Page 15 of Main Event

“Including Marin?”

He holds my gaze for a few seconds. “Including Marin.”

I nod. Stand. Pick up the folders.

“Brandon.” He waits until I look at him. “I will tell you everything. When I can do it without—” He stops. Tries again. “There are people I’m trying to protect. The order matters.”

I look at my brother. The man who showed up to my first major pitch meeting and sat in the parking lot the whole two hours because I mentioned I was nervous, which I only found out about six months later. The man who came to the hospital after the accident without being asked. He showed up before I’d even called anyone, which I filed at the time as Luke being Luke and have been quietly re-filing ever since.

“I know,” I say. “I trust you.”

I walk out of the gym, get in my car, and I drive.

Not home. Not to the office. Just drive—the default routine of a man who needs the time, distance, and privacy to keep assembling the puzzle pieces without interruption.

Evelyn Carrington asked about Andi by name.

Marin’s expression didn’t change.

Luke is holding something back, and whatever it is connects to a woman who sat across a conference table from me yesterday and asked about my future sister-in-law with warmth that arrived exactly on cue.

I’ve made myself a promise about Marin. Private, unspoken, the kind you make when you love someone, and you’re also smart enough to know what you’d do if the worst turned out to be true. I made it after the accident—after she showed up at the hospital before I called her, which I told myself meant she cared, which I still believe, which doesn’t resolve the other thing.

I’m not ready to cross that line yet. I need more than pattern recognition and a name that didn’t produce the right reaction.

But I know what I’m looking for now.

Then I head to the office.

There’s work to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

ANDI

The Bill meeting runs until five-thirty.

We map everything—Evelyn’s current positions, her board memberships, the financial connections between her advisory roles, and the institutions that moved against the center over the last eight months. It’s more than we expected. She’s not on the periphery of these organizations. She’s load-bearing infrastructure. Remove her, and three of them restructure immediately.

Bill says, “When we move, we move on all of it at once. If we pull one thread, she repositions the others before we reach them.”

Luke asks, “How long?”

Bill replies, “Weeks. Maybe less if the witness chain keeps moving.”

We’re on the same page when I leave. That’s something. The picture is clearer than it was this morning, which is the most you can ask for on a day like this.

I take the parking structure exit onto Peachtree and head south toward home.

I notice the black SUV at the third light.

Not because it’s doing anything wrong. Because it’s doing everything right—the following distance is perfect, the lane changes mirror mine with just enough delay to look natural, and the driver hasn’t once looked at me directly in the rearview. That last detail is the tell. Drivers who aren’t following you glance at the cars around them. Drivers who are following you already know exactly where you are.

I keep my speed steady, and I think about what I should do next.

Four months ago, I would have talked myself out of it. Told myself I was paranoid, that black SUVs are common, that the light pattern was a coincidence. Four months ago, I hadn’t found a photograph on my desk that was taken before my center had a name.

I change lanes without signaling.