"I don't know." The words came out hard. Ryker didn't like not knowing—I could hear it in the way the syllables landed, clipped and controlled, the sound of a man whose operational picture had just developed a gap he hadn't anticipated. "But they're here. And they're not asking."
We found Wyatt in his room on the third floor. The door was ajar. Inside, my brother was standing by the bed in jeans and nothing else. From behind the bathroom door came the sound of the shower running. Sophie.
Wyatt looked at us. Read the situation off our faces in under a second. Ryker told him.
"How many?" Wyatt asked.
"One agent. Four tactical," Ryker said. "The family attorneys are being notified. We're about to dial the D.C. line."
Wyatt nodded. His jaw set—the Valentine jaw, the same one I saw in the mirror, the one our father had apparently given to all the men in this building. "Give me five minutes. I need to change and tell Sophie."
"Five minutes," Ryker confirmed. Then he turned, and we walked back the way we'd come.
The front entrance of Dominion Hall was a wide stone portico with iron-framed doors that looked like they'd been designed to withstand an industrial battering ram and hadprobably been tested at least once. The morning light came through at a sharp angle, casting long shadows across the steps.
The FBI was waiting.
One agent. He stood at the base of the steps with the patient, unhurried posture of a man who knew his authority. Mid-forties. Tall—not Dane tall, but tall enough to look you in the eye without adjusting. Dark hair cut short and going silver at the temples. A face that had been handsome once and had been refined by time and purpose into something harder and more precise—high cheekbones, a jaw that could have been architectural, eyes the color of slate that moved with constant, quiet assessment.
His suit was federal—dark, fitted, the cut that said Bureau without needing the badge, though the badge was there, clipped to his belt beside a holstered weapon he wasn't touching and didn't need to.
He stood the way the best operators stood—still, grounded, radiating a competence that was more effective than any display of force.
His name, when he introduced himself, was Special Agent Dominic Craine.
The name landed in my ear and stayed there.Craine.It had weight to it. The kind of name that sounded like it had been doing damage for a long time and had gotten comfortable with the work.
Behind him, four men in black tactical gear stood in a loose semicircle. Body armor. Weapons. Earpieces. The posture of men who'd been told to stand ready and were doing it with the bored professionalism of a team that had done this enough times that the adrenaline had worn off and been replaced by procedure.
I measured them. Automatically, the way I measured every potential threat—height, weight, stance, hand placement, eye movement.
Ryker approached with the composed authority of a man who owned the ground he was standing on—which he did, literally and otherwise. His voice, when he spoke, was polite. Not deferential. The politeness of a man who understood the law and respected it and would work within it right up until the moment working within it stopped being productive.
"What can we do for you?" Ryker said.
Craine reached into his jacket—slowly, deliberately, the motion of a man who knew that reaching into a jacket in front of trained operators required telegraph and transparency—and produced a folded document.
"New information has been uncovered regarding the death of Special Agent Trevor Klein," Craine said. His voice matched his face—precise, controlled. "Wyatt Dane is being brought in for additional questioning."
He extended the document. Ryker took it. Read it. He’d clearly been reading legal documents under pressure for years and could separate the operative language from the boilerplate in seconds.
"This is a material witness request," Ryker said. "Not an arrest warrant."
"Correct," Craine said. "For now."
Thefor nowsat in the morning air like a held breath.
Ryker's eyes came up from the document. "Our attorneys will need to review?—"
"They're welcome to meet us at the field office," Craine said. "The request is lawful. I have the authority to compel Mr. Dane's presence for questioning. I'd prefer to do this cooperatively."
The wordcooperativelywas delivered without warmth. It was a courtesy wrapped around a mandate, and everyone present understood the wrapping.
Wyatt appeared in the doorway behind us. Changed—jeans, boots, a plain shirt. His face was composed in the way that facesgot composed when a man had spent thirty seconds explaining to the woman he loved that the federal government wanted to talk to him about the time she'd pushed a man off a bridge, and had then walked out the door before she could see the fear underneath the composure.
"It's okay," Wyatt said. To Ryker. To me. To the morning itself. "I'll go."
One of the tactical men stepped forward, producing a set of handcuffs with reflexive efficiency.
