The Liar's Lullaby Read Online Free PDF Page B

bare- butt naked, chanting about diversity, but an Aryan woman had to hide her Valkyrie Sisterhood tattoos and apologize for the crime of being born white.
    Outside the ballpark, it was a scene. News trucks, reporters with microphones. And police cars lined up for a hundred yards, lights shrill, a bigfoot presence that made her skin creep.
    Keyes tapped his watch. “Sixty seconds, max.”
    They were on a late run, one of Blue Eagle’s night pickups in the city. The truck’s onboard computer automatically tracked their route. It had logged them taking a detour to the ballpark, and if they loitered there too long, their jobs would be toast.
    “Do you care?” Ivory said. “When the fightback comes, these jobs won’t matter.”
    “When the fightback comes, I want access to the truck and everything in it. So I stay on the payroll until shots are fired.”
    The Blue Eagle uniform shirt stretched across his sloping shoulders. Years in the army, Ivory thought; a decade spent working as a security contractor on behalf of the government, earning three hundred thousand dollars a year, and for what? To get fired. To end up sitting on his butt behind the wheel of a courier truck, wearing that cheap-ass shirt. The “gubmint” had reduced a warrior to a delivery boy.
    Ahead, barricades were set up. Behind them people huddled, lighting candles, laying flowers, crying. A TV crew was interviewing a Mexican woman and her little girl. The woman wiped her eyes. “Tasia grew up here—it’s like losing a member of our family. How could an accident like this happen?”
    Ivory kept her voice low. “The lie’s taking root.”
    Keyes’s face flattened, like a club. “Soon enough we’ll give her something to cry over.”
    They kept moving. Being near so many cops gave Ivory the willies. She had a record. She’d been caught patrolling the border. Illegals infested America like lice, but hunt them, take their drugs, and you got called a criminal.
    Keyes snapped photos with his phone. “Didn’t I tell you, Frisco is at the heart of the government’s plans?”
    Ivory nodded. He certainly had told her San Francisco would be a staging center during the government crackdown.
    “Killing Tasia here proves it,” he said.
    He sent his photos to Tree of Liberty. Nearby, the little Mexican girl laid a spray of white carnations by the barricade.
    “God have mercy on their souls,” Ivory said.
    “Mercy, on lice ?”
    Keyes eyed her with what felt like disgust. True America, the realm of freedom and power where they lived—in their hearts—was a hard-core place.
    “Don’t hurt my feelings. I meant God better, ’cause we won’t.”
    He should know how serious she took it. She risked everything for True America. This job, her whole life in San Francisco, was a front. And if the cops found out, she’d take a hard fall.
    Then Keyes put a hand on her shoulder. “The rocket launcher rests right here. I’ll teach you.”
    She lifted her chin, thrilled. Around them, gawkers and weepers continued to gather. Cops came out of the ballpark, and a few stragglers who had been at the concert. Some wore bloody clothing. One, silhouetted by the white light of television cameras, was a lumbering figure in fatigues, a— no motherloving way —a Goliath holding a chunk of the turf from the field as a souvenir.
    Ivory turned and pulled Keyes toward the truck. “Freak alert. The night crawlers are coming out.”
    Keyes didn’t linger. When you drove an armored car for a living, you couldn’t afford to be late to the bank.

7
    R OBERT MCFARLAND OWNS THE COLT FORTY-FIVE?” JO’S HEART rate kicked up. “I’d better see the footage of the shooting.”
    “You should. But don’t expect it to clarify anything,” Tang said.
    Tang led her to a control room on an upper deck of the ballpark, overlooking the field. One wall was lined with television monitors. Cops and stadium officials filled the room. Below, under the bleached stadium lighting, forensics