“Agreed,” Wolfe said. “Which means we plan it that way.” He looked around the table. “Hawk, you’re heading up protection on the ground. Gator, you’re on transport and advance work on the venue. You’ll be working with Diego. I need eyes on the guest list as soon as it’s available.”
“Already requested it,” Diego said.
“Chance,” Wolfe continued, “I’d like your people positioned but not visible. We’re not trying to spook anyone. If Corvane or Valen has any contact attending that event, I want to know before Noah walks in the door, and if we sense a threat of any kind, we get him out of there.”
“I can do that,” Chance said. “I’ll have two agents there in a civilian capacity. You won’t know they’re mine.” He paused. “But I want to be clear… if something develops at the Gala, anything actionable, my people move first, and you guys are there for support.”
I watched Hawk’s jaw tighten slightly. He didn’t argue, but I could tell he wanted to. Wolfe nodded once, and the hierarchy was established. The FBI was in charge, and everyone in the room accepted it, even if they didn’t like it. Which told me something about how seriously they were all taking this.
“Transport,” Gator said, moving on. “We’re not driving Noah to Houston in a civilian vehicle, and I don’t want to put him on a plane, so I’m thinking armored SUV, two-car convoy. We leave from here, we stay together, we bring him back the same way.”
“Sounds good.” Wolfe agreed.
“As far as accommodations go,” Gator said. “I want us in the same hotel as the Gala, if possible. If not, adjacent. I don’t want him crossing open ground between buildings.”
I’d been listening to all of this while they built a plan around me. It was competent and thorough, and I was genuinely grateful for it. But my mind kept going back to something that Wolfe had said that bothered me.
“Can I say something?” I asked.
This group of men, who were going to so much trouble to make this happen, all looked at me, and I took in a breath. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but this event mattered to me, and I needed to make sure they all understood that.
“The reason I’m speaking at the Gala has everything to do with all this.” I motioned at the file in front of me, but I kept my voice even. “My therapist asked me to speak because she thought it would help me stop being someone things happenedtoand start being someone who does something about it.” I looked at Wolfe. “But all of this is pointless unless I actually give the speech. Not something that gets cut short because someone spots a threat in the room. The full speech.”
Nobody said anything, but Jackson squeezed my leg under the table, letting me know I had his support, and that wasn’t a small thing.
“I’m not being reckless,” I said. “I understand what you’re doing, and I’m grateful for it. But I need you to plan around me doing this thing, not around me being removed if it gets complicated or because you see someone you think is a threat.”
Wolfe looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at Hawk. Then back at me.
“I hear you, Noah,” Wolfe said. “And we’ll do our best to make sure you give the speech.”
I held his gaze. “Okay.”
Chance was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Then he spoke, quietly and without any of the procedural flatness he’d had for the rest of the meeting.
“For what it’s worth, what you’re doing takes guts. I’m sure it isn’t easy to speak publicly about what you went through.” He paused. “But I’ve worked trafficking cases for eleven years, and you should know, the survivors who come forward and put their faces and their voices to it, they do more good than we do most of the time.”
The room went quiet, but a few of them nodded in agreement.
“Thank you,” I said.
He picked up his pen, and we went back to the plan, but something had shifted in the room. Not the professionalism of it, that stayed, but the weight behind it, our conversation reminding everyone of the reason this mattered.
Wolfe called in Kat, and we spent another forty minutes working through the details. Entry points and exit routes, communication protocols, the positions Hawk’s team would hold during the speech itself, and what Gator and Diego needed from the venue layout.
When it was done and people were gathering their things, Chance stopped beside me and Jackson on his way to the door.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Better than I was,” I said.
He nodded. “Good.” He glanced at Jackson, and something passed between them, communicating something I didn’t quite catch. Then Chance looked back at me. “One week is fast, but we’ll be ready.”
He left, and the room emptied around us until it was just me and Jackson standing at the long table with the whiteboard covered in the plans we’d made.
Jackson looked at it for a moment, like he was trying to make sure nothing had been missed, before he turned to me.
“You okay?” he asked.
