Black Swan Rising Read online

  Copyright Information

  Black Swan Rising © 2018 by Lisa Brackmann.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  As the purchaser of this ebook, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2018

  E-book ISBN: 9780738759920

  Book format by Steff Pitzen

  Cover design by Shira Atakpu

  Editing by Nicole Nugent

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brackmann, Lisa, author.

  Title: Black swan rising / by Lisa Brackmann.

  Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Midnight Ink, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018014114 (print) | LCCN 2018015422 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780738759920 () | ISBN 9780738759470

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.R333 (ebook) | LCC PS3602.R333 B58 2018 (print) |

  DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014114

  Midnight Ink does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

  Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  To my friends Christy Gerhart, Ebbins Harris, and Pilar Perez.

  You’ve done so much to enrich my life.

  1

  They’d found her new email address.

  you fat slutty cunt why don’t you go suck a two-inch cock

  She stared at her laptop screen and shivered. The headquarters’ air conditioning ran so high it was like being inside a refrigerator half the time. She’d complained to Natalie, the closest thing they had to an office manager, saying, “You know, given Matt’s environmental focus, this isn’t setting the best example,” but Natalie had rolled her eyes fractionally and told her that she’d gone to the building manager and he’d promised to adjust the thermostat, but if they turned it up too much, then the tenants on the floor above them complained it got too hot.

  The conversation replayed in her head, like a lot of conversations did.

  You fat slutty …

  All at once the noise of the office—the phones, the ringtones from everyone’s cells, the conversations ranging from muttered to shouted, the TVs droning in the background, the clatter of heavy fingers on keyboards—seemed to recede, like she’d entered a tunnel and was leaving them all behind.

  “Sarah, how are we doing on the CaliBaja page?”

  She looked up. Ben stood there, wearing a carefully faded microbrewery T-shirt, his sandy hair curling at the collar.

  “I … It’s … I’ll have it done by end of day.”

  “Cutting it close.” He rested his palms on her desk and leaned in. Staring openly at her computer screen.

  It’s not there, she told herself. It’s on your phone. He can’t see it.

  “The language is okay,” he said. “It’s maybe a little dry. The images … these are too stock. Too bland. We want something a little edgy but that isn’t going to scare people.”

  He wasn’t that much older than she was, but she felt like he was a lot of the time, like the line between your early twenties and late twenties was a huge divide. Or maybe he just knew how to be so much better than she did. Like being the communications director was no big thing, it was just something he deserved.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll work on that.”

  “Make sure you emphasize job creation and economic impact on this side of the border, okay? Because that’s what the people want to hear about.”

  She smiled and nodded, smiled a little too hard and nodded a little too much. “Right. For sure.” Her cheeks twitched as he walked away.

  She realized she was breathing hard. Her back and shoulders ached.

  This chair is uncomfortable, she thought, and it’s too cold in here. She stood up, shoved the chair back under the desk. Grabbed her phone and tucked it in her pants pocket, which was so shallow that half of the phone stuck out of it. But she was wearing business attire, not jeans and a brewery T-shirt. No one would take her seriously if she dressed like Ben, even on Beer Friday.

  She walked out of the small maze of cubicles, past the ranks of long beige folding tables where a few volunteers sat phone-banking, past Natalie at the receptionist’s desk directing calls beneath the campaign banner, down the beige hall to the building’s lobby, and out the door, into the blinding sun.

  Too hot.

  The heat waves in San Diego almost always used to happen in September and October, people told her, but the weather had changed the last few years. Sometimes there were heat waves in March. May and June used to be gray most mornings into the early afternoons, but here it was, the beginning of May, and the temperature was in the low 90s and dry, with winds from the east and some stretched-out clouds too high up to bring any moisture.

  She took off her jacket, a black blazer that matched her slacks, folded it, and sat down on the retaining wall that ran in front of the parking lot.

  No one here knew who she used to be, she told herself.

  The brewery across the street was rolling up its metal doors, opening for business. There were three or four breweries within walking distance of headquarters, in this neighborhood of long, flat featureless buildings, industrial parks, cheap office space. Plenty of options for staffers to grab a quick beer at lunch, or engage in more serious drinking sessions after work. “They’re tasting sessions,” Ben had said once, grinning, when she’d declined his invitation. She wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, but she did know that beer was a major business here in San Diego—“the craft brewing capital of the United States; fuck Portland, they can’t compete”—and it seemed to be okay, even encouraged, to go taste the IPAs, stouts, saisons, dubbels, and sours.

  Not that she did.

  She caught a whiff of chili oil from the dumpling restaurant in the next complex. That was another thing you could find in the area, Asian food. Chinese dumplings, Japanese ramen, Korean barbecue. There were two large Korean supermarkets not far from here, a Ranch 99 market too, Asian strip malls that had sprouted among the car dealerships and fast food chains and gentlemen’s clubs, big box stores, parked semis, and medical buildings. All of these Asian businesses moving slowly west, pho place by Tai
wanese bakery.

  You hardly ever saw people walking around here though. The landscape was oversized and empty, a neighborhood built for absentee giants.

  “This a cigarette break?”

  She started. Turned. She thought she knew the voice, but it had never spoken to her directly.

  Her boss. Representative Matthew Cason.

  He stood there, suit jacket slung over one shoulder, blocking out the sun.

  “I … no,” she stuttered. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Shit. Oh well. Probably a good thing.”

  He was taller than average—always good for a politician—thick, dark hair shot with just a touch of gray, a square jaw with a beard that came in heavy and a nose just crooked enough to make his face interesting. She’d known that from seeing him on TV, at events, and, more recently, from a couple of his quick sweeps through the bull pen on the way to the campaign manager’s office.

  He sat down on the wall next to her. “I quit years ago. But I swear, if you’d had one just now? I’d be smoking it.”

  It was strange when someone you’d mostly seen on TV and at a distance suddenly sat less than a foot away, becoming three-dimensional. The reality of the person, his body, how he held himself—it wasn’t the same on a screen. She was conscious of all kinds of things: the patches of sweat under the arms of his blue Oxford button-down, how trim his waist and belly were, that his eyes were on the green side of hazel and were staring at her.

  “Today’s been a clusterfuck,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” It seemed like the safest thing to say. Or did he want her to ask why?

  Why do you care what he wants?

  He’s your boss, she told herself. Of course you care. You wanted to work for him. He’s sitting right next to you.

  Close enough to smell his sweat.

  Her heart was pounding.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  He rolled his eyes. “Flight from DC was late. Missed a fundraiser. Almost missed another one. You’re in Communications, right?”

  “I … yes,” she said, nodding.

  “I don’t remember your name.”

  You wouldn’t know it, she wanted to say. “Sarah. Sarah Price.”

  “Right,” he said. “Sarah Price.” He was still staring at her. She thought he was going to do something, like shake her hand, but his hands stayed where they were, at his sides, grasping the edge of the concrete wall.

  He kicked out his legs and sprung to his feet. Now he stuck out his hand. She took it. Warm, dry, slightly callused. He held on a moment.

  “Great meeting you,” he said, letting go. “I’m looking forward to your thoughts on the CaliBaja mega-region.”

  He might have smirked as he said it, but he was gone before she could be sure.

  Of course he had that kind of charisma. Of course. It was how he got away with some of the stands he took, the things he said. She’d been hearing about his charisma since she’d started following his career during his first term in Congress.

  It was just different, seeing it up close, aimed at her.

  She hadn’t gone to work for him just because of that. It was his policy positions, that he said smart things, and he didn’t seem to measure every word by its potential to hurt or help; he just said what he thought.

  And he was a vet in a military town.

  You want to get into Washington, you pick your player. Matt Cason was a good bet.

  But his first reelection campaign was going to be a bitch.

  “I’m not going to make a speech. You’ve heard too many of them from me already, and we have a long way to go on this shitshow. And believe me when I tell you that it’s going to be a shitshow.”

  The congressman—Matt, everyone called him Matt, even if they sounded self-conscious when they said it—sat in the middle of one of the long tables in the bull pen, hands on either side of his thighs, fingers curled over the hard rubber edge.

  Same pose as when he was sitting next to her outside.

  “We don’t know for sure who we’re going to be running against, but the amount of money our opponent is gonna spend on this race? We might break the record for a congressional campaign. Maybe four million by him, and that’s not even counting outside money. All of which I’m sure will be spent on positive ads talking about issues and laying out a constructive agenda to move the district and this country forward.”

  A wave of chuckles rippled through the room. Most of the senior staff were there, regardless of whether they were paid by the campaign, by the state party, or were outside consultants: Jane and Presley and Angus (The Troika, Ben called them), Tomás the field director, John the tracker, Natalie, who handled all the office stuff and answered the phones. There were a few junior staffers she recognized, Sylvia the constituency coordinator for one, and a couple of volunteers she didn’t know.

  She was still trying to figure out how everything worked.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “Whoever ends up getting the nod, they’re going to go negative. And they’ll get the outside funding to bury us in this … negativity. So, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Raise more money!” somebody called out. Laughter.

  Matt gave a little fist pump. “Always.” Then he shrugged. “You know what, fuck ’em. We don’t put up with their shit, and we will hit them back hard. But we run our own campaign. We focus on our own game plan.”

  The stare. It was weird to watch. All this intensity, focused on someone, or something, but you didn’t know what he was really looking at. What he was seeing.

  “We are going to talk about real problems and concrete solutions, and we are going to articulate a vision. We explain things clearly without talking down to people. We talk about our goals, why we have those goals, and how we’re going to get there. And we’ll aim for the minimum ration of bullshit. Though I’m not making any promises on that one.”

  The obligatory chuckles.

  He hopped down off the desk, the same choreography as outside.

  “Right now? It’s Beer Friday, and I’m in the mood for a beer. Who’s in?”

  “You’re coming, right?”

  “I’m working on CaliBaja.”

  “I thought you were going to be done with that by now.” Ben hovered by her desk, clasping his hands.

  “I’m close.”

  He huffed out a sigh. “Matt wants to get to know everybody better, and you need to be there. He asked about you today.”

  She felt a little rush of adrenaline. That’s good, she told herself. It’s what you want, right? To get noticed?

  “Okay,” she said. “I just need a few minutes.”

  Ben leaned over her desk. “Look, I know you want to do issues. Just don’t try to reinvent the wheel. If it’s any kind of policy that could be considered a part of his public role, then the congressional staffers do the heavy lifting. If it’s posted to his official website, you can use it. If he’s in total synch with the state party or the DCCC on something, you can pull from them too. Most of what we’re doing here? It’s about crafting a message specifically for the campaign. Something that’s going to pop, get people excited. It’s about creating a consistent style and voice across all our social platforms.”

  “Right,” she said.

  He straightened up. “Just wrap it up and come over, okay? We can publish the page tomorrow.”

  “I will,” she said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Probably more like a half hour, but Ben didn’t need to know that.

  There was a poster of a baseball player tacked to the wall across from her cube. A good-looking black guy with hazel eyes, wearing a desert-themed camo jersey and a cap with the SD logo on it, smiling and holding two puppies. She ended up staring at the poster a lot, when she wasn’t sure what to write.

  Mayb
e I should go to a baseball game, she thought. A lot of people working here did. She’d heard it was fun. And Matt was a big fan.

  Just save the report, print out a copy, and go to the brewery, she told herself.

  The phone rang.

  She jumped a bit. It was the ringtone for her area, for Communications, a series of low trills.

  Maybe Ben, wondering where she was. Except … he’d call her on her cell.

  The person who emailed her, maybe he’d found her.

  She felt like she’d been slapped. Her gut twisted, and she was sweating in the cold, stale air.

  Why don’t you go suck …

  No, she told herself, no, don’t be stupid. It’s not him. They don’t know who you are now. Just pick up the phone.

  “Cason for Congress. This is Communications.”

  “Oh, good. I guess I dialed correctly.” A man’s voice, relaxed, maybe a hint of a drawl. Not young, not old. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Sarah,” he repeated. “Is your boss around?”

  “No, I’m sorry, he’s not. Can I take a message?”

  “Hmmm.” A pause. “That’s all right. I can talk to you.”

  Oh, fuck, she thought. Not someone who wanted to talk. She’d gotten a few of these calls from people who wanted to talk, about things like HAARP and vaccines and Islamic terrorists crossing over the border from Mexico.

  But she had to hear what he wanted to say before she could figure out how best to get him off the line in a hurry.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  “This is more about me helping you. I know some things about your opponents that you might find interesting.”

  “Oh.”

  Oppo research was under Presley, who had a voicemail box here but only came into the headquarters for meetings. He was a consultant, Ben had told her, based in Los Angeles.

  “I’m not really the right person for you to talk to,” she said. “I can transfer you—”

  “That’s okay. Tell you what. Why don’t you check the LA Times tomorrow? There’s going to be a story in it you’ll like.”