Page 115 of Main Event

We arrive at seven. Daniel’s attorney meets us in the parking lot. Daniel is already inside—he’s been there since yesterday, the first time he’s seen his sister-in-law in eighteen months. The attorney tells us that Delia is aware we’re coming and has agreed to the additional presence. She knows who we are. She’s been following what’s happened from inside.

Someone on the staff has been bringing her news.

We position ourselves in the lobby. Brandon is near the main entrance. I’m near the corridor leading from the residential wing. Bill’s security contact is at the exterior door. The front desk staff have been briefed. They know who we are, why we’re here, and they don’t ask questions.

We wait.

At eight-fifteen, a man comes through the side entrance wearing scrubs and a badge. The front desk coordinator tells me, very quietly, that it doesn’t match any staff member she recognizes. She’s been watching for exactly this.

I cross the lobby.

He sees me coming and makes his calculation—the same calculation the man at the gas station made, the man in Brandon’s condo made—a split-second assessment of whether the opposition warrants a change of plan.

He changes his plan. He turns for the side entrance.

Brandon is already there.

It’s not a confrontation. Brandon simply stands in the doorway with his arms crossed, his broken nose mostly healed, and the look of a man who has nothing left to manage and therefore is not managing anything. The man looks at him. Looks at me behind him. Looks at the front desk coordinator who is already on the phone with the facility’s security team.

He leaves.

Not running. Walking. The intentional, controlled exit of a professional who has assessed the situation and determined that today is not the day.

We let him go because the FBI is in the parking lot.

They follow him out.

Delia walks out at nine-oh-five.

She’s smaller than I expected from the picture in the file—fine-boned, careful in her movements, with the wariness of someone who has spent eighteen months in a controlled environment and is recalibrating to open space. She has a canvas bag over one shoulder and a leather journal under her arm.

Daniel is beside her.

He looks like a man who spent two years with something heavy and has just been allowed to set it down—not released from it, just allowed to rest. His hand is on her elbow, light, present.

She looks at the lobby as she crosses it. At the front desk coordinator. At Brandon near the door. At me. She stops when she reaches us. She looks at me for a long moment.

“You’re Luke,” she says.

“That’s right.”

“She loves you,” she says. Simply. The way you say things you’ve had a long time to decide are worth saying. “I could tell from Jackson’s files. Even before she knew she did.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I nod.

She looks at Brandon.

“You’re the one who ended things with the woman,” she says.

“Right again,” Brandon says.

She nods once, approving. Then she looks at the door.

“I’d like to go outside now,” she says.

We take her outside.

She stands in the parking lot for a long moment.