Free Born to Run by John M. Green Page A

can’t believe he knew the charity was a terrorist front.”
    “Don’t ever defend that shit publicly,” said Ed, walking to the window.
    Gregory was about to give his opinion when Ed’s head snapped round and the ice of his glare froze Gregory’s tongue. Instead, he straightened his tie, a Versace, and let Ed
continue.
    “Ahmed has to go down for this before the election, or we’re finished,” said Ed. “I’m telling you this thing will fester, and it will screw your campaign.
Trust me. None of those fancy arrows on that stupid sheet of paper will change that.”
    A silence jagged the air for almost a minute, a staggering time for someone like Gregory for whom speech and thought were almost indistinguishable.

 
14
    S IMON KNEW THAT his girlfriend Elia despised Mike Mandrake. It wasn’t merely that the journalist was a sharp-elbowed loudmouth from
Washington DC, there was something else. Simon tried pressing the issue but Elia clammed up as she usually did about her work. “It’s confidential”… “If I told you,
I’d have to kill you, ha ha”… They were all excuses, not reasons. Whatever was behind it, Elia was continually pissed off about something and it was bugging their
relationship.
    “It’s just him , okay?” she said, trying to push Simon off. “He’s an egotistical bully and a repulsive shit, and… and he’s got no background in
TV, but then… you know, this is the thing… he’s cracked something no one’s managed to crack before. So I loathe the guy… seriously, but his work...
it’s…”
    “This work. Is it worth the crap he’s dumping over you?”
    Elia’s eyebrows rose like someone poised at the top of a cliff debating whether to jump.
    Simon waited.
    “It’s about Isabel Diaz’s past,” she said.
    “You already told me that.” He stood and stretched his lanky frame. “Beer?”
    She nodded.
    He sidled over to the fridge. Take it slowly. That’s what one of the fridge magnets said. He knew it was Elia’s joke to remind him to fix the loose shelf inside, but right now he
took it as a warning for this conversation. He noticed her fingers were fretting her bottom lip. “What is it, then?” He couldn’t help himself. “Is he linking her to
Ahmed’s terrorists? Is that it? Jesus, Elia. How could you?”
    Like many of the former runaways Isabel’s charity had given a hand to, Simon was very protective of his benefactor. He didn’t know her personally, not really; they’d only met a
few times, but her Triple-B foundation had changed his life. At sixteen, he was doing drugs and living on the streets. It was his arrest for busting a convenience store that tripped him up. The
duty lawyer hooked him up with a Triple-B guy in court that day for someone else, and who convinced the judge not to send him to juvy if he signed up for their vocational training program. It was
hardly a choice, and he had begrudged it at the time. But it gave him the chance to pick up on plumbing and these days Simon’s ample chest puffed proudly at being a solid citizen who made a
difference to people’s lives. He fixed their pipes. It was far better than living in them.
    “It’s a human interest thing.” Elia was biting her lip now.
    “So what’s turning you inside-out?”
    She glanced back over her shoulder, and shook her head as if realising the stupidity of the action. “We’ve tracked down who Isabel’s father really was.”
    Simon handed Elia her beer and carried his over to the TV. “What? Was he a Bolivian drug lord or something? That it?” He kept looking at the screen, feigning the right level of
disinterest to keep Elia going.
    She cleared her throat. “Ah… here’s the thing… he wasn’t actually Bolivian.”
    “Huh?” He turned back so quickly he spilt his beer on the rug.
    Isabel’s father was Bolivian. A businessman. Everyone who’d been through Triple-B knew that. The story was famous.
    “He was Chilean,” said Elia, the sweat beading her