Finally, she exhaled. “I don’t know what the next step is.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “We don’t have to know yet.”
She looked at me skeptically.
“We do need to know one thing,” I added.
“What?”
“That you’re not doing this alone.”
Her mouth curved faintly, sad but real. “I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good,” I said. “Because whether you like it or not?—”
She raised a brow.
“—you’re one of my people now.”
The words were out before I’d fully examined them.
She blinked.
“That’s not a legal term,” she observed.
“Lucky for you,” I replied. “It’s not a negotiable one either.”
She shook her head, but there was something like relief in her eyes.
I stood and moved around the table, tugging the blanket off the berth and draping it over her shoulders before she could object.
“Eat,” I said. “Then we’ll follow up on the FOIA stuff. And we’ll figure out how to hear from people who don’t feel safe being heard.”
“And if I’m right?” she asked quietly.
“Then we get smarter,” I said. “And quieter.”
She nodded.
And for the first time since we’d left Rosa’s house, it seemed like the ground under our feet had stopped shifting.
We didn’t have answers.
But we had the shape of the problem.
And that was enough to keep going.
Twenty-Two
MADDEN
The email arrived before my second cup of coffee.
From: Barbara Channing
* * *
Subject: Response to Public Records Request
