If the AG desk moves on the referral, they'll move. Castillo's voice came in the background. He'd been listening. Given what's in this package, they'll move.

Puit was sitting at the bench looking at his hands. He'd said very little in the last hour. He'd answered questions when Burch asked them. He'd produced what he was asked to produce, and then he'd gone quiet with the particular quality of a man who had put down something heavy, and was now feeling the weight of what putting it down meant.

Silas stood up from the bench. He walked to the bay door and stood in it, looking out at the dark, and she came to stand beside him. "May," she said quietly. "She knew," he said.

She protected him for 2 years after she found out. And I I didn't know enough to help her because I was so busy managing the situation here that I didn't He stopped. I called her tonight and I told her about the case and she said she said she'd been waiting for someone to do something about it since the day she found that document. She just didn't think it was going to be me.

Why not you? Because I was always the one who came late, he said after the damage. That's been my pattern with her. He looked at the dark tonight.

She asked me why it took a 24year-old woman with a chain in a gas station lot to get me moving. Ria almost laughed. It came out as something that was close to a laugh. What did you tell her?

She said. I told her sometimes a person shows up who makes it impossible to stay still, he said. He looked at her sideways briefly. She said she wanted to meet you.

Ria looked at the dark and the cold and the tree line where Puit's four security men were presumably still standing and felt something in her chest that she didn't have an immediate category for. Something that was not happiness exactly but was in the same neighborhood. Then Decker's radio crackled one click, then two fast, then one more. That was not a code.

That was Rex not using a code. That was Rex hitting the transmit button in a pattern that meant he was moving and didn't have time for language. She and Silas both turned. Crane was already at the side door.

The sound reached them before the visual. An engine, not a motorcycle, something larger, coming down the gravel road at a speed that was not consistent with a reasonable visit. Coming fast, coming without the tentiveness of someone unsure of the address, Decker killed the exterior lights. The bay went from blazing to dark in 2 seconds and the dark was total and she stood in it blinking getting her eyes to adjust and the engine sound was getting louder.

Back room, Silas said. Eleanor. She was already moving. She went through the shop in the dark using the layout she'd memorized over weeks, feeling the bench edges with her fingertips, stepping around the frame jig by memory, through the door and into the back room where the television was still on.

And Eleanor was sitting up in her chair with the expression of a woman who had been listening to everything and had been waiting for this. "Stay here," Ria said. "I know," Eleanor said. She said it the way she said everything that was important without drama with the full weight of someone who understood exactly what it meant.

Ria went back to the bay. The vehicle had stopped on the gravel road before the clearing. She could see the headlights through the high windows, stationary now, pointed at the building. The kind of high-mounted lights that came on a truck rather than a car.

The engine was still running. Nobody had gotten out. "Massan," Crane said from beside her. She hadn't heard him approach.

"You think he found out Puit came here?" Ria asked.

"Either he's been watching Puit or one of Puit's people told him," Crane said. He paused. He's been running an independent operation. His principals at Harrow don't know.

If Puit's sitting in this shop talking to a federal referral attorney, then Massen's entire position collapses. She said, "Everything he did independently becomes criminal exposure with no protective cover from the Harrow lawyers." "Yes," Crane said. "He's not here to negotiate." She turned to find Silas. He was already behind her.

Where's Puit? she said. Bench, Silas said. He hasn't moved. She looked at the high windows.

The headlights hadn't moved either. He's waiting for something. She said he stopped before the clearing. He can see the building is dark.

He doesn't know how many people are inside. He knows Puit's here. Silas said he knows what Puit came with. So, he's calculating whether coming in gets him anything or just adds to his exposure.

She said, "He's sitting in that truck doing the same math we're doing." From the back of the bay, Rex's voice, low, controlled. There's a second vehicle came off the county road from the other direction, parked in the south tree line. Two vehicles, two positions. Crane said, "They're bracketing the building." She looked at Silas in the dark.

She could barely see his face, but she could read his posture, the weight distribution, the set of the shoulders, the absolute economy of a man who had arrived at a decision and was holding it steady. Options, she said. We call county law enforcement, Decker said. We have an active federal referral.