Page 23 of Main Event

I want to say, “Let me come.” I want to say, “You’re not going—not alone.” I want to say all the things I would have said a year ago without thinking about whether they were mine to say.

I don’t say them.

“I’ll go with you,” I say instead. “To the building. I’ll wait outside.”

Something moves across her face—not quite a smile, but it’s just under the surface. “She’ll have someone watching the entrance. If you’re outside, she’ll know you came. Again. To protect me. Again.”

“Then I’ll wait two blocks away.”

“Luke.”

“I’m not sitting at home,” I say. “That’s not negotiable.”

She looks at me for a moment. Then she relents in her way. “Two blocks. In the truck. Phone on.”

“Phone on,” I agree.

She picks up her fork.

“She’ll think she found exactly what she came for,” Andi says. “A woman who’s had a tough couple of weeks and is grateful for institutional support.” She looks down at her plate. “That’s what I’m going to show her.”

“And what she actually finds?” I ask, already knowing the answer that’s coming.

Andi looks up. The directness in her eyes means she’s already three moves ahead.

“Someone who’s been waiting for this meeting since the moment she walked into my center,” she says.

The photograph is in my gloves on Friday morning.

I open my locker and reach for them the way I always do—right hand first, checking the fit before I tape—and my fingers find paper.

I pull it out.

Andi and I, asleep. Our bedroom, through the window, the angle of a camera positioned outside the glass. The image is clear enough that I can read the time on the clock on my side of the bed—2:14 a.m. Recent. Within the last two weeks, based on the angle the summer light takes through our curtains at that hour.

I stand at my locker for a moment.

Then I close it. I walk through the gym without stopping, go to the parking lot, stand in the August heat, and call Mack.

He picks up on the second ring. I tell him what I found. He listens without interrupting.

When I finish, Mack replies as if he’s thinking out loud, catching up on the conversation but also thinking through the mechanics of this game. “He’s been in the gym.”

“Yes.”

“This locker is in the secured section. Requires a code.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Then, with the flat quiet of a man who has been managing dangerous situations for forty years. “He’s telling you something.”

“I know what he’s telling me.”

Your home. Your gym. Your bedroom. I go where I choose, when I choose, and the measures you take don’t change that.

“I’m going to make some calls,” Mack says. “New codes, new protocols. It won’t stop him, but it’ll slow him down.” Mack pauses before he says my name. “Luke?”

“Yeah?”