"I'm driving to the garage in an hour. Killian needs to see what's in the letter. He's the one who's been building the case against Thorne. The document part is the piece he hasn't had."
I nod. I knew this had to come, I just didn't know when.
"I'm coming with you," I say.
He doesn't argue or pretend to consider it. He nods. "Okay."
"Not as your plus-one. The letter is from my brother. I want to be in the room when it does what it's going to do."
"That's why I waited to tell you until I knew you were up. So you could decide."
It's a small thing. But it's the first decision in eight years that's been put in front of me before being made and I can feel the size of it even while I'm pretending not to.
I shower fast. I put on jeans and a sweater, tie my hair back, finish the coffee at the kitchen window while he gets the truck ready.
In the truck I sit shotgun. He drives the twelve miles into town with both hands on the wheel. The knife isn't in his pockettoday, the first time he's come out of the house without it since I got here.
The Iron Vault is red brick, square against the hill, the doors closed at this hour against the morning cold. He drives around to the back. The lot is empty except for one car I don't recognize and one I do: Jaxson's.
"Killian's here already," Kane says. "Jaxson stayed because I asked him to. Nobody else."
"Who is Killian?"
"He's Delta. Two years ahead of me. He lost four men in Kandahar to intel Thorne falsified and walked out the same month. He's been building the case ever since. I came in when I figured out what Thorne did to Danny."
"And he knew about the letter."
"He knew the piece existed and that he didn't have enough without it. Where it was, I never told him. I'm telling him now."
He kills the engine and looks at me for the first time since we got in the truck.
"You don't have to come in if you've changed your mind. You can stay here, and I'll be back in twenty minutes."
"No, I'm coming in."
He nods, and we get out.
The back room is the one I haven't seen before. The mezzanine is up the stairs to the right, the part I remember from the second day when I was given a quick tour and told this section of the building was for client meetings. The back room is past it, behind a steel door without a sign. Kane uses a key, and the door opens onto a wall.
The wall is one map and four whiteboards. Names I don't know, dates that go back further than I'd expect, photographs at the corners. The center column has a name in red marker at the top: *THORNE.*
The man at the table looks up when we come in: about Kane's age, dark hair close-cropped, light eyes. He's seated with both hands flat on the table and a single closed folder in front of him. He doesn't smile, but he stands.
"This is Callie Walsh," Kane says.
"Killian Vance." He puts out a hand. I take it. The hand is dry and the grip is short, done in two seconds. "I'm sorry about your brother."
"Thank you."
Jaxson is at the back of the room with his shoulder to the wall. He nods at me once. I nod back.
"Did Kane explain what you're walking into," Killian asks me.
"The document closes the case. That's what I have so far."
"That's the easy part. The harder part is the man we're closing it on. Thorne runs three trafficking pipelines through assets he still controls on the inside. He's sent four units he commanded into operations he knew were traps, because the men were starting to ask the wrong questions. Your brother was one of them. A month ago his people started moving on your address. The reason you're sitting in this room and not in a ditch off a county road is that Kane pulled you out the day my network flagged the move. As long as he's with you, you stay clear. Two weeks from now, none of this touches you again."
I take it in cold.
