Page 118 of Split Decision

"She's escalating," Andi says.

"Yes."

"Brandon is a message." Her voice is steady, but I can hear what's underneath it. "We're too close. She can't reach us directly right now—not after the break-in, not after what we brought to Bill. So she reached for the thing that would pull us off course."

"Make me focus on my brother instead of the case," I say.

"Make us emotional. Reactive. Give us something personal and immediate to manage so we lose the thread." A pause. "It's the methodology. Applied to us directly."

I lean against the wall.

"I had to sit across from her," I say. "In there. She was holding his hand and telling me she was glad I was there."

"I know what that must have cost you."

"I wanted?—"

"I know what you wanted." Her voice doesn't waver. "You didn't."

"No."

"That's everything, Luke. That's the whole fight right there." A pause. "Come home when you can. Don't leave Brandon alone with her longer than you have to, but don't let her see that either."

I close my eyes for a moment.

"She's going to keep going," I say.

"Yes. Until we stop her." Andi's voice is quiet and certain. "Come home and be careful."

I go back inside.

ANDI

I'm at the kitchen table when I hear his car in the driveway.

Three hours of sitting at my table with a document open on the screen that I haven't been reading. Three hours of running the same calculation—the timing, the method, the specific choice of Brandon rather than any of the other options available to her.

She didn't go after the case. She didn't try to suppress the documents or intercept what we brought to Bill. She went after Luke's brother.

Because she knows what I know about Luke—that his loyalty is the thing you use if you want to move him. The Commission used it. The arrangement used it. And now this.

She's not running the playbook on us anymore.

She's running it on him specifically.

I hear the front door open, then the sound of him in the kitchen—like someone who has been holding it together for hours and now no longer needs to. I shut the laptop and head to him.

He's standing at the kitchen counter, his phone face down and his hands resting on either side. He's still in his morning clothes, carrying the tense silence of a man who spent time in a hospital waiting room, watching someone smile at his injured brother, and holding himself perfectly still throughout.

I cross the room and put my arms around him from behind, careful of his ribs, of my leg, of the way we have to settle into each other now. I press my face into his back, between his shoulder blades, and hold on.

His hands come up and cover mine.

We stand there for a moment.

"She's going to come for everyone I love," he says. Not angry. Just clear. The way he gets when something has settled into certainty.

"I agree," I say.