Free Conscience (The Bellator Saga Book 2) by Cecilia London

creepy repressive federal facility without constant monitoring. Fischer unceremoniously shoved her into the chair across from the agents.
    “Be nice,” he said. “I’ll be back for you later.”
    She couldn’t quell her curiosity, and spun to face him as he headed toward the door. “You’re not staying?”
    Fischer laughed. “Getting attached to me so early?”
    Disgusted with herself, Caroline turned her back to him and heard him laugh again.
    “Take your time,” he told the agents.
    The older one spoke first. “I’m Howard, this is Bradbury,” he said, nudging a thumb at his companion.
    How quaint. They were being polite and introducing themselves. Caroline abandoned her own rules of etiquette and stayed silent. She started making a mental list of names. Howard, Bradbury, Fischer, Cameron. And Gary, who apparently wasn’t an important enough member of the club to warrant a reference by his last name. It was like a fucking white boy dudebro convention with less money, fewer beers, and more violence.
    “How are you feeling?” Howard asked.
    His tone indicated that he really couldn’t give a shit, but she was going to be honest anyway. She could talk about nonessential topics. Her wrists were red, the outline of the handcuffs still visible. She rubbed them vigorously, but they weren’t her main concern.
    “My ribs hurt,” she said.
    “Why is that?”
    “Some soldiers beat the crap out of me.”
    “That doesn’t seem nice.”
    “Welcome to my world.”
    “Maybe we can get you something to help the pain.”
    Right. She wouldn’t be hanging her hat on that one. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
    “Give a little, get a little. You know how it works.”
    “Which one of you is the good cop?” Caroline asked. “Is it you, since you’re playing at pretending to help me out?”
    Howard smiled at her. “I appreciate your honesty. Perhaps we’ll be able to get somewhere today. And in case you’re wondering, neither one of us is the good cop.”
    Refreshing honesty from him as well. “I have nothing to say to either one of you. Also, shouldn’t you have read me my rights?”
    Bradbury spoke up. “You don’t have any rights.”
    A young asshole. Predictable. Probably only a year or two out of Quantico, if that. “So we’re just abandoning any and all constitutionality in here?”
    “Traitors don’t have rights,” he said.
    “You presume I’m a traitor?”
    “You tell me.”
    She wasn’t going to fall for that one. Caroline pursed her lips and turned her head away from them, fixating on the concrete blocks of the wall. Counting them. Rearranging them in her head. Imagining patterns and movement. Like a game.
    “Let’s drop the charade. You know why you’re here,” Howard said.
    Caroline continued to stare at the wall.
    “We found your laptop,” he said.
    He was lying but she wasn’t going to correct him. He wanted her to admit she had a laptop. Or a cloud drive. Or a message board. Or a website. Or anything else. They were bluffing. They had no way of knowing what she’d been doing. They were trying to get her to admit facts that weren’t in evidence, so they could start building a roadmap toward their version of the truth.
    Unless they really knew about the laptop. Or that she’d attempted to destroy it in the first place. Or the secret online discussions, the passwords, the standalone server, the wireless hopping, the backups, the code words, the plotting…
    No. All her laptops had been encrypted before being swept clean and tossed into the Susquehanna. They couldn’t have gotten anything useful off of any of them, even if they managed to find corrupted remains. As for everything else…it had never happened. None of it. It had all been a dream. Like now. Now was a dream.  A very terrible, awful dream.
    She had no such thing as plausible denial but she had a very strong incentive to keep her mouth shut. Caroline banished thoughts of the rebellion from her mind. If they