And then, three seconds later:
Hurry.
Dacey typed back two words, On it, and walked up Adams Street to the gate of the side lot, his right hand resting on his belt.
* * *
The car knew Julian before he touched it.
That was the thing he loved about it, a little foolishly. He had bought it the previous winter, after his firm finished the Maggie Walker Library annex and he finally let Corinne talk him into it. "You've driven a Volvo with a cracked dashboard for nineteen years," she'd said. "You spend your whole life making beautiful things for other people. Let somebody make something beautiful for you." When he walked toward it now, the fob in his pocket, the car's door handles slid out from the bodywork to meet him and the little lights in the side mirrors projected a pattern on the brick at his feet. He did not even have to press a button. He put his hand on the driver's handle and felt the lock give, heard the soft electric sigh as the door released, and pulled it open.
He was thinking about the route. Franklin to Fifth, Fifth to Broad, Broad to Twelfth. Eight minutes if the lights were kind. He was thinking about Naomi at six years old, asleep on the drafting table in his first office on Brook Road with her cheek on a roll of trace paper. He was thinking that he should call Corinne back once he was moving, on the car's phone, to tell her he was on his way.
"Hey. Hey! Step away from the vehicle."
He turned, one hand still on the door. A police officer was coming through the gate, fast, a big man with a red neck and a flashlight he was not using.
"Officer," Julian said. He kept his voice level. He had been a Black man in Virginia for sixty-one years and he knew where his hands were. "This is my car. My daughter's in labor at VCU, I'm trying to—"
"Step away from the vehicle. Now."