“So why did you?”

She blinked at me, surprised. “What?”

“Why did you become an Irwin?” I waved a hand at the windshield, indicating the storm. “Worrying about what may or may not be going on out there isn’t going to get us to Weed any faster. Now tell me why you became an Irwin while I try to get enough caffeine into my system to be safe behind the wheel.”

“Right. I—right.” Becks took a deep breath, drumming her fingers against the wheel. “How come you never asked me this before?”

“We were already busy when you hired on with the site, and then the Ryman campaign kicked into overdrive and there wasn’t time. After that… I don’t know. After that, I guess I was too busy being an ass**le to realize it was something I needed to ask about. I’m sorry. I’m asking now.”

“Okay.” Becks shook her head a little. “Okay. You know I’m from the East Coast, right?”

“Yeah. Westminster, like the X-Men.”

“No, Westchester, in New York. No mutants. Lots of money. Old money.” She glanced my way. “My parents aren’t in the same weight class as the Garcias, but they’re well-off enough that my sisters and I had what must have looked like a fairy-tale childhood. Dance lessons at three, riding lessons at five—yes, on actual horses. That may have been the only dangerous thing my parents ever approved of. I was supposed to go off to school, get a degree in something sensible, and come home to marry a man as well-bred and well-mannered as I was.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to Vassar. My concentration was in English, with a minor in American history. Wound up getting interested in the way the nation has changed, and realized that what I really wanted was to go into the news.” Becks slowed as she swerved to avoid a fallen tree branch that spanned half the road. “So I told my parents I wanted to study politics at New York University, transferred, and went for a degree in film, with a journalism minor. My parents disowned me when they found out what I was really doing, naturally.”

“Naturally,” I echoed, disbelieving.

Becks continued like I hadn’t spoken. Maybe that was for the best. “I’d been freelancing for about eight months when I saw the job posting for the Factual News Division at your site. I was doing Action News, I was doing Factual News… I was doing everything but supporting myself. I was living in a walk-up in Jersey City, eating soy noodles for every meal. I applied almost as a Hail Mary. And I got the job.”

“George was really excited about your application,” I said.

“Thanks.” Becks smiled a little. “I knew the Newsies weren’t for me after my second press conference. I kept wanting to slap people until they got off their asses and did something. So I started trying to transfer. I just wanted… I don’t know. I guess I wanted to do something fun for a change. I wanted to have a life before I died.”

“Cool.” I finished my Coke in one long swallow before wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and tossing the bottle into the back. “Thanks for telling me. I’m ready to drive, if you want to pull over.”

“Yeah, well, I figure we’re past the point of keeping secrets, right?” Becks began to slow. “Which reminds me. What’s the flat-drop you told Alaric to do?”

I grimaced.

She shot a sharp look in my direction as she pulled the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road. “Hey, I answered yours.”

“I know, I know. It’s not that I don’t want to answer. It’s just that it’s complicated.” I unfastened my belt as I spoke and moved to slide between the seats, creating the space for Becks to move to the passenger side. “So. You know the situation with the Masons, right? The whole thing where they adopted George and me after their biological son died in the Rising?”

“I’ve read Georgia’s essays on the adoption process,” said Becks carefully, as she moved to take the seat I had so recently vacated.

“Yeah, well, after she died, they tried to take her files away. We even went to court over her estate. They lost. George had a really solid will. But they weren’t happy about it.”

“So the flat-drop—”

“Was to the Masons.” I fastened my seat belt and resettled the seat, adjusting it to my height before taking the wheel. “Once those ratings-hounds get involved, there’s no way this story is getting buried again. Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky, and if anybody else needs to die, it’ll be them.”

“That’s a pretty horrible thing to say about your parents.”

“If they were my parents, I might feel bad about it.” I looked over at Becks. “Get some sleep. I’ll get us home from here.”

She nodded, an expression I couldn’t identify on her face. It might have been understanding. Worse, it might have been pity. “Okay.”

I didn’t look at her again as I pulled away from the shoulder and back onto the highway. The rain made the asphalt slick and a little hazardous, but it had been rainats, clong enough that most of the oil had washed away, and the very structure of the highway was working in our favor. Roadwork got a lot more dangerous after the Rising, and the American highway system wound up getting some adjustments that hadn’t been necessary before zombies became an everyday occurrence. In areas where flooding was a risk, the roads were slightly raised, and the drainage was improved over pre-Rising standards. It would take a flood of Biblical proportions to knock out any of the major roads, and that included the one that we were on. Let it pour. We’d still make it home.