Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANDI
Mrs. Alvarez calls me at seven-fifteen on a Wednesday morning.
She doesn’t call before eight unless something is wrong. I know this about her the way I know everything about the center—from years of paying attention to what doesn’t change, which is the only reliable way to notice when something does.
“You need to come in,” she says. “Before anyone else gets here.”
I’m there in twenty minutes.
She meets me at the side entrance. She’s been at the building since six—I can tell from the coffee situation, two cups in, the alertness of someone who has been alone with something unsettling for an hour and needs another person in the room before she can fully name it.
She walks me to her desk without speaking.
The files are there. Two of them, printed and placed in the center of her workspace with the deliberateness of someone who wanted them found. Not dropped, not scattered—centered. The way you place something when the placement is the message.
Deja’s file is on top.
Everything. Her placement history, her current foster address, her school, her schedule, and her case worker’s name.
Her intake record from the center—the day she first walked through the door, the programs she attends, and the staff she’s worked with.
Four months of her life in this building, compiled and printed and left where Mrs. Alvarez would find it first thing in the morning.
I set it down carefully and look at the file underneath.
Kelly.
I go very still.
Kelly’s file is thinner—she hasn’t been a center participant in the same way as Deja.
She’s been a presence through Luke’s family rather than as a program member.
But whoever accessed the server found her anyway, pulled from the administrative records, where Luke’s parents are listed as her emergency contacts for a program donation account.
The file includes her school. Her grade. The Woods family address.
And at the bottom, printed from what appears to be a public court record search, is a case reference number.
Protected testimony. Juvenile witness, sealed proceeding.They know Kelly was a witness.
They found the record, even sealed, or found enough of it to know it exists.
They left it here to make sure I understood they know.
I stand at Mrs. Alvarez’s desk for a long moment.
Two children. One who found this place on her own and doesn’t know she was already in the network’s peripheral vision. One who shot Jackson Rhoades in my kitchen nearly two years ago and has been living with Luke’s parents ever since, waiting for an adoption that keeps hitting inexplicable delays.
The machine has been in this building, and it knows about both of them.
“Who is the second girl? Kelly?” Mrs. Alvarez asks.
I look at her. She’s watching me with the expression she uses when she’s already decided she can handle the answer—she just needs me to trust her with it.
“Kelly is connected to Luke’s family. She’s been through things I can’t fully explain right now, but she’s a documented witness in a sealed proceeding. Someone accessed that record, or enough of it to know it exists, and left it here.”
Mrs. Alvarez absorbs this without visible reaction, which is one of the things I value most about her.
“What do they want?” she asks.
“To show me they can reach anyone in this building or in my life.” I look at the files. “And to make sure I understand that doing nothing isn’t an option anymore.”
She nods once. “What do you need from me?”
“Don’t tell anyone about these files. Not staff, not volunteers, not anyone.” I take my phone out and photograph both files, every page, in sequence. “I need to make some calls. And I need you to act completely normal today—programs run as scheduled. Nothing changes visibly.”
“And the girls?”
I think about Deja coming through the door at three-fifteen the way she always does. I think about Kelly at the Woods’ house, fifteen years old, counting months.
“They don’t know anything is wrong,” I say. “I want to keep it that way for as long as possible.”
Mrs. Alvarez picks up both files and holds them out to me. “Take them,” she says. “I don’t want them on my desk.”
I take them.
I call Bill from the parking lot before I go back inside.
I tell him about both files. The sealed record reference for Kelly. The center’s server is accessed remotely, after hours, and is precise enough to pull specific individuals rather than bulk data.
Bill is quiet for a long time after I finish.
“Kelly’s sealed record shouldn’t be findable,” he says. “Not without either inside access to the court system or someone who already knew the record existed and searched specifically for it.”
“They knew,” I say. “They’ve known about Kelly since the night at my house. Evelyn’s network was watching Jackson. They know what happened in that kitchen.”
He stops again. “This changes the protection picture significantly.”
“I know.”
“Luke’s parents need to know their address is in these files.”
“I know.” I look at the center entrance.
Through the glass, I can see Mrs. Alvarez at her desk, already on the phone with the security company.
She didn’t wait for me to ask. “Bill—they’re using Kelly as leverage against Luke.
The adoption delays, now this. They’ve been working that angle for going on two years. ”
“Yes,” Bill says. “I think you’re right.”
“We need to move faster,” I say. “On everything.”
“Agreed. I’ll call Daniel’s attorney today.”
I hang up and sit in my car for another minute. Then I call Luke.
He picks up between rounds. I can hear the gym, Reyes saying something in the background, the bags and bells of a space built for maximum effort and no rest.
“I need you to listen,” I say. “And I need you to stay in the gym while I tell you this because there’s nothing you can do about it right now, and Reyes needs you focused.”
He takes a moment to focus. “Tell me.”
“Someone accessed the center’s server last night. They printed files and left them on Mrs. Alvarez’s desk.” I pause. “Deja’s file. And Kelly’s.”
The gym sounds continue around him. He doesn’t make a sound for a long moment.
“Kelly,” he says.
“They found the sealed record reference. They know she was a witness.”
Another silence. When he speaks, his voice is level in a way that costs something. “My parents.”
“Their address is in the file. Bill will call you about the next steps. I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
“Are they—”
“They don’t know yet. Bill will help us figure out the right way to tell them.” I keep my voice steady. “Luke. Stay in the gym. Finish the session. There is nothing you can do in the next two hours that Bill and I can’t handle, and Reyes needs you there.”
A long pause.
“Okay,” he says. The word settles like something he had to work to produce.
“I’ll call you the minute I know anything else.”
“Andi?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful today.”
“Always,” I say.
I go back inside.
The center begins its morning routines, with programs underway and Mrs. Alvarez at her desk, while the building goes about its usual activity.
At 3:15 p.m., Deja enters the door as she always does—carrying her backpack, wearing headphones around her neck, embodying the relaxed confidence of someone who feels secure here.
Deja has been at Sam and Linda’s for two weeks.
She still comes to the center every day, which surprises exactly no one who understands that the door she found is hers, regardless of where she sleeps.
She doesn’t know someone printed her file and left it on a desk this morning.
I watch her cross the activity floor and sit down with two of the younger kids to help with homework.
She doesn’t know. And I am going to make sure that the people responsible for that file wish they had never walked into this building.
LUKE
Reyes has me sparring at nine.
My partner today is a welterweight named Castillo, who fights out of a gym in Decatur—fast, elusive, doesn’t stand and trade, makes you chase him, and punishes you for it. He’s the kind of fighter who exposes what you do when your plan stops working—exactly why Reyes brought him in to spar with me.
This is a test.
Three weeks ago, I would have been frustrated by him. I’d have pushed forward, tried to impose my game, gotten tagged coming in because I was thinking about controlling the fight instead of reading it.
Today I let him move.
That’s what Reyes has been building toward—the understanding that patience isn’t passive. That waiting isn’t losing ground. He’s been in my ear for four weeks about the difference between protecting something and taking something, and it’s starting to live in my body rather than just my head.
Castillo throws a combination and steps left. I don’t follow. I reset, cut the angle, and he runs into me instead of away from me. My straight right hand punch lands clean. He covers up.
Reyes, from the corner, says, “There it is.”
Three words. That’s Reyes’s version of a standing ovation.
We go four rounds. By the third, Castillo has figured out that running doesn’t work on me the way it used to, and he’s trying to make me come to him. The old version of me would have obliged. The new version makes him wait, controls the center, and forces him to commit first.
When Reyes calls time, I’m breathing hard but not spent. There’s a difference between tired and damaged. Reyes has been teaching me to know which state I’m in.
Castillo touches gloves. “You’re different from what you were on the footage,” he says. Meaning the gas station footage that’s now an online viral sensation. “In that footage, you look like a brawler. In here, you’re something else.”
“Working on it,” I say.
Reyes hands me water and looks at me the way he looks at things he’s satisfied with but won’t say yet.
“Again tomorrow,” he says. “Same time.”
I’m unwrapping my hands at the bench when the gym door opens.