Page 75 of Split Decision

"No." He advances the footage. "But I know someone who has. One of their principals worked on a D.C. crisis management case in 2018 that involved the suppression oftestimony. Sealed records. Nothing public." He glances at me. "Andi didn't ask me to look into it. I looked because she asked the question, and the question was the right one."

I sit very still.

"Marin recommended a firm whose principal worked on testimony suppression?"

"Allegedly. Nothing's provable. It was sealed." Mack shrugs. "Could be a coincidence. Could be that a lot of D.C. crisis management people have adjacent histories that look bad out of context."

“Or it could be that someone is building infrastructure inside the center's communications." I look at him. “A PR firm controls what gets said publicly about the center. Who speaks. What language gets used. What gets released and when. If Marin recommended them and they're connected to suppression work, they're not just managing the story. They're positioned to shape it. Or kill it.”

Mack doesn't respond directly to that. He just advances the footage to a Soto clip and says, "See how he drops his right elbow before the hook. Every time. You need to be ready for that."

I watch the clip.

But I'm thinking about something else.

BRANDON

I pull the firm's background on a Sunday afternoon, when I’m alone in my office, because if I'm going to look at this, I want to look at it without Marin in the room. The principals are clean on paper. No violations. Solid client history. The kind of track record that looks exactly as it should look.

Then I go one layer deeper.

The firm’s lead principal—a man named Garrett Cole—has three prior crisis-management cases with political dimensions. Two are a matter of public record. The third is sealed, which Marin would have known, having filed adjacent documentation on that same case during her time in D.C.

She knows him. She worked with him. Yet she recommended him without disclosing that.

I sit with that information for a long time, turning it over and over in my head. Looking for the angles that yield deceit because there’s no way it was an oversight or incompetence. She’s already proven that with everything else she’s touched. She’s thorough and doesn’t miss anything.

It's not proof of anything. People work with people they know. Marin's world is a small world—D.C. crisis management runs through a tight professional network, and previous collaboration is the rule, not the exception.

But she didn't disclose it, even to me, and I can’t overlook that pertinent detail.

And Andi asked me to look for a reason.

I pour a glass of water, stand by my office window, and reflect on Marin, similar to how you observe two versions of something—one enjoyable and the other mismatched—and try to determine which one you're truly focusing on.

She's been right about almost everything.

That's the part I can't get past.

Every recommendation has been strategically sound. Every analysis has been accurate. Every prediction about how things would move has come true. She's been an extraordinary resource through a genuinely difficult period, and I've leaned on her more than I intended to when she first walked into our lives.

But I think about Andi's voice on the phone.

Ask yourself who benefits when the solution alwayslooks the same.

I pick up my phone and call Marin.

"Brandon," she says. Calm. Even. The voice she always has.

"The PR firm," I say. "You and Garrett Cole. Tell me about it."

A pause. It lasts exactly as long as a pause would last if she were deciding how much to tell me and in what order.

"We worked adjacent cases in 2018," she says. "I should have disclosed that when I made the recommendation. You're right to ask."

"Why didn't you?"

Another pause.