The Regional Office Is Under Attack!: A Novel by Manuel Gonzales Read Free Book Online

didn’t know her name, and only later would she learn about her connection to the Regional Office or what the Regional Office was, and about the personal war she was about to wage against it.
    But that would be later.
    At that moment, Rose only knew that here was this woman, stunning and calm and powerful, and that simply looking at her made that hitch in her voice come back.
    The Woman in Red stepped up close to Rose and touched her finger gently to Rose’s forehead, where there would be a nasty bruise soon enough, and in that touch Rose felt some living, pulsing, twitching memory shiver under her own skin, a thing that started at the touch, coursed through her down to her feet and into the earth, and then rose up from the ground all over again, up herlegs and through her whole body to rush tingling up the back of her neck—she could feel it, could trace the shiver’s path—up her neck and over and through her skull, where it landed, finally, on that spot, touched her the way she’d been desperate to be touched, and her body went limp. After everything that had happened that day, her body decided now was the time to give out, and she felt herself start to fall, and she hoped—deeply hoped—that the Woman in Red would reach out and grab hold of her, but she didn’t.
    Henry—where he’d come from she didn’t know—Henry caught her, instead, and she looked up at his not-unhandsome face, and the feeling continued to move through her and seemed to grow out of her, seemed to want to envelop him, too.
    She didn’t push him away or struggle out of his grasp. She let him hold her and despite everything, she moved in, instead, for a kiss.
    Her first.
    Despite what she’d told Patty and Gina, despite all the things assholes like Akard and Schroeder said about her, her very first kiss.
    When she’s older, when she’s back in this small town, when she’s drunk and half-asleep in her car, having pulled herself over because even in this state she knows she shouldn’t be on the road, and before the police pull up behind her with their bright flashing lights, and before she mouths off to them, before she tells them to go fuck themselves because for Christ’s sake she’s doing the right thing and not driving back home shit-faced unlike most people she knows, and before she resists arrest and struggles so strongly against the handcuffs that for the next week her wrists will be redand swollen, before she head-butts the window of the police car and cracks the window, and then tries but fails to smash the foot of one of the officers with her booted heel, before any of this happens, she’ll be thinking about this kiss, which wasn’t a great kiss, by no means was it a great or sexy or even sensual kiss, but it was her first real kiss, which made it memorable in and of itself, but also because of how she likes to joke with herself about that kiss and how fireworks lit the sky, right as they kissed, likes to joke with herself about how all hell broke loose with that kiss.
    Which, in a way, it did.
    Then the kiss broke and the room and her momma’s house and the people in it and the Woman in Red all came back into focus.
    Judging by the look on Henry’s face and the sound of the woman’s laughter, the kiss was unexpected. Henry stood her up.
    “Are you all right?” the Woman in Red asked.
    Before Rose could answer, Henry shook his head. “Nothing that won’t heal.”
    The Woman in Red smiled. “That wasn’t what I meant.” Then she looked at Rose and then back to Henry. “Well? Your assessment.”
    Henry shook his head again. “You saw it all for yourself,” he said. He paused and pressed his palm gingerly to his side. “She’s strong.” He looked at Rose. “Angry,” he said. He didn’t touch his fingertips to his lips but Rose will always imagine that he did when he said, “Passionate.”
    The woman smiled again, the look on her face so genuine and welcoming that Rose couldn’t help but smile back and feel,