Brad Meltzer - The Inner Circle

I was wrong. She wasn’t inside. She was out here the whole time.

“I’m sorry. I really am,” Clementine adds as she points her gun at Dallas’s face, then over to mine. “But I need to know what they did to my dad.”

"You really think I believe a word you’re saying?” I ask, my eyes narrowing on Clementine’s gun.

“She’s a liar,” Dallas agrees. “Whatever she’s about to tell you, she’s a liar.”

“Don’t let Dallas confuse you,” Clementine says. “You know what’s true… you met Nico yourself. They ruined him, Beecher. They ruined my dad’s life.”

“You think that excuses everything you did? You killed Orlando! And then that lying… exploiting our friendship…!” I shout, hoping it’s loud enough for someone to hear.

There’s a small group of employees all the way down by the cave’s cafeteria. They don’t even turn. They’re too far.

She points with her gun, motioning us around the corner as we duck under the yellow police tape with the word Caution written across it. Back here, the lights are dimmer than those in the main cavity. From the piles of metal shelving on our right, and the rolls of cable wire piled up on our left, it looks like this section of the cave is mostly used for maintenance and storage. No one’s hearing us back here.

My brain whips back to our old schoolyard and when she tied that jump rope around Vincent Paglinni’s neck. Two days ago, when Clementine saw her father, I thought the girl who was always prepared was finally undone. But I was wrong. As always, she was prepared for everything.

“Beecher, before you judge,” she says. “I swear to you… I tried telling you the truth.”

“When was that? Before or after you hired someone to play your dead grandmother?”

“I didn’t hire anyone! Nan’s the woman I live with-the landlord’s mother-in-law. Instead of paying rent, I take care of her!”

“Then why’d you say she’s your grandmother?”

“I didn’t, Beecher! That’s what you said! And then-You cared so much about it, and I just wanted-You have no idea what’s at stake.”

“That’s your response!? You’re not even pregnant, are you? That was just to suck my sympathy and lead me along!”

“I didn’t tell her to blurt that! She saw me throwing up and that’s what she thought! The woman hates me!”

“You still let me believe some old woman was your dead grandmother! You understand how sick that is?”

“Don’t say that.”

“You’re sick just like Nico!”

“ Don’t say that! ” she erupts.

“ You killed my friend! ” I erupt right back. “You murdered Orlando! You’re a murderer just like your crazy-ass father!”

She shakes her head over and over, but it’s not in anger. The way her chin is tucked down to her chest, she can’t look up at me. “I–I didn’t mean to,” she pleads. “I didn’t think he would die.”

“Then why’d you bring that chemo with you!? I know how you did it-don’t say it’s an accident, Clementine! You came in the building with that chemo in your pocket-or was the real plan to use that on me?”

“It wasn’t meant for anyone,” she says, her voice lower than ever.

“Then why’d you bring it!?”

Her nostrils flare.

“Clementine…”

“Why do you think I brought it? Why does anyone carry around oral chemo? It’s mine, Beecher. The medicine is for me!”

My eyebrows knot. Dallas shakes his head.

“What’re you talking about?” I ask.

“Orlando… He wasn’t supposed to be there,” Clementine stutters. “When Orlando opened that SCIF and handed me his coffee… I thought the chemo would just… I thought he was in the Plumbers-that he was watching me for the President… that they’d found out about me. I thought it would knock him out… but I never thought it’d…”

“What do you mean, the medicine’s for you ?” I ask.

“Ask yourself the real question, Beecher: After all these years, why now? Why’d I pick now to track down my father?” Her chin is still down, but she finally looks up at me. “They diagnosed me eight months ago,” she says, her hands-and the gun-now shaking. “I’m dying, Beecher. I’m dying from… back when Nico was in the army… I’m dying from whatever they did to my father.”

"She’s a liar,” Dallas insists.

“They changed him!” Clementine shouts. “Whatever the army put in Nico… that’s what made him insane!”

“You see that, Beecher? It’s pure delusion,” Dallas says.

“It’s not delusion,” Clementine says. “Ask him, Beecher. He’s in the Plumbers, isn’t he?”

“I’m not in the Plumbers,” Dallas insists.

“Don’t let him confuse you,” Clementine says. “I knew it when I saw him at the cemetery. But when I first found out about Eight-ball… ask him what I was blackmailing Wallace for. It wasn’t money. Even when they nibbled and replied to my message in that rock at the graveyard-I never once asked for money.”

“Is that true?” I say to Dallas.

He doesn’t answer.

“ Tell him! ” Clementine growls, her hand suddenly steady as her finger tightens around the trigger. “He knows you’re working with the President and the barber and all the rest of his ass-kissers who’ve been hiding the truth for years!”

Dallas turns my way, but never takes his eyes off Clementine’s gun.

“She asked for a file,” Dallas finally says. “She wanted Nico’s army file.”

“His real file,” Clementine clarifies. “Not the fake one they dismissed him with.” Reading my confusion, Clementine explains, “My mother told me the stories. She told me how Nico… she told me how he was before he entered the army. How when they were younger… how she used to keep the phone on her pillow and he’d sing her to sleep. But when he finally came home… when he left the army-”

“He didn’t leave the army. They kicked him out- for trying to use a staple remover to take out one of his superiors’ eyes,” Dallas says.

“No-they kicked him out because of what they put inside him… what they turned him into,” Clementine shoots back. “Have you even bothered to read his fake file? It says he got transferred from army sniper school in Fort Benning, Georgia, to the one in Tennessee. But I checked. The address in Tennessee was for an old army medical center. Nico wasn’t just a sniper! He was a patient-and he wasn’t the only one!” she adds, looking right at me. “You know another one! You know him personally!”

“What’re you talking about?” I stutter.

“My mother-before she died-she told me, okay. You think they came to our tiny town and just took one person? They took a group of them-a bunch of them. So you can think I’m as crazy as you want, but I’m not the only one with the results of their experiments in me, Beecher. You have it in you too! You have it from what they did to your father!”

I shake my head, knowing she’s nuts. “My dad died. He died on the way to the recruitment office. He never even got a chance to sign up.”

“And you believed that. You believed that because that’s what they told you, okay. But he was there. He and Nico and the others… they were enlisted long before anybody knew it. Your father was alive, Beecher. And if I’m right, he still may be!”

My lips go dry. My stomach crumples, folding in on itself. She’s a liar. I know she’s a liar…

“You can look for yourself,” she adds. “Ask them for the records, okay!” It’s the third time she’s ended a sentence with the word okay , and every time she uses it, every time her voice cracks, it’s like a fracture, a faultline that’s splintering through her, threatening to undo everything she always keeps so neatly packed in place. “My mom told me-the experiments were all going right-until everything went wrong-!”