Claire's voice was clipped, but he could hear the strain underneath. "Courthouse is secured. Room 114, ground floor, east wing. Judge Alderman's chambers—he's on vacation and offered the space. Entry is through the east side door. I'll meet you there with Agent Rojas from the DEA and Special Agent Hendricks from our office. That's it. No one else in the wing."
“And Grizzly?” He used CB’s SPS codename out of habit, but Claire knew them all. “I want him there.”
"He'll post outside. I've also got a marshal on the east entrance."
Good. Small footprint, controlled access. Better than the field office by a wide margin.
“Any info on the shooter?" he asked.
"SWAT cleared the parking structure and found the nest on the fourth level. Shell casings indicate a Remington 700 platform. Looks like a professional setup."
Most likely, but it wasn’t his level of expertise. He’d bet the shooter didn’t have military training. “The leak?" he said.
"Working on it. I've pulled access logs for everyone who knew your ETA. It's a short list.”
“We’ll be at the courthouse soon.” He ended the call.
Alyssa was watching him. He could feel the weight of her attention, the way she catalogued his responses, his expressions, the things he said, and the things he left out.
"You don't entirely trust her," she said. Not an accusation. An observation.
"I trust Claire. I don't trust the system she's operating in right now."
She nodded and looked out the window at the houses drifting past, the quiet residential streets, the absurd normalcy of a Sunday in a neighborhood where no one knew two people with targets on their backs were driving through.
After a moment, she spoke. "Do you remember the cabin at Flathead Lake?"
The question caught him off guard. "What?"
"Flathead Lake. That long weekend, the summer before—" She paused. "Before everything."
He remembered. Of course, he remembered. A rented cabin on the western shore, three days of nothing planned. It had been Alyssa's idea—she'd found the listing online and shown him the photos with so much excitement that he'd have said yes even if the place had been a cardboard box.
"The one with the dock that was falling apart," he said.
"And the canoe with the hole in it."
"That was not a hole. That was a design flaw."
"It was a hole, Mack. Water was coming in. I was bailing with a coffee mug."
"And we still made it across."
"We made it to the middle. Then you had to tow us back because I was sitting in four inches of lake water." She was almost smiling. Not quite—the situation they were in wouldn't allow the full thing—but the corners of her mouth had softened, and her voice had lost the tight, controlled quality it had carried since the parking structure. "You pulled us back one-handed while I held onto the cooler because I was not losing the sandwiches I'd made."
He remembered that, too. The water sloshing around their ankles, the canoe listing badly to starboard, Alyssa clutching the cooler with both hands, as if it contained classified documents rather than turkey clubs and a bag of chips. He'd grabbed the dock piling and hauled them in, and they'd sat on the half-rotten planks, soaking wet and laughing so hard his ribs hurt.
"Those were good sandwiches," he said.
"They were terrible sandwiches. I put way too much mustard on yours."
"I like mustard."
"You like mustard the way normal people like mustard. I put enough to strip paint." She glanced at him. "You ate the whole thing anyway."
He’d have eaten a shoe if she'd made it for him back then. He'd have done anything she asked, gone anywhere she pointed, followed her into any leaking canoe on any lake in the world. He'd been that far gone, and she'd known it, and they'd been happy.
The memory settled like something warm, taking up the space the fear had occupied. He could almost smell the lake water, the pine sap, the cheap sunscreen she'd bought at a gas station on the way.