufus. “I think she would have done great under Hitler.”

Rufus made a face but then started flipping through the program again. “She sounds like a real—ah, Urgenta. Panel ends in about ten minutes. Man, these people start protecting America before I’m even out of bed. Did you want to try and catch her afterward?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

They used the postage-stamp-sized map in the program to head toward the room where the panel was being held. People were already starting to sneak out of this hour’s sessions, which meant that the hall was filling up again. A couple of guys threw Sam and Rufus second glances. Maybe they were closet cases. Hell, maybe they were out-and-out homos. But the back of Sam’s neck prickled, and he remembered his brush with Brady, and he wondered how many people had been given their description since yesterday afternoon.

After two wrong tries, they found the Urgenta panel as it was ending. The double doors stood open, and a throng of bored-looking—and slightly sweaty—people were pouring out into the hallway. Sam scanned faces. Rufus broke away from his side without comment, weaving his way through the exiting crowd, and vanishing into the sea of people on the opposite side of the Urgenta doors.

Sam opened his mouth to call after him, and then he spotted Evangeline. He hadn’t paid much attention to her the day before when he had been reacting to the shock of seeing Lew, but he recognized the shape of her face, the plastic smile. She wore a simple navy suit that looked good on her and managed to look expensive while still being understated. Her brown hair was longand artfully curled—Sam didn’t want to think about the wake-up call time for hair like that. She was talking to a young man who stumbled while Sam was watching; he was trying to look down her shirt. Ah, young love.

“Ms. Ridgeway?” Sam called and fought his way through the river of bodies.

Her head came up. Dark eyes focused on him, assessed, tried to catalog. Cold eyes. File not found.

“I’m sorry,” she said as people streamed around Sam with varying looks of irritation. One older man even harrumphed. “Have we met?”

“Not officially,” Sam said. “Could I have a moment of your time?”

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