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"We're both fine." A breath. "It's the site."

"Okay." I thought about what he'd told me on the couch—the car accident, the septic markers, Code pulling camera feeds. "Will you have time to talk tonight? Even if not a date—just a call?"

Another pause, longer this time. I could almost hear him rethinking things.

"Yeah," he said finally. The word came out a little softer than the ones before it. "Yeah, it would be good to talk to you. I'll call after James is down."

I disconnected in time for Ernie to call me back up front.

Adam called at nine forty-three.

I was in bed with my laptop, the shipping anomaly spreadsheet open in one tab and a half-eaten bowl of popcorn beside me, when his name came up on my phone.

"Tell me," I said, without preamble.

He did.

Two pieces of equipment—he named them, I didn't know what they were, but from the way he said the dollar amounts I understood they were significant—destroyed, not damaged. The kind of destruction that was deliberate and meant to do more than send a message. It was meant to stop the whole operation.

“But you have insurance,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s going to take a little while to pay out, and in the meantime, we’re losing money. But, there is an upside. The cameras caught two figures, hooded and masked. They moved like they’d done something like this before. The gas cans were close to the construction trailer," he said. "Someone was working late in there. Gus, one of Harvey's guys."

I was quiet for a moment. "They didn't care that someone was inside."

"No." His voice was flat. "They didn't."

Onyx had been on scene fast—faster than the saboteurs had anticipated, from what Code could tell. The SUV had gone north on Route 9. The plate wasn’t caught on the cameras from the construction site, but Code was working backward through every ATM camera, every grocery store parking lot feed, every traffic intersection along the likely route.

"He'll find something," Adam said. It sounded like something he was telling himself as much as me.

"And Harvey?"

A long silence.

"Harvey wants to sell."

I closed the spreadsheet. "Can you blame him?"

"No." A rough exhale. "No, I can't blame him. He's got a wife. A daughter. He doesn't want to be the reason someone gets hurt." He paused. "But if Harvey sells, the project is in trouble. Ford and Walker lose their contracts. The families in Jasper Creek who were counting on this development lose their housing options. Pacific Rim wins by making decent people too scared to fight back."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet. We're meeting tomorrow." Another pause, quieter. "I'm glad I called you."

"I told you," I said. "Lean."

I heard the small sound he made. Not quite a laugh. Something warmer.

We stayed on the phone for another twenty minutes without talking about anything important at all.

Chapter Thirty

The pencil hit the drafting table and skidded off the edge.

I didn't bother retrieving it.

Three days in a row, some neighbor's dog had started up just as I'd gotten into the zone on the Sadowski elevation drawings. Not a bark but a sustained howl, the kind that suggested either the owner never paid it any attention, or the dog hated architects—me in particular.