Ethan and I race into the office just after midnight, breathless and sweating. We had to dump his truck three blocks away when we couldn’t get past the police barricades set up around the Federal Reserve building.

Stepping off the elevator, I’m still trying to get my head around what’s happening. In a sudden vertigo, I feel like the ground is getting farther away but also somehow rushing up to meet me. It started with Carter’s question about my father.

When Ethan told him it’d been years since they’d spoken, Carter tried to hang up without telling us why he’d asked. Ethan pressed but was only able to get out of him that he was looking at a memo generated through the FBI’s Manhattan field office that no one had bothered to read until it became relevant. All we knew for certain: Patrick Turner Murphy was reaching out from the grave. Ethan’s gears were spinning before he ended the call.

While I drove, he worked the phones. First to track down the warden from Sing Sing to find out if anyone had claimed my father’s possessions. Then waking my father’s attorney to demand he gather any papers retrieved from the prison and messenger them to me at the magazine. The pieces were coming together, and it wasn’t a pretty picture.

“‘Unknown number of armed assailants gained entry to the Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty at 8:47 p.m.,’” Ethan reads aloud from his phone as we jog to our desks.

Everyone in the Farm is running around, ragged, shouting at each other across the room. I open up my laptop and bring up the Messenger app to send a text to Navid. It’s more efficient than trying to yell above the noise.

“No reports of shots fired.” Ethan pulls off his sports coat and tosses it on the back of his chair then searches through his desk drawers. “Off-duty NYPD officer called it in after witnessing several suspects entering the building through a side door. Described as males wearing military-style uniforms and bandannas over their faces, armed with assault rifles. CCTV footage shows someone inside opened a door to allow the suspects to enter. No communication with the on-duty security detail working in the building.”

My laptop chimes with a new message.

“Here.” Ethan pulls a folder from his drawer. “Photocopies of everything Patrick gave me during our interviews. Pages from his book.”

“Navid’s looking into it,” I say, talking to Ethan over the wall of our cubes. “I’ll read through—”

That’s when Ed pops up like a vole from his burrow. The man must have an extensive tunnel system through the office, because I never see him until he’s right on top of us.

“What’ve you got?” He spares me only a brief glance before turning his attention to Ethan.

“My source at the FBI gave us the preliminary details,” Ethan answers. “We’ve been gathering some background on a possible lead.”

Ed shoves his hands into his skinny jeans, which crinkle loose around toothpick legs. If he’s pleased or at least satisfied, he doesn’t show it. The man’s face is a topography of permanent undulating hills and long, snaking valleys.

“Your source can confirm?” Ed asks.

“He will.”

I feel someone behind me, like the sun at my back, before I notice Ethan looking over my shoulder. Cara’s there in a T-shirt and jeans, hair tied up on top of her head. If I saw her on the street, I wouldn’t recognize her.

Phone to her ear, she says, “C.J. checked in from the scene. I’ve given her the Twitter feed and sent one of mine to get video. Hearing there still isn’t any word from inside the building. She’s trying to confirm if officials believe the target is the vault or—”

“It isn’t,” I say before I think better than to interject. “At least, we think we have a pretty good reason to assume it’s not.”

My laptop chimes again with a message from Navid. There’s a link and a file attachment, so I let Ethan explain while I check it.

“Thursday evening a memo was generated from the FBI’s Manhattan office warning about chatter it picked up from an alt-right message board. Specifically, it mentioned a series of posts where several members discussed staging a demonstration wherein they would seize a piece of federal property. One of the locations suggested was the Federal Reserve Bank.”

Looking through Ethan’s photocopies of my father’s book, I start comparing them to the pages Navid’s sent. It’s eerie, seeing my father’s handwriting, reading his words. I hear his voice in my head like he’s standing right behind me, whispering in my ear.

“You’re suggesting a link to domestic terrorists?” Ed asks.

“More like militia,” Ethan says. I catch his eye and give him a nod. We’ve found what we’re looking for. “They’re a far-right group of sovereign-citizen types who contest the legality of the federal government. The Federal Reserve is one of their favorite boogeymen.”

“Okay…” Ed scratches at the prickly white stubble along his sagging chin while he leans against the wall of an empty cubicle. “Get your source to confirm and find me evidence we can print—”

“There’s more,” Ethan says, turning to me. “Avery…”

Frantic heart beating against my ribs, I don’t think, just speak and hope it comes out in English. I’ve always hated the spotlight. Strange for a journalist, I know. But even Adele gets stage fright.

“While he was in prison, my father began writing a book. A manifesto.”

Ed and Cara share a glance. They stand up a little straighter, attentive.

“Sometime in the last two years, he managed to disseminate his writing outside the prison. Navid has found several references to Patrick and his writings on alt-right message boards. He’s also mentioned numerous times on a website for a group like the one described in the FBI memo: Juris Christian Constitutional Assembly.”

For more than a decade I’ve been running as fast as I can to get away from my father. Turns out I’ve been running in circles. I should have known better than to believe prison would silence him, or that he’d allow himself to fade into obscurity and become irrelevant. Legacy was always very important to him. Without a loyal child to carry on his message, he needed a new audience. Seems he found one.

“Put it together for me,” Ed says.

“It seems this group has adopted Patrick’s philosophy, if you will, into their anti-government agenda,” Ethan says. “Patrick wrote about the illegitimacy of the federal government, the illegality of federal taxes, and a vast and convoluted conspiracy theory concerning central banking. It seems the men who have taken the building are members of this group, and that this demonstration is in response to Patrick Turner Murphy’s death.”

“There are hundreds of posts,” I add, “on these message boards claiming my father’s death was carried out by the government in a secret plot to silence him. They’re using his death as a rallying cry to lure people to their cause.”

Cara shakes her head, rubbing her eyes. “So they’re insane, is what you’re getting at.”

“And armed,” I say. “However absurd their beliefs, they’re committed to them.”

It’s easy to dismiss people like these men, my father, as lunatics and ignore them. But I’ve seen one of them up close. They’re far more dangerous than just some schizophrenic shouting at a lamppost or muttering to himself on the subway. What people mock as tinfoil-hat-wearers are organized, militarized, and growing in number every day. In every corner of the country there are people like Patrick Turner Murphy cultivating their flocks, feeding them lies and paranoia. I know better than most what happens when that paranoia hits a tipping point.

Ed clears his throat and checks his smartwatch. “Ethan, I want you down there. See what your source is willing to confirm and get a statement on the record.”

“All right, here’s how this works,” Cara says to me. “C.J. and my guy can keep gathering updates from the scene. We’ll put the feed up on the front page of the website and supplement with any additional details that come in. Avery, if you’re up to it…”

“Yes.” I asked for this. A chance at a real story. No way I’m backing down now. “I’m all over it.”

“You’re sending her?” Cyle appears behind Ed like the Ghost of Shitting in My Cereal.

“Problem?” Ethan’s still itching for a fight. Doesn’t matter who. Cyle’s as good a target as any right now.

“Yeah.” Cyle hacks his answer like he’s got a pepper flake stuck on the back of his throat. “She’s too green. Let me send one of my people.”

The insinuation being that, despite my assignment to the online section, I am not one of his people. I’m the enemy in the cold war between print and digital.

“I can handle it.” Looking Cara dead in her crisp blue eyes, I straighten my spine. “There’s no one more qualified to report this story than me.”

“Oh, come on.” Cyle all but stomps his feet. “This chick’s never covered something like this. She’ll get railroaded out there, and that’s only if she isn’t trampled first.”

“This chick ran three miles with a bullet in her leg.”

The words are out of my mouth and snap off the walls before I know I’ve spoken. Then it’s the absolute silence after a gunshot cracks through the air and everyone holds their breath and strains their ears. The phantom pain behind the scar on my leg throbs and burns as if it were still fresh.

“And the next time you call me a chick, you better be wearing a cup.”

In my peripheral vision, I think I catch Ed’s lips twitch.

“That settles it,” Cara says. When I check her face to gauge the fallout of my outburst, she looks almost proud. “Go with Ethan. I want a write-up for the website by five a.m.”

After the debate has ended and the others have dispersed, I go to the bathroom to change my outfit. I can’t run around in this dress, so I’ve got no choice but to change back into the clothes I’ve been wearing since Friday night. As I’m walking back to my desk, Ed gets my attention and calls me into his office, then shuts the door behind us.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asks, standing in the center of the room.

“Would you ask a man the same question?”

“Under the circumstances, yes.”

“I’m up to it.”

Emotional detachment has never been my problem. I spent several years of my adolescence making an art of it. The hard part is pretending there’s still something human left in the hollow places. For so long my father’s been the reason anything good gets ripped out of my hands. I’m not letting him take this, too.

Ed crosses his arms, and I realize the uncomfortable part of this conversation hasn’t started yet.

“You were with Ethan tonight,” he says.

There’s no point denying the obvious conclusion he’s already drawn. Ed knows Ethan and I were together when he called him back to the office. That we were two hours away in Montauk. It doesn’t take a great deal of deduction to figure out what that means.

“Yes.”

“Just keep it out of the office. What you do on your own time is your business. If it has to become my business, I won’t hesitate to fire either one of you. Fair?”

“That’s fair.”

As much as I like the idea of what Ethan and I could have together, I’m not about to risk my career on a man. Escaping Massasauga, getting through rehab, I’ve used up my second and third chances. One thing I’ve learned: I have to look out for myself.

“One more thing,” he says, taking a seat on the stool beside his desk. “How much has Ethan had to drink tonight?”

His question gives me pause. I stare at him, blinking, knowing every second I don’t respond sews doubt in Ed’s mind. He’s not some frail, feeble old man. Despite his apparent age, Ed is sharp and incisive, and he’s made a long career out of recognizing bullshit.

“I wasn’t counting.”

He doesn’t even blink, but we both understand.

“Keep an eye on him.”

With that, I’m dismissed. I don’t know if it’s just general concern that Ed doesn’t want to send a drunk reporter out to the scene of a major story—with armed law enforcement no less—or that he is still worried over Ethan’s two-day disappearance. But now understanding what Ethan’s been going through with his mother, I can’t fault him for needing a couple of days to himself. And I don’t think having a couple of glasses of champagne at a party qualifies as excessive.

Ethan is waiting for me when I come out of Ed’s office. He’s found my press pass in my desk and hands it to me as we walk to the elevator.

“What was that about?” he asks.

“A pep talk,” I say, hitting the Call button. “Ed wanted to make sure I’ve got my head on straight.”

“Don’t be mad at me…”

The doors open and we step inside the elevator.

“But you going off on Cyle like that…” Ethan runs both hands through his hair and slides me a look as the doors close. “I’m so turned on right now.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Outside, Ethan gets on the phone. It looks like the police have widened the perimeter from the Fed building; the barricades are now visible at the end of our block. Traffic is snarled with drivers trying to navigate around closed streets. Car horns trumpet and bray over the bleats and wails of sirens. Everything’s talking.

“Carter’s not answering,” Ethan says, sweat gathering at his hairline.

New York summer nights, hot and thick, everything and everyone in the city lingers in the pungent air.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

“He’s likely still at his office.”

“We’re not going to the bank?”

“Quick detour,” he says.

So we head uptown, thirteen blocks north to Federal Plaza. Once we pass through the metal detectors—and I get a curious stare from the guard when I put the shell casing in the plastic bowl with my cell phone—it’s a short wait until Carter Grant is standing in the cold, gray lobby of the FBI Manhattan field office, arms crossed, giving Ethan and me a look like we’re the mice that keep skipping the moldy cheese in the trap and going straight for the pantry.

“Let’s go,” Carter says, and jerks his head toward the elevator.

On the twenty-third floor he leads us to his office and two matching chairs from the lowest-bidder line of office furniture sets.

“I really regret knowing you.” Carter dumps himself behind his laminate wood desk and loosens his tie.

He doesn’t look at Ethan, instead training me with a skeptical gaze. He’s plain in all the ways a man can be. No particular shade of brown hair. Terribly ordinary brown eyes. He’s got the Midwestern bone structure of thirty million other American men. Standard issue, just like the furniture and his typical black suit.

“You know this doesn’t look good for me, right?” Carter reclines in his pleather office chair. “People wondering why I’ve got two reporters sitting in my office during a major security situation. Wearing the badges was a nice touch, by the way.”

I glance down at the press pass hanging around my neck. Ethan told me to leave it on.

“Makes it harder for you to get rid of us.”

“So what’s so important you have to ambush me?”

Carter can’t help it; his eyes pull in my direction even as he speaks to Ethan. He feels the incongruity in the room. The stranger sitting right in front of him, somehow familiar. He’s trying to place me, digging around in his mind for the switch that turns on the lights.

Ethan pulls his phone out of his back pocket, swipes, taps, and tosses it on Carter’s desk. “Avery has some information pertinent to your situation.”

With a darting, accusatory glance at me, Carter lurches forward in his seat and grabs the phone. His attention then falls to the screen as I question Ethan’s profile. He won’t look at me, though I know he senses my questions boring holes in the side of his face. This suddenly feels like a trap.

“What is this?” Carter asks, pushing the phone at Ethan across the desk. He grabs a notepad from his top drawer and pulls a pen from his shirt pocket. “Forward that to me with a screenshot of the originals.”

Ethan hands me his phone to show me a series of comments on the Riot Street website signed by Juris Christian Constitutional Assembly. Each a declaration of support for Patrick, espousing more of their misguided doctrine. And an invitation for Echo to contact them.

“Where are these from?” I ask.

He doesn’t respond but for heavy silence.

A chill slides down my spine, through my limbs. These are in response to my most recent essay.

“You didn’t think to mention these earlier?” Carter asks.

“The site gets hundreds of comments a day,” Ethan says. “No one can read them all. I didn’t think to look until you made the connection to Patrick’s death.”

“Fine.” Carter scratches at the shadow of stubble creeping down his neck. “But how does this help us? We’ve already identified three of the possible suspects inside.” A pause, as Carter gives Ethan a pointed look that I’m guessing is to remind him that we’re off the record in here. “The domestic-terrorism task force lost track of two individuals it was monitoring in New Hampshire. The third is linked to the IP address used to post on the message board. We believe the suspects gained entry with the help of a member of the security detail sympathetic to their cause.”

“You still haven’t made contact. We can help with that.”

Carter’s cell phone rings. He glances at the screen then stands to take the call outside, closing the door behind him.

I don’t like this. Ethan came here with a plan, but I’m not in on it. I get the sense I’m being maneuvered, manipulated, and it grates right to the bone. Hands fisted in my lap, my entire body shaking with anger, I’d punch a wall if I didn’t think it’d get me arrested.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Carter’s a friend,” Ethan tells me, impassioned plea in his eyes. “You can trust him.”

Dread rolls down my spine.

“What does that mean?”

He leans in and lowers his voice. “There are half a dozen armed men, maybe more, inside that building with the largest stockpile of gold reserves in the world. This isn’t going to end like Montana, with the feds sitting back and waiting them out for weeks. These men walked right inside the United States’ impenetrable fortress without any resistance. For the last four hours, the world’s watched us do nothing about it. Every minute that passes without a resolution emboldens the next guy and casts doubt on the government’s ability to secure its assets. It’s an embarrassment law enforcement can’t tolerate. This thing ends before the sun comes up. If they can’t get someone on the phone and talk them out, FBI and SWAT are going in. Then it’s shoot first and let the coroner sort it out.”

We’re here to get the story. It’s not my job to be partial about the outcome.

“You didn’t tell me about those comments before we came down here. You’re hiding things from me. Again.”

I can let him off the hook for not telling me about his mother, but this is different. I thought after he’d come back to tell me the truth about why my father had agreed to the interview that I could trust him. Completely. There wouldn’t be anything Ethan would lie to me about if he could admit that. Being wrong cuts to the core of what I liked most about him.

“You can still back out,” he says, and reaches out to tuck my hair behind my ear. His fingertips skim my neck, and I hate that his touch is like rain dousing the blaze burning in my chest. “I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I don’t understand what you expect from me.”

“The only story worth telling is the one going on inside that building.”

Behind us, Carter whips open his office door. As our eyes meet, I read it on his face. He’s caught up, finally made the connection. In that instant, I see Ethan’s plan spread out like an enormous pattern in the sand. Impossible to discern up close, but from a distance a clear image emerges.

“You,” Carter says, pointing with his phone in his hand. “Tell me your name.”

I’m the bait and the hook. Because I have something no one else does—my father’s blood.

Twenty minutes later and a harrowing ride speeding down Broadway with an FBI escort, Carter brings Ethan and me to the mobile command vehicle set up outside the Federal Reserve building. Police have the entire area cordoned off. Patrol cops and K-9 units man the barriers every ten feet. SWAT officers in bulletproof vests and helmets carry rifles, scanning the crowds pressed up against the metal rails lined along the sidewalks and blocking streets. Above our heads, snipers stand perched on rooftops.

We’re brought inside the truck, no bigger than a large family camper, where Carter sits me down at a counter among several computer monitors and radios. Five other FBI agents stand around, watching, scrutinizing. It’s more than a little unnerving being in the presence of so many badges and guns, even when you haven’t done anything wrong.

“Here’s how this is going to work…”

My role is simple, get the men inside to talk. The FBI negotiator was able to make contact about thirty minutes ago, but only long enough to gather that the suspects didn’t want money or a jet fueled and waiting to take them to Fiji. They wanted total surrender of the federal government. So, basically, a nonstarter. Instead, I need to ease them into a conversation. Placate them, listen, until such time as they feel satisfied that their message has been heard and will start talking seriously about surrendering without anyone getting killed.

Just before we begin, Ethan pulls me aside.

Hands on my shoulders, he says, “You can still say no.”

Though I am mad at him, Ethan has that unshakable confidence that somehow reaches right into my chest and slows my heart. It quiets the noise and focuses my vision.

“I can do this.”

I have to do this. Not because Carter asked me to or Ethan steered me into this position. What would I tell Ed and Cara about why I refused? I was afraid? There are dozens of other reporters outside, hundreds all over the city, who would sell their own mothers to be in my position. They wouldn’t hesitate to pick up that phone and say anything, be anything necessary to get the best story. Tomorrow morning, our article will be the authority on what took place here and the events that set this standoff in motion. My byline will circulate all over the world, people reading my words. What I do here, what I write, will shape opinion and impact debate. I have the opportunity to do something important, even if it is just through dumb luck.

Turns out, I am my father’s daughter after all. Two heads of the same beast.

So I sit down in front of the phone with Carter, Ethan, and a half-dozen skeptics looking over my shoulder. The negotiator dials the number and hands me the phone, listening in through a headset as it rings.

“Who’s this?” a voice says on the other end.

“My name is Echo. I’m Patrick Turner Murphy’s daughter.”