Page 133 of Split Decision

And then she tried again this morning in a parking lot twelve minutes from my house and failed again.

I sit with the specific feeling of that—not fear, something colder and more focused. The clarity of understanding that the person you've been building a case against isn't just running a methodology. She made a unilateral decision about your life. Twice.

"The escalation," I say. "Someone who has been watching this operation run for a long time sees Evelyn move to physical methods and understands what it means. She's running out of time. That's the signal that it's safe to act."

Bill is quiet for a moment.

"If documentation arrives," he says carefully, "I need you to bring it to me before you do anything else with it. Don't photograph it yourselves—do it here, with a chain of custody established. Don't tell Brandon. Don't tell anyone who doesn't already know." He pauses. "Carrington has been doing this for thirty years. When she's cornered, she'll claim fabrication. The documentation has to be unimpeachable."

"Understood."

He looks at Luke. "The parking lot. You put yourself in front of the car."

"Yes."

"Anyone see?"

"Mrs. Alvarez may have seen from the window. No one else visible."

Bill nods. "Good. If there's a next time?—"

"There won't be a next time," Luke says. His voice is even. "She knows it didn't work. She's not going to send the same asset twice."

"She'll send a different approach," Bill says.

"Yes." Luke looks at me. "Which is why we're not going to give her a next time."

Bill looks between us.

"How long?" he asks.

I think about the device. About what Evelyn has heard and what she hasn't. About the specific calculation she's making right now in whatever city she's in, weighing the failed physical action against the still-open institutional window.

"Days," I say. "One way or another."

Bill nods once.

"I'll be available," he says.

Luke calls Travisfrom the car on the way home, putting it on speaker. I watch the Atlanta streets pass by as I listen. Travis answers on the second ring, sounding relaxed—the ease of someone whose life is going well at the moment, which Luke mentioned it is. New album. Good tour. A city he enjoys.

"Hey," Luke says. "I need to ask you something about Phoenix. About the accident."

A pause. "Okay."

"The other vehicle. After it hit you—did it stop?"

Longer pause. I can hear Travis thinking through it the way you think through a memory you haven't revisited in months. Placing himself back on the highway. The impact. The pavement.

"No," he says. Slowly. "No, it didn't. I was on the ground, and I was looking at Andi, and I heard the car—I heard it speed up, actually. Not brake. Accelerate." Another pause. "I assumed it panicked. That's what I told myself. Drunk driver panics and runs."

"Did you see the vehicle at all?"

"Dark. Four-door. That's all I got before we went down." He's quiet for a moment. "Luke. Why are you asking?"

"Because I don't think it was a drunk driver."

The silence on the other end of the phone is the silence of someone who has been carrying their own version of that night and is now being given permission to look at it differently.