Chapter 36

The hearing ran late.

Traffic delays, a last-minute defence application, the judge taking his time on two rulings. By the time it wrapped up and Becky had finished with the court clerk about tomorrow’s filing it was past seven.

The courthouse had mostly emptied.

Freen had been in the back row for four hours. Jeff had not been in his seat today. She had texted Nam at five thirty.

jeff not at hearing. location?

Nam: lost him at the entrance this morning. working on it.

Lost him.

Freen had put her phone away and watched the rest of the hearing with her face completely still.

—

The car park was three levels below the courthouse.

Becky’s car was on level two. They took the stairs – Becky talking through tomorrow’s filing as they went, half to Freen, half to herself. Freen listened with part of her attention.

The rest was on the car park.

Level two. The stairwell door closing behind them. Fluorescent lights, concrete smell, rows of cars in the silence of an underground space after hours.

She clocked them in the first sweep.

Two men. One positioned near the far stairwell exit. One between two parked cars on the left, closer. The spacing between them was deliberate – not random, not people heading to their cars. The kind of spacing that happened when people had rehearsed it.

She had four seconds before the closer one moved.

“Becky.” She kept her voice completely normal.

Becky stopped mid-sentence.

“The pillar.” Freen nodded toward the large concrete column six feet to their right. “Go there and stay there.”

Becky looked at her. One second – the quick assessment she gave everything. Then she moved to the pillar without arguing.

The closer man moved.

—

He was good.

Freen registered this in the first exchange – the way he moved, the angle he came from, the fact that he wasn’t telegraphing. Whoever had sent them had sent people who knew what they were doing.

It didn’t matter.

She stepped into him rather than away from him, which surprised him – most people moved back, the instinct was to create space. She didn’t need space. She used his momentum, redirected it, and the car park pillar did the rest. He went down hard.

Three seconds.

The second man was already moving – faster now, the recalibration of someone whose plan had just changed. He was bigger than the first and he used it, coming in low. She moved left, let him commit, and when he was fully committed there was nothing to commit to and she used that too.

He hit the ground differently from the first one. More final.

Eleven seconds total.

She stood up straight.

Both men were down. Neither was unconscious – she hadn’t needed that, had used the minimum required. The first one was already reassessing the situation from the floor with the expression of someone concluding that the situation was not recoverable. The second was doing the same.

She looked at them.

“Leave,” she said. Quietly. The way she said most things.

They left. The far stairwell – the one she had positioned herself to leave available. They moved fast and didn’t look back.

The car park was quiet again.

Freen straightened her collar.

She turned around.

—

Becky was at the pillar.

She had not moved. Her bag was still on her shoulder, her files still under her arm. She was standing exactly where Freen had put her.

She was looking at Freen.

Not the way she had looked at her across the office. Not the careful assessing look or the professional look or any of the looks Freen had catalogued over two months.

Something else entirely.

Freen walked to her. She held out her hand.

“Keys,” she said.

Becky looked at her hand. Then at the empty car park where two men had been eleven seconds ago. Then at Freen’s hand.

She gave her the keys.

—

Freen drove.

She took the exit ramp up to the street and pulled into the Tuesday evening traffic and drove. Becky sat in the passenger seat with her bag on her lap and her files still under her arm and looked out the window.

Neither of them spoke.

One block. Two. The traffic light held them for a full cycle. Freen checked the mirrors – nobody following, she was certain – and kept checking anyway.

Three blocks. Four. Five.

“You can stop checking the mirrors,” Becky said. “I know you’d know if someone was there.”

Freen glanced at her. Becky was still looking out the window.

Six blocks.

Freen pulled over on a side street. She put the car in park. The engine ran. The city went past at the end of the block in its Tuesday evening way – unremarkable, indifferent, loud.

She waited.

—

Becky sat for a moment.

She had not been afraid in the car park. This surprised her, in retrospect. Two men and a situation that should have been frightening and she had not been afraid. She had watched and she had processed and she had been – present in a way that was very clear and very focused.

She was still processing.

She looked at the end of the block. A taxi going past. A woman with shopping bags. A couple walking a dog.

“Eleven seconds,” she said.

Freen said nothing.

“I counted.” Becky turned to look at her. “Eleven seconds for both of them.”

Freen looked back at her.

“You moved toward the first one,” Becky said. “Not away. You moved toward him.”

“Away gives them the advantage,” Freen said.

“I know.” She had understood it in real time, watching it happen. The logic of it. The specific, efficient, completely calm logic of someone who had done this before. Many times. “You’ve done that before.”

“Yes.”

“Many times.”

“Yes.”

Becky looked at her.

This was the thing. She had been looking at Freen for two months – cataloguing, assessing, building a picture. The coffee order she knew without being asked. The exits she always knew. The courthouse and Jeff and the authentication records ready before they left the building. The way she moved through rooms. The way she had said I’ve been in rooms under considerably more pressure than a courtroom on the first day and Becky had filed it and not pulled it out until right now.

All of it had been building toward this.

She was looking at it now. The full picture. Without the frame of junior associate or Charlotte’s recommendation or anything else she had been using to organise what she saw.

Just Freen. What she actually was.

It was not a small thing to look at.

“Charlotte,” Becky said.

“Yes.”

“She asked for you specifically.”

“Yes.”

“Because someone was coming for me.”

Freen held her gaze. “Yes.”

Becky looked at the windscreen. She looked at it for a while. The end of the block. The ordinary city. A motorbike weaving through the traffic.

“The man in the gallery,” she said. “From the first week.”

“Jeff. Yes.”

“The woman who left the firm last week. Khun Malee.”

Freen said nothing. Which was its own answer.

“How long,” Becky said.

“Since the first week of trial.”

She nodded slowly. She was putting it together the way she put arguments together – one piece at a time, building toward the shape of it. She was almost at the shape of it.

“The names,” she said. “In the procurement chain. The military names.” She looked at Freen. “You knew them.”

“Some of them.”

“Personally.”

“Some of them.”

Becky looked at her. “That’s why you went still in the courtroom. The day I presented the chain.”

Freen said nothing.

“I noticed,” Becky said. “I notice everything. I just didn’t know what it meant yet.” She looked at the windscreen again. “I know what it means now.”

The engine ran. The city went past. Somewhere behind them the courthouse was empty, two levels below it a car park that looked exactly as it had before.

“We need to talk,” Becky said. Not a question. “Properly. Everything.”

“Yes,” Freen said.

“Not tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Tonight I need to-” She stopped. Looked at her hands on her bag. “Tonight I need to just sit with it.”

“Okay,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her. The look that was seeing clearly, without the frame, all the way through.

“Are you actually keeping me safe,” she said. “Or are you trying to.”

“Both,” Freen said. “Always both.”

Becky sat with that for a moment.

Then she reached over and took the keys from the ignition.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

She got out and came around and Freen moved to the passenger side and they switched and Becky started the car and pulled out into the Tuesday traffic and drove.

—

Freen watched the city from the passenger window.

She had broken protocol. She knew the full weight of this – what it meant operationally, what it meant for the cover, what it was going to mean for everything that came next. She had broken it in eleven seconds in a car park and she would make the same choice again without hesitation.

She looked at Becky driving.

The steady hands on the wheel. The set of her jaw. The particular focus of someone who was holding something together while also taking it apart, which was exactly what she was doing.

Freen thought about both. always both.

She thought about nine days.

She looked out the window and let Becky drive and said nothing and that was enough for right now.