“Which is?”
“That his late wife sat on a board that paid a vendor that sat inside one of Wiley’s networks.Has Cabot mentioned Henry?That isn’t idle curiosity.”
“They were using him for leverage, too.”
“But we don’t know who was making the decisions.”
“Köhler? Or even above Köhler,” I said.
Cabot looked up at me for the first time in ten minutes.
“Patterson was trying to break the chain. He couldn’t break it from inside. He couldn’t email the information. He had to write it down and walk it to us, but they found out he was doing that, and they couldn’t let him.”
“Yes.”
“We have to finish breaking the chain.”
“Cabot.”
“I’m not asking.”
“I know you’re not, but you have to know what comes with that. The minute you sit at this table with Wiley and start putting names against names, you become the man they have to stop, a target, like Patterson.”
“I’m already that. It’s the reason Patterson hired you.”
My phone buzzed. It was a text.
Farrow:Cleared. Moving. Twenty out.
I gave Reed the twenty-minute call and went back to the parlor.
“Farrow’s moving. Two vehicles will arrive within the half-hour. When they get here, you stay where you are until I bring Wiley to you.”
“Understood.”
Twenty-three minutes later, I heard a vehicle take the corner at the head of the street. I checked the camera feed. Collins pulled up to the curb.
Reed waited for the cadence. Three raps, pause, two more.
“Farrow,” he said.
“Open it.”
Farrow came in first. He’d put Wiley behind him and to his right. He saw me at the end of the hall.
He looked at me and held the gaze for maybe two seconds. That was all it took. I clocked the line of his shoulders and how he carried his weight on the balls of his feet. I was inside him the night before, pinning him against the wall.
He moved his hand to Wiley’s elbow, and the moment was gone.
Wiley was walking under his own power. His hands were in his coat pockets, and he held his shoulders a little high.
“Wiley, did you hit anything on the way down?”
“My shoulder, I think.”
“Move it,” I said.
He pulled his hand out of his pocket and rolled the shoulder. He didn’t flinch. It might be bruised, but he’d live.