“I know.”
“But I have revised my assessment of the player.” The carein his voice is the most Frank Amato thing I have ever heard. Precision as tenderness. “I thought you should have accurate information.”
The same thing Max said. To my father. Without being asked.I wanted you to have accurate information.
Father and daughter. Operating in the same language without knowing the other was speaking it. “Thank you,” I say.
“Call me Sunday.”
“I will.”
He hangs up. I sit in the amber-lit garage for three more minutes. Then I start the car. Drive six blocks. Park again, outside a building I know, and sit there for exactly long enough to stop pretending I don’t know why I came.
I get out, go upstairs, and knock. Two knocks. The second one softer than the first. The door opens.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Max Stevens
She knocks on my door at seven-fourteen. Two knocks this time. The second one more reserved than the first, like she almost didn't finish it. I open the door. Toni stands in the hallway in jeans and a soft gray sweater and her hair down and no badge, no clipboard, no blazer. Her green eyes find mine and stay. “You went to see him,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “Why?”
“Because it wasn’t for you.” I hold the door. She steps inside. The city is outside my window, the same view I’ve had for two seasons, but it looks different tonight and I know it’s not the city. “I didn’t want you to be in it. It wasn’t a play, Toni.I didn’t do it to get something.” She moves to the window. Arms crossed, but loosely. Looking at Chicago the way she looks at everything — cataloguing. Deciding.
“He said you asked for nothing.”
“I asked for nothing.”
“Why?”
I cross to her. “Because that’s not why I went.” I hold her gaze. “I went because he had incomplete information, and he’s the kind of man who makes calls based on what’s in front of him. I wanted him to have the right data.” A pause. “That’s all.” Toni’s expression is tight. Her green eyes are doing the thing they do when she’s deciding whether to tell the truth or find the professional sentence to put in front of it.
“Max.”
“Still here.”
“He said it was the strongest behavioral reversal he’d seen in a conduct case ever.”
Something shifts inside me. “He said that?”
“He did.” Her voice is lowered. “You know what that means, coming from him.”
I do. “Yeah.”
She unfolds her arms. Turns fully to face me. The city blazes behind her and she is twenty-four years old and tall and green-eyed and the most specific problem I have ever had, and she is looking at me without a single layer of management between us. “I’ve been cautious my whole life,” she says.
“I know.”
“I’m tired of it.” The words land simply. No drama.Just the fact of it, finally said. “I’m tired of the guarded answers and the professional distance and the twelve inches of space I measure and then feel insane for measuring.” Her chin comes up. “I don’t want to be careful about you.”
My heart is going at a rate that would concern a cardiologist. “Okay,” I say.
