Page 13 of Main Event

Marin’s expression doesn’t change.

That’s the thing I notice, standing in my kitchen with a glass of wine I haven’t tasted yet. Not what her expression does. What it doesn’t do.

When I tell Marin something she finds interesting—professionally, intellectually—her attention sharpens in a way I can measure. When I tell her something new, there’s a beat of genuine processing. I’ve come to know these tells over months. I rely on them the way I rely on any good data—as a baseline against which anomalies register.

No sharpening. No processing beat.

“The name sounds familiar,” she says. “Governance circles are small.”

“She asked about Luke. About Andi specifically.” I watch her. “Said the testimony was substantive.”

“It was,” Marin says. She picks up her file again. “She’s right about that.”

I stand in the kitchen for a moment longer than the conversation requires. Then I let it go—because I’m good at letting things go when I don’t have enough to justify not letting them go. I take off my jacket before we have dinner. She stays, and the evening proceeds as evenings do.

But I don’t let it go entirely.

I just file it away for future reference.

The files are on my passenger seat when I get to my car the next morning.

I see them before I open the door—a stack, centered on the seat, with an intentional centering that is too precise to be accidental. My first thought is that Marin put them there, as part of some document exchange I overlooked. But the top folder is the Dalton Group analysis. The one I built from scratch over three weeks, stored on my personal laptop, and never shared with anyone.

I stand on the parking garage level and look at them through the window for a long moment before I open the door.

I pick up the top folder. My formatting, my notations, my shorthand in the margins. Not a copy of a document I shared. A copy of my work that never left my possession.

I check the other folders. Methodically, the way I do everything. Four folders. All material from my personal research on the governance network and its financial connections. Material I’ve never sent anywhere, never printed, and never brought out of my home office.

I sit in the driver’s seat with the folders in my lap, and I think long and hard about what this documentation means. Not just to me, but to all of us.

Someone accessed my personal laptop. Or my home network. Or both. Copied four folders of research material—not randomly or selectively, but the files most directly relevant to the investigation—and left them here where I would find them immediately, where the finding would be impossible to dismiss.

Not to steal. They’re still on my laptop, I presume. To show me they can get whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want.

I know what you have. I know where you keep it. You didn’t stop me by having it. You should think carefully about what you’re doing with it.

I sit in the parking garage for eight minutes. I know because I watch the time in the corner of my phone screen while I’m deciding what to do.

Then I call Luke.

He answers on the second ring. Gym noises echo in the background—the distinct sounds of a place designed for exertion.

“Someone was in my car,” I say. “My research files were copied and left on the passenger seat.”

His silence that follows is not the silence of someone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“It happens,” he says. “This is not the first time.”

I look at the folders in my lap.

“How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“A while.”

“Luke.” I keep my voice level. “Tell me what’s happening. All of it.”

Another silence—shorter this time, the silence of someone deciding what to share and what to conceal. I know my brother better than he thinks I do.