The room was quiet for a moment. The specific quiet of people absorbing a plan and measuring it against reality. Olivia leaned toward her camera. "The intermediary trace," she said. "I'm 48 hours from having something solid enough to include in the media package.
The federal watch list connection is real and I can document it. " "You have 48 hours," Elena said. "Then it goes to Kimberly. " Judith spoke from her screen. Ms. Maddox, I want to be direct about one thing. Her voice was careful and professional.
Once I walk into the AG's office this morning, this moves into a phase you can't fully control. Investigations take their own shape. I know, Elena said. That's the point. I don't want to control it.
I want to hand it to people whose job it is to take it from here. She paused. I just needed to make sure they had everything they needed to do that job. Judith nodded. Then I'll see you on the other side.
The call ended. Olivia signed off to keep working. Kimberly packed up her laptop and headed for the door already on her phone. Judith's screen went dark. Mattie stood up and looked at Elena.
The suite was quiet now. Just the two of them and four pages of notes and 12 days left on a clock. Only they could fully see. 96 hours, he said. Elena picked up her coffee.
It had gone cold while she talked, but she drank it anyway. Let's not waste any of them, she said. The church was full. Not just the pews, the side aisles, the back wall, the folding chairs that Reverend Odinwald's volunteers had set up in every available space. 400 people, maybe more.
Elena stood at the side entrance and looked out at them before she walked in, and the weight of it settled over her like something physical. Old women in church coats, men with work-roughened hands folded in their laps, young mothers with children pressed close to their sides, teenagers who had come because their grandparents had asked them to and were now sitting up straight because something in the room's temperature told them this mattered. These were the people on the maps. These were the red zones. Reverend Odinwald touched her arm lightly.
They're ready," he said. Elena walked in. The room shifted when she entered, not loudly, but perceptibly, the way a room shifts when the person everyone has been waiting for finally arrives. Odinwald introduced her briefly, and without exaggeration. He said she was a woman who had come to Chicago on one kind of business and stayed for a better kind.
That was enough. Elena stepped to the front. No podium between her and the room, no notes in her hand. She had decided that before she came, no paper, no barrier, nothing that put distance between her and 400 people who deserve to be looked at directly. She started with the truth.