Page 7 of Main Event

Andi sits at the kitchen table with her coffee as Reeves works, rehearsing her prepared remarks for the third time. She has spent four months preparing for this testimony—the legislative committee on foster system reform has been in session since spring, and she received the invitation in June, shortly after returning home from her tour with Sound Bar.

She had thirty days to prepare. She used all of them.

She’s been through it enough times that the words are in her bones now. She’s not memorizing. She’s calibrating—the wording had to be strong enough to withstand scrutiny and clear enough to move people who had never lived through what she had lived through and couldn’t imagine how much it cost her.

Reeves finds nothing new. The house is clean—the intruder hasn’t been back since he placed the device behind the bookcase. Mack stands in the living room while Reeves gives his report, looking at the gap in the baseboard with the expression of a man filing information he intends to use.

“The gym was clean,” Mack says to me quietly. “Nothing in the locker room, nothing in the training space. Wherever he’s been, he hasn’t been inside there. Yet.”

I look at him. “Yet.”

“He got in and out of MaxMorgan without triggering a single alarm,” Mack says. “That’s a narrow skill set. Professional. Practiced.” He picks up his coffee. “Which means he’s not improvising. He’s been doing this for a long time, and he’s patient enough to move one space at a time.”

Reeves leaves at seven-forty-five. Mack follows ten minutes later. He has his own schedule today, his own preparation for a fighter who is not me, but who still gets the same level of attention from him. Before he goes, he puts his hand briefly on Andi’s shoulder, the way he does, and says nothing. She puts her hand over his for a moment.

That’s the whole of it. That’s Mack.

I drive her to the committee building.

She sits in the passenger seat, her prepared remarks in her lap, not reading but gazing out the window as the city scrolls by. Atlanta in August feels unique—the oppressive heat despite the air conditioning, the thick atmosphere, and how the morning light hits the buildings on Peachtree.

“Tell me the ask again,” I say.

Not because I don’t know it. Because saying it out loud is different from reading it, and she knows it too.

She looks out the window for a moment. Then she says, “Three things. First, mandatory placement continuity reviews at the six-month mark. Right now, a child can be transferred without documentation of where or why they’re going, and that gap is how people fall through the cracks. Second, independent oversight of private facility admissions for minors—the current structure allows a single evaluating physician with no external review, which means the paperwork is only as reliable as the person signing it.” She pauses. “And third, a formal audit of placement agencies with documented regulatory violations in the last decade. Name the organizations. Put them in the public record.”

“Why those three specifically?”

“Because they’re the three places where the blind spots work against the children the most,” she says. “Transfer without documentation. Admission without oversight. Agencies operating after violations because no one compiled the record.” She looks at me. “These aren’t new problems. They’re problems that have survived this long because the people who benefit from them have known how to keep them invisible.” She lets it stand. “I’m going to make them visible.”

After a moment, I continue my preparation questions. “How many people in that room are going to push back?”

“Three, maybe four. There’s a committee member who has taken money from two of the placement agencies I’m naming. He’ll question my analytics and suggest the data is anecdotal.” She’s calm about it—the practiced calm of someone who has expected every version of this conversation and prepared for them all. “I have the data. It isn’t anecdotal.”

“And the rest of the committee?”

“Persuadable.” She finally looks away from the window and at me. “That’s all I need. Not unanimity. Movement.”

I pull into the parking structure.

She picks up the remarks. She doesn’t need them, but she takes them anyway—the physical object is an anchor. It’s proof that the preparation was real. I’ve seen fighters do the same thing with their hand wraps, holding them in the locker room long after Mack has already secured them.

“Luke?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Don’t watch me,” she says. “Watch the room. Read it the way you read other fighters in the ring.”

I look at her, pride swelling in my chest at how brave she is.

“I know how I’m going to do,” she says. “I don’t know how they’re going to receive it. That’s the information I need.”

I nod. She gets out of the car.

The gallery fills up fast.

I take a position near the back—not the last row, where I look like I’m hiding, but two rows from it, angled toward the exit with a clear sight line to the witness table. Old habit. My trainers over the years taught me how to read a space before I occupied it—find the exits, the pressure points, the people who would matter before anything happened. I do it without thinking now.