Chapter 6: Clement Street
Gerald Pruitt answered his door at 11:40 at night wearing a flannel shirt and reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.
He was in his mid-sixties, heavyset, with the careful eyes of a man who had spent two years waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He looked at me.
Then past me at Reyes standing at the foot of his porch steps.
"Who are you?" he said.
"My name is Luca Vance.
My wife is Jessi Vance.
She told me you've been waiting."
Gerald Pruitt went very still.
Then he stepped back from the door and let us in.
His living room was small and neat.
A television on low.
A half-finished cup of coffee on the side table.
He turned the television off and sat in the armchair across from us.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Jessi."
"She's alive.
Both legs broken.
Head trauma.
She's stable."
His jaw tightened.
He looked at his hands for a moment.
"I heard there was an accident at the Sterling site.
I knew it wasn't an accident."
"It wasn't," I said.
"Mr.
Pruitt, we have the drive.
Your recording is on it.
But Flynn Sterling is going to know that by morning, and when he does, he's going to come for anyone connected to this."
"He already came for me once," Gerald said.
"Two years ago.
A man named Cord sat in that same chair you're sitting in and told me that if I repeated what I'd seen at the zoning meeting, my store would fail its fire inspection, my son's contractor license would be pulled, and my wife would have trouble with her nursing renewal." He said it without emotion, the way you describe something you've memorized.
"I withdrew my statement the next day."
"But you kept the recording."
"I kept the recording." He looked up.
"Because I knew that one day either someone would come for it, or I'd die with it on my phone and nothing would ever change."
Reyes leaned forward.
"Mr.
Pruitt, we need you to come with us tonight.
Not permanently.
But until we can get your testimony into the right hands through a channel Arthur Sterling cannot touch, you and your wife are not safe here."
Gerald looked at her for a long moment.
"My wife has a shift at the hospital at six in the morning."
"She won't be going to that hospital," Reyes said quietly.
"Not tomorrow."
Something moved across Gerald's face.
Not fear.
Something older than fear — the look of a man who had been carrying a weight so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to put it down.
"You're federal," he said to Reyes.
"Yes."
"And you're actually going to do something this time."
"Yes."
He was quiet.
Then he stood up, walked to the hallway, and called upstairs.
"Patty.
Get dressed.
Bring your medications and two days of clothes."
A woman's voice came back, groggy and confused.
"Gerald, what on earth—"
"I'll explain in the car.
Just get dressed."
He turned back to us.
"Give me ten minutes."
While Gerald was upstairs, Reyes stepped close to me and spoke low.
"Flynn has a man named Cord.
That name is in the inquiry file too.
He's the one who made the approach to Pruitt.
If Cord finds out Pruitt is moving tonight, he'll call Flynn before we clear the county line."
"Does Cord know about tonight?"
"Not yet.
But Flynn got a lawyer to a hospital room inside of three hours.
He has people watching." She glanced toward the front window.
"We leave clean and we leave now."
Twelve minutes later, Gerald and Patty Pruitt came downstairs with a bag each.
Patty was a small woman with sharp eyes that had moved past confusion into something quieter and more resolved.
She looked at me.
"You're the soldier," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Jessi talked about you." She picked up her bag.
"She said you'd come."
We went out through Gerald's back door into the alley, the same way Reyes had arrived.
Gerald locked the door behind him out of habit, then seemed to realize what he was doing and almost laughed.
"Forty years in that house," he said to no one in particular.
"You'll be back," Reyes said.
He nodded once.
He didn't look back.
We were three blocks away when my secure phone lit up with a message from Diane: *Flynn Sterling left his residence twenty minutes ago.
May you like
Direction unknown.
Move.*
