Page 102 of Main Event

This morning, it’s in print.

I pick up my phone. Bill has already texted.

FBI confirmed receipt of documentation package. Story running on all three outlets. Evelyn’s office has not responded to requests for comment. We’ll talk at nine.

I text back.

I’ll be in Atlanta by nine.

I go inside to wake Luke.

MaxMorgan’s plane is wheels up at seven. Just us and the pilot and the story breaking on every screen in the country below us.

Luke sleeps on the plane, which is the right thing—his body has been through twelve weeks of preparation and one full professional fight, and it needs what it needs. I work. The phone has been going since six, and I manage it with the smooth efficiency of someone who has been preparing for exactly this volume of response.

The center’s communications team has the three-sentence statement ready. We drafted it two weeks ago. I approve it with one word: Send.

Travis texts from somewhere on the road.

Read it. All of it. Call me when you can.

Brandon texts.

Marin is gone. Apartment empty. She left sometime overnight.

I read that one twice. File it. The machine is moving its pieces. She knew this was coming, and she ran before it arrived, which tells me she understood exactly how exposed she was. Her disappearance is its own kind of confirmation.

I forward it to Bill with one line.

Document the departure timeline.

Luke opens his eyes somewhere over New Mexico. He looks at me and reads the phone in my hand.

“How bad?” he asks, his voice still thick with sleep.

“Not bad,” I say. “Loud. There’s a difference.”

He sits up. “Evelyn?”

“No comment. Her advisory positions are being reviewed. Two of the boards she chairs have issued statements saying they’re conducting internal governance reviews.” I look out the window. “She’s not running. She’s managing.”

“For now,” he says.

“For now,” I agree.

He takes my hand across the armrest. I let him hold it for the rest of the flight.

Bill meets us at his office at nine-fifteen.

He looks like a man who’s been awake since before the story broke, running on the kind of energy that comes when everything you’ve worked for finally lands in front of you.

“FBI contacted me at six forty-five,” he says before we’re fully seated. “They want a formal meeting this week. They’re incorporating our documentation into an active federal investigation. The fingerprint development in the Grady case gave them jurisdiction, and the story gave them public cover to move openly.” He sets a folder on the table. “They also confirmed that the facility managing Delia Rhoades is cooperating with the state medical board. The institutional protection around that facility has been significantly weakened.”

I look at Luke.

“Delia?” I ask.

“Yes.” Bill opens the folder. “Daniel’s attorney called this morning. Daniel wants to begin the formal legal process to secure her release. Now that the network’s infrastructure is under federal scrutiny, the mechanisms that kept her there are exposed. I’m confident we can get her out within thirty days.”