Page 103 of Final Drive

“I told her he filed the registration. On the record, with his name and his profession, and she’s pulling the state filing date in the morning. It’ll be in front of the bar association inside a month. His firm has a licensing review every year. My mother will find out from the internet, since I’m not going to be the one who calls her.”

Beckett doesn’t say anything for a second.

“Do you want me to tell you that was the right call?”

“No.”

“Good, since I don’t know if it was.” He puts his hand out, and when I take it he pulls me in against his chest and holds on. “I know you didn’t have a better one. That’s the most I’ve got for you.”

The single comes back down the course, and whoever’s in it is a novice, by the puddles.

“He came to Riverside for me,” I say into his jacket. “Two months ago. Walked into the officials’ tent and took the whole thing apart in under five minutes and got me on the water.”

“I remember.”

“He did that to protect the story. Not me.” I get a breath in. “I knew it while it was happening and I’ve never told anybody, and it doesn’t feel any better now that I have.”

Beckett doesn’t answer that. He just keeps his hand between my shoulder blades and lets me stand there in the cold until the novice gets the single racked.

“Come on.” He opens the truck door. “Tyler’s texted twice asking if you’re all right, and Gray’s been standing in the kitchen since we left, making coffee nobody wants.”

“He doesn’t drink coffee.”

“I know. Which is why it’s so weird.” Beckett shuts my door. I stare out the window as the lake disappears into the trees.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Beckett

Kowalski takes three days to run it. She spends them pulling the state filing and calling the firm for comment. I know about the second part since the firm rings the house twice looking for Reese and gets Bo both times.

I set an alarm for five so I can read it before anybody else does.

Kowalski’s piece goes up at 6:02. I’m on the porch with the laptop on my knees and the lake doing nothing in particular out past the trees, and I read the whole thing twice before I let myself have an opinion about it.

It’s good, which is the problem.

She got the filing date off the state registry, so the second paragraph has James Callahan’s name, his firm, and the words amended designation sitting in a row where anybody can find them. She quotes Reese six times, every one something Reese chose to say. There’s a line near the bottom about a men’s roster, a registered Omega, and three sets of rules that don’t agree with each other. It’s written to be read by the people who wrote them.

There is exactly one sentence about the crew.

Callahan declined to discuss her teammates’ private lives, and this outlet found no source willing to do it for her.

I read that one three times before I close the laptop and go make breakfast for nine people, since it gives my hands a job.

Zane comes down first. He always does.

“Is it out?”

“Since two minutes past six.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s fair.” I watch him work out that those aren’t the same thing. “Eat something before you look at it.”

He eats standing up, scrolling with his thumb. About forty seconds in, he stops chewing and puts the phone down on the counter screen-side up.

“Her dad’s firm has a website. There’s a picture of him on it.”