Chapter 19: The Plan

By Wednesday noon the grandmother's kitchen table was covered with printouts, cold tea and four laptops.

Yvette slept on the couch under a sheet she had taken off the furniture.

Her wet shoes were lined up by the door.

I had not slept at all, and I felt wonderful.

"Say it back to me," I said.

Oz stood at the head of the table in a hoodie printed with cats in tiny crowns.

"Convention Center vendor portal," he said. "I add myself as a contract stagehand for the audio company. Their onboarding takes a name and a pulse."

"And Thursday?"

"I sit in the booth at the back of the hall. I own the mics, the lights and the big screens."

"If Palmer cuts my feed, I cut his."

"Don't smile like that," I said.

"I'm going to smile like that for eight days."

The detective who had taken the gas station arrest answered my call on the second ring.

He was a tired man, and he did not like what I told him.

I played him thirty seconds of the recording and the ballroom clip from Monday.

"If you take Yvette Vandermeer in before Thursday, Palmer's lawyers bury the recording by noon," I said.

"If you wait until the room has heard it, you arrest two people on live television."

The line went quiet for long enough that I counted the cracks in the ceiling.

"Eleven o'clock," he said at last. "I'll have two cars at the loading dock. If I'm wrong about this, I lose my badge."

"You aren't wrong."

"I hope you're right, Ms. Lindeman. I read your father's file a long time ago, too."

Jonas had been sitting at the end of the table all morning, saying almost nothing.

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