The cadres from the Authority stood frozen, a cold dread settling over every one of them. That sinking feeling told them the same thing: Ambrose Ward hadn't been bluffing. What he'd announced was the plain truth.
Ruby Gordon caught the look on Director Quinn's face, color draining like water from a cracked basin, and that was all the confirmation she needed. Everything Ambrose had said was real. She had become the woman who fed Dalton Lawson a false report, the crucial link in a chain of misinformation. In the world they inhabited, such a blunder didn't merely embarrass, it ended careers, or worse.
She swallowed hard, forcing the panic down beneath her ribs, and turned to Chief Sinclair. Her voice came out level, almost too controlled for someone whose world had just tilted sideways. "Ch
