Chapter 37. Juliet, the Model
Juliet, the Model
PRESENT DAY
Juliet wanted to do it in Gabriel Knox’s office.
It would be a message—poetic, even, since Knox was the big bang that had started Knox Aeronautics, and would now be the big bang that ended it.
But when she arrived at the highest floor, his office was locked, and no amount of swiping her key card would change that.
No matter. The message would be just as effective from anywhere.
She sank to her knees in front of the receptionist’s desk, wondering if the person who worked there would approve of what she was doing.
As someone who’d spent the majority of her life on the wrong side of things like desks and counters and velvet ropes, Juliet liked to believe they might offer solidarity.
She unzipped her backpack and hefted out the device, using all of her strength to set it gingerly on the floor.
It had to weigh at least thirty pounds, and her back ached from carrying it.
Other than its weight, the device looked ordinary, even low-tech, like one of those coolant tanks her dad used to keep in the trunk in case their car broke down.
It was corseted by wires, like an architectural designer dress. She was careful not to touch them.
Luca had promised it would be easy. All Juliet had to do was walk the device to the top floor of the Knox Aeronautics Tower, which she could access with her badge—she assumed it was stolen from an unsuspecting Knox employee, though Luca hadn’t said.
Juliet would press the button to start a timer that controlled the autonomous trip wire, and then she’d have ten minutes—plenty of time—to make her way back down to the lobby and exit.
She didn’t need to worry about the security cameras inside the tower because the Green Lions were taking care of that, jamming the building’s Wi-Fi so no footage could transmit.
Still, out of an abundance of caution, her disguise hid her identity well.
If anything, she looked like Scout, like a celebrity trying to dodge the paparazzi.
As Luca had explained, the tower was the neural center of Knox’s empire.
The floors below Juliet housed hundreds of servers, and taking them out would cripple the company, halting the drones Knox Aeronautics had shipped around the world.
It would terrify investors and plunge the stock price, hurting the source of Knox’s campaign funding.
Most importantly, it would send a steel-fisted message to him and his supporters.
Juliet pressed the button. The timer’s blocky red numbers sprang to life, counting backward from ten minutes.
She seized the now-empty backpack and scrambled to her feet, taking several precious seconds to gaze at the pristine marble tables and teak chairs that decorated the billionaire’s floor.
So urbane and civilized, all while thousands of miles away the drones, the instruments of death that had made Knox so rich, rained punishment on foreign soil, and Knox himself, wherever he was, sold the country a bill of lies.
She glanced down at the timer and, remembering what she’d done, ran for the elevator.
Soon Juliet was pushing open the tower’s double doors and stepping back onto the street, trading recycled air-conditioning for lungfuls of LA’s signature smog and secondhand smoke.
Without the shield of the building’s thick walls of glass, the noise of the protest was deafening.
The hairs on Juliet’s arms lifted. She strode head-down toward the crowd, yanking off her ball cap, mask, and hoodie and stuffing them into her backpack. She wore a Green Lions shirt underneath, an image of the lion swallowing the sun, and for the first time she felt like she deserved to wear it.
The adrenaline, her shaky breaths, the trembling in her hands—this was what it felt like to do something, not just for herself or her friends, but for strangers she would never meet, strangers who might one day recoil once they learned what she’d done, and who would benefit from it all the same.
That was the last thing Luca had said to Juliet before she’d handed over the backpack: Very few people will thank you for this.
Many will call you a monster. Far more will admire you in private and denounce you in public.
Prepare yourself. Decide the price you’re willing to pay for what’s right, and then never waver.
As she shouldered her way into the protest, hearing Luca’s rich voice carry over the loudspeakers, Juliet thought of Scout and the others.
They’d changed her life, looked out for her like older sisters, protective yet controlling.
But there came a time when even the most devoted younger sisters had to forge their own paths.
Juliet had accomplished something Scout didn’t have the courage for: true sacrifice. One life for the greater good.