"Ada has asked one thing of you." 

"What?" 

"She wants you in the boardroom when it happens. She wants Curtis to look at you when the agents walk through the door. She says juries remember that moment more than any document." 

Hayden nodded slowly. "I will be there." 

Eleanor reached across and took his hand again. She did not say anything. She simply held it. 

Marcus gathered the documents back into the folder. He stood. He looked at both of them for a long moment, and then he allowed himself, for the first time in two days, a small tired smile. 

"Friday," he said. 

"Friday," Hayden answered. 

***

Friday morning arrived clean and cold. Hayden walked into the lobby at 9:40, took the executive elevator to the forty-fourth floor, and entered the boardroom at three minutes before ten. 

Curtis Vance was already there, standing by the window with a cup of coffee, laughing at something Howard Bell had just said. The two of them turned when Hayden walked in and greeted him with the easy warmth of men who believed they had perhaps forty minutes left before the world they had built for themselves began to deliver itself to them. 

The meeting was called to order at 10:00 exactly. The first item on the agenda was the quarterly safety review. Hayden listened patiently while the head of operations walked through the slides. 

At 10:07, the side door of the boardroom opened, and Ada Marin walked in, followed by four federal agents. 

Curtis Vance looked up. For one long second, his face did not change. Then it did. It changed the way a face changes when a man understands, in the space of a single breath, that every contingency he has prepared for the past fourteen months has just become irrelevant. 

He looked across the long table at Hayden, and Hayden looked back at him, and neither of them spoke. 

Ada read the charges in her even courtroom voice. Conspiracy to commit murder, wire fraud, securities fraud, obstruction. She named Howard Bell second, and Howard Bell did not even try to stand. 

The agents walked around the table, and the two men were led out through the same side door Ada had entered through. And the boardroom was very quiet for a long moment after the door had closed behind them. 

Hayden stood up. He looked at the remaining members of the board who were staring at him with the slow dawning expressions of people who had just understood that the morning they had walked into was not the morning they had been told to expect. 

"There will be a full briefing this afternoon," he said quietly. "I would ask you to stay in the building until then. This meeting is adjourned." 

He walked out of the boardroom alone. He took the elevator down to the lobby. 

Eleanor was waiting for him by the front doors, her coat over her arm, and beside her, in a clean blue jacket that was the right size for the first time in a long time, stood a thin boy with carefully combed hair and slightly nervous hands. Marcus's sister stood a few steps behind them, smiling quietly. 

Hayden walked across the lobby. He stopped in front of Jamal. He did not speak right away. He simply looked down at him, and the boy looked back up with the same steady eyes he had shown on the rooftop four days ago. 

"It's done," Hayden said. 

Jamal nodded once. "Thank you, sir." 

"No, son, thank you." 

He knelt down so his face was level with the boy's. He did this slowly because his knees were not what they had been at thirty, and because he wanted the boy to see him do it. 

"Jamal," he said, "Eleanor and I would like to talk to you about something. Not today. Today we are going to go home and have a real lunch and watch a movie if you want, and you are going to sleep in a room that has a door you can close. But in a few days, when you are ready, we would like to sit down with you and talk about what comes next. About school, about a home, about whether you would like that home to be ours." 

The boy's eyes filled, but he did not look away. He nodded once. "I would like to talk about that, sir." 

"Good." Hayden stood up slowly. 

Eleanor took the boy's hand on one side, and Hayden took it on the other, and the three of them walked out of the lobby together into the cold bright morning. 

The car was waiting at the curb. Anthony Owens, who had driven Hayden home on Monday night, opened the rear door. He nodded at the boy, and the boy nodded back. They got in. 

The car pulled away from the building and into the slow steady current of the city, and Hayden Lockwood, for the first time in four days, allowed himself to close his eyes.