Page 6 of Main Event

I focus on my work—everything corporate, everything executive—so I don’t have to think about the hornet’s nest I’ve just kicked.

The photograph sits on the corner of my desk where Bill left it—bagged now, as evidence—and I don’t look at it more than necessary. There are people in and out of this office all afternoon who don’t know it’s there. Who don’t know what this morning was. I answer questions about release schedules, licensing agreements, and a distribution dispute that needs my sign-off, and I do so with the practiced focus of someone who has learned to hold two things at once—the ordinary and the unbearable—without letting one collapse into the other.

At four-fifteen, Bill calls.

“I need to tell you something,” he says. “Are you somewhere private?”

I close my office door.

“The Athletic Commission contact,” he says. “The one Katelyn used to place the damaging material against Luke’s license while you were on tour with Sound Bar. I’ve been trying to reach him for three days. He was on the list of people I wanted to interview for the evidentiary chain.”

I already know where this is going. Something in the weight of his voice has told me.

“He’s dead,” I say.

I hear him settle before he begins. “Car accident on I-285. Two nights ago. Police are calling it distracted driving.” He waits a beat. “He lived alone. No witnesses to the accident itself. The vehicle left the roadway at a section with no traffic cameras.”

I sit very still.

“He was on our list,” I say.

“He was on our list,” Bill confirms. “I don’t have proof it’s connected. A car accident on I-285 is not inherently suspicious—people die on that highway with statistical regularity. But the timing…”

“The timing is both very suspicious and convenient,” I say.

“Yes. Exactly what you’re thinking.”

I look out the window at the MaxMorgan parking lot. The afternoon has the ordinary cadence of any other work day in Atlanta—cars, pedestrians, the city proceeding without awareness of what’s been assembled in this office today.

“She’s eliminating the witness chain,” I say. “Before we can reach them.”

“That’s my concern.”

“Which means she knows we’re building one.”

“She heard enough in that living room to know you have her name and you’re looking for documentation. She doesn’t know you have Daniel’s file—but she knows you’re pulling threads.” Bill’s voice is measured, the way it gets when he’s delivering something that requires stillness to hear. “Andi. If she’s moving on witnesses, she’s moving on a timeline. Which means we have less time than we thought. When you start eliminating the pawns, you clear the lane for a decisive move.”

The office continues to hum around me. A release approval awaits in my inbox, and I have an artist call in forty minutes. The usual operations at MaxMorgan go on as always—unaffected by what I’m holding and simply needing what they need.

“How much less?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think we need to assume she will not wait for us to find what we’re looking for.”

I look at the photograph on my desk. The center before it existed. The date on the back.

Six years of being watched.

“All right,” I say. “Then neither are we.”

CHAPTER THREE

LUKE

Mack arrives at six.

No ceremony—he pulls into the driveway at night with a duffel bag and an unfamiliar man, later identified as Reeves, a former military intelligence contractor. After three introductory sentences, Reeves opens the duffel and gets to work. He doesn’t explain what he’s doing, and I don’t ask. I point out the gap behind the bookcase where I found the first device. He notes it without a reaction, suggesting he’s seen worse.

He moves with purpose, meticulously checking every room and leaving nothing to chance. The full sweep of the house only takes him ninety minutes.