He didn't make it out. The silence was different now. The specific gravity of a silence that holds the weight of a real person who is no longer here. "I'm sorry," Victoria said quietly. "No performance in it at all. " "After that, I" He shook his head slightly.
Maya was 8. Her mother had just left. I was a single father with a job that had taken my partner and my daughter had nobody else and I made a choice. He looked up. I don't regret the choice.
I just He paused. Some nights I think Calvin would have something to say about me fixing HVAC units and checking backup generators. What do you think he'd say? Darius almost smiled. He'd say I was wasting my talent on buildings that weren't on fire.
Victoria looked at him for a long moment. He'd be right, she said. Darius looked at her. Don't tell me I'm wasting my I'm not telling you anything tonight, she said. It's 2:30 in the morning and you just got us out of a building with someone trying to kill us.
I'm not making speeches. She wrapped her hands around her own coffee cup. I'm just saying Calvin Briggs sounds like a man who knew what he was talking about. Darius looked at the table. Yeah, he said he usually did.
At 2:51 a.m., Okafer came back to the table with his jacket buttoned and his notepad closed, which Darius recognized as the body language of someone delivering news they'd been waiting to confirm before sharing. Ethan Caldwell was taken into custody at 2:44 a.m. Okapor said he was found attempting to access a storage unit in the Meridian district. Inside the storage unit. And this is preliminary investigators found documentation consistent with the financial records.
Miz Hayes described along with equipment that appears to have been used for remote system access. He paused. He also had plane tickets. International departing at 6:15 this morning. Victoria set her coffee cup down very carefully.
Where too? She said Portugal. One way. The silence that followed was the silence of a very large thing becoming very real all at once. 13 years of working relationship, 13 years of shared offices, shared decisions, shared strategy.
The man had been planning to be in Lisbon by this time tomorrow. He had it all set up, Victoria said. Not to anyone specifically, just placing it in the air. The financial manipulation, the documentation wipe. Tonight it was all the exit plan.