Page 86 of Main Event

I drive home.

Luke is at the gym. The back deck is empty, and the pool surface is still in the late afternoon light. I sit in one of the chairs, and I look at the water, and I let the day settle into something I can carry.

Four weeks.

The machine is running out of moves.

So are we.

The difference is we know what move comes next.

LUKE

I call my parents at five and ask if we can come over.

My mother says yes before I finish the sentence. That’s Linda Woods—she doesn’t need reasons, she needs to know you’re coming. The reason can wait until you’re there.

Brandon meets us in their driveway at six-thirty. He’s moving carefully, the ribs still making themselves known, but he’s dressed and present. He shakes my hand at the door, which is his version of I’m fine, stop watching me. I stop watching him.

We go inside.

Kelly and Deja are at the kitchen table, doing homework. They look up when we come in—the quick room assessment of two girls who don’t trust easily, the habit of two kids who learned early to read the temperature of a space before committing to it. Kelly sees Andi and me, then Brandon, then reads something in the collective weight of three adults arriving together on a Thursday evening.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

My mother puts her hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “Let’s all sit down together in the other room.”

We sit in the living room. My parents flank Kelly and Deja on the couch, Brandon in the chair by the window, and Andi and me across from them. This room has held its share of important conversations, fights, and resolutions before, and knows how to hold another one.

My father looks at me. He’s been reading the room since we walked in, the way he reads everything—quietly, thoroughly, without showing his hand. “Tell us,” he says.

I tell them.

Not everything—not the full architecture of the investigation, not Daniel’s file, not the trafficking layer. Enough. The kind of “enough” that people who love you and need to understand the danger without being handed more than they can act on.

I tell them about the server breach. About the files left on Mrs. Alvarez’s desk. About Kelly’s file specifically—the sealed testimony record that someone found and printed and left as a message.

My mother’s hand tightens on Kelly’s shoulder.

Kelly is very still.

“They know where we live,” my father says. Not a question.

“Yes,” I say. “The address was in the file.”

He nods. Processing. My father does this—he receives information, goes quiet with it, turns it over, and fully understands it before he responds. He’s done it my whole life, and it used to frustrate me. Now I recognize it as the learned wisdom of a man who learned that reacting quickly is rarely the same as reacting correctly.

“What do we need to do?” he asks.

“Bill is arranging private security for the house,” I say. “Not visible—no car out front that announces something is wrong. But someone is watching the property.” I look at him. “And we need to tell Kelly.”

Everyone looks at Kelly.

She’s been sitting very still since the word file was said. She’s fifteen and has been through things that would break most adults. She has a particular quality of controlled stillness that I recognize—it’s the same as Andi’s when she’s receiving something difficult and holding the surface steady.

“Kelly,” Andi says.

Kelly looks at her.