Page 132 of Split Decision

"I think the documentation is coming," I say. "I think we're days away, not weeks. Something in the last week told whoever has it that the moment is now."

"What made you think that?"

Something surfaces that I've been filing without knowing I was filing it.

"Bill." I stop. "Before we talk about next steps—I need to tell you something about Phoenix."

He looks at me.

"The driver didn't correct," I say.

Luke goes very still beside me.

"When you're driving erratically and you suddenly see a motorcycle in the dark, you correct. You brake, you swerve, you do something involuntary because that's what the body does when it processes an obstacle." I hold Bill'seyes. "This driver didn't do anything until it was too late. I noticed it in the half-second before impact. I didn't understand what I was noticing."

Bill picks up his pen. Sets it down. "Did the vehicle stop?"

"I was unconscious before the paramedics arrived." I pause. "I was told it was a hit-and-run. That the driver fled before police arrived."

"Who told you?"

I think about it. The hospital. The recovery. The information that arrived while I was still piecing together what had happened.

"Katelyn," I say.

The room is quiet.

"She managed the press statement," I say. "She framed it as minor injuries to protect the tour schedule. She's the one who relayed what the accident report said."

Bill is looking at me with the expression he uses when something has arrived that changes the shape of what he's been building.

"Katelyn, whose aunt is Evelyn Carrington," he says.

"Yes."

Luke says, very quietly, "She was on the tour bus with you. She knew exactly where you'd be on that highway that night."

The three of us sit with that.

"I'm not saying it's provable," I say. "I'm saying I noticed something I didn't understand at the time, and now I understand it. And it fits."

"It fits," Bill says. He's already writing. "The Phoenix accident was a first physical escalation—before the parking lot this morning. Two attempts. A documented pattern when institutional methods failed." He pauses. "Travis was with you."

"He was on the motorcycle. Conscious after the crash. I was airlifted."

"He needs to be asked what he saw. Specifically, whether the other vehicle stopped. Whether he got any description."

"I'll call him," Luke says.

I look at the table.

Five months ago, I was lying on a desert highway, thinking I was going to die without being able to tell Luke how I really felt. I thought it was random. A drunk driver. Bad timing and the specific cruelty of an accident at exactly the wrongmoment.

It wasn't random.

She tried to kill me.

She failed.