“Yeah, and we’re taking him to his house near Seattle to reset the system.”
“The house is the first place—”
“No, Livia’s contact, Little, says it’s not being monitored. Should be just a quick in and out.”
“Why does that sound familiar?”
Dox laughed again. “Because women say it’s your only means of lovemaking?”
Rain didn’t answer. Sometimes with Dox, silence was all you could do.
“Seriously,” Dox went on. “We’ll be careful.”
“What’s the endgame? You reset the system, then what?”
“Then Mr. Schrader has kindly offered to advise us on how to obscure the faces of the girls in the videos. That way only the men in them will get hurt. The girls didn’t do anything, and in fact quite a few of them are kindly inclined to Mr. Schrader for being so nice to them. He understands if any of the videos get released without being obscured, it could cause a lot of pain for those nice girls.”
Rain understood Schrader must have been nearby and that Dox was choosing his words deliberately.
“All right,” Rain said. “So the plan is to release sanitized versions of the videos?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s going to have a lot of very powerful people feeling irked.”
“Well, they’re already irked, and they have a logical motive to do us in on top of it. I’d like to remove the logical motive and just leave them feeling irked. Irked isn’t too bad. I’ve irked lots of people and none of them has killed me yet. Look at you and Larison. I irk you all the time and we’re all friends.”
“Still.”
“Partner, if you’ve got something better, I am all ears.”
Rain considered pointing out that it wasn’t his job to come up with solutions, given that Dox had created the problem. But that wouldn’t be fair. Or helpful.
“I wish I did,” he said.
“Look, it’s actually a pretty good plan. If those videos get released, the men starring in them are going to have a whole lot of problems more serious than getting back at whoever pressed the publication button, assuming they even know who that was. On top of which, they might lose access to their current resources. I mean, today, Pierce Devereaux is the damn director of National Intelligence. Tomorrow, he could be the disgraced former director, and negotiating a plea deal for reduced prison time for the rape of teenaged girls. I’d call tomorrow’s Pierce Devereaux a much less formidable enemy, wouldn’t you?”
“And I suppose that applies to the others, as well.”
“That’s our thinking. So unless you have any other concerns, we’re going to proceed as planned. By the way, how’s old Manus?”
Rain glanced over. Manus was signing with Dash. Evie was watching Rain.
“He seems good. They’re all good.”
“Tom told me what happened. I really appreciate you and Delilah helping out. And I’m not trying to gild the lily here, but I think this could work out well. That Manus is a damn force of nature. He saved my ass earlier, and I for one would be proud to welcome him into our little band of brothers.”
“There is no band. I’m retired. Or anyway, trying to be.”
“All right, well, if you ever decide to get off the shuffleboard court, or shit happens, or whatever. I’m just saying, Manus is solid. Give him my best, will you?”
Rain nodded at Evie. “I’ll give him your best.”