Gavin sent the correspondence before the meeting.
Nina was parked outside a bakery when it arrived. She'd put her folder on the passenger seat and moved it twice before finding the old work-order page in the received material. His own forwarded billing exchange. Attachments associated with that work, not a directory of everyone who had ever paid Harbor. His note said the officer had the same material.
At the end he had written that he was tired of carrying other men's promises in case they decided later he'd made them up.
Nina acknowledged receipt. She forwarded nothing beyond the agreed route. She was still sitting there when Adam called.
“We're here,” he said.
“Gavin there?”
“Yes.”
She heard Gavin say something away from the phone. Adam repeated it: he knew she could see the material, he didn't need her to read it aloud to him.
“Then don't repeat it,” Nina said.
Adam let out a small breath. “He wants to hear what I'm going to say about the work.”
“Say it to him.”
There was a pause. Then Gavin's voice, closer.
“If she's listening, turn the thing around. I'm not talking to a pocket.”
The video request appeared. Nina accepted. For a second she saw Adam's thumb and a stretch of pale ceiling. Then he set the phone on something and the image steadied.
They were in a front work area beside large windows, the street visible beyond parked vehicles. Gavin stood by a desk with half-open drawers. Behind him two people were moving a tall rack. Someone at a counter was sorting keys into small envelopes. A normal working place losing its order as people cleared their own things.
Adam sat near the desk, his walking aid against the chair. He looked at the phone and then deliberately at Gavin.
“I gave you the date,” he said. “I supplied the wording. I knew the two submissions were being used as if they came from separate knowledge.”
Gavin folded his arms. “And?”
“I didn't stop it.”
“That's a wonderful sentence. You didn't stop it. Like rain.”
Adam looked down at the paper in front of him. Nina saw him make himself look up again.
“I sent it through. I got paid. I let you go to the door and be the person in the picture while my name stayed in the preparer's sheet.”
Gavin's jaw moved. He wasn't ready to accept the answer because it was accurate.
“Then when it comes back, they call me the witness. I can't remember something I never saw, so I'm the liar. You're the husband who was frightened to tell his wife.”
“I lied too.”
“Write it the way you just said it.”
Adam took the pen Gavin pushed toward him. He wrote. Nina watched a man who had spent years making strangers believe him struggle to give one other man the exact words he needed.
Gavin went back to the desk drawers. He took out a small tool pouch and put it near Adam.
“Yours.”
Adam looked at it. “Some of it's yours.”
“The green-handled one. Keep the rest.”
Adam opened the pouch, found a screwdriver and set it on the desk. Gavin picked it up at once and put it in his own bag. Adam checked the empty place in the pouch before closing it, making sure he'd given back the right one.
Someone behind Gavin said his name. He answered without turning. A man came past carrying a box, glanced at Adam and went on. No one looked like a guard. No one had promised to be one.
“Did you get the copies?” Gavin asked Nina directly.
“Yes.”
“So you can stop worrying the paper will vanish if I get a coffee.”
“I got them,” she said. “The officer has them too.”
“Good.”
Adam finished writing. Gavin read the page with a finger under each line. He made Adam change one description that used we for an action Adam had done himself. Then he put it in his folder.
“You can send that too,” Adam said.
“I know what I can do with it.”
They were almost finished. Nina could see the room beginning to return to other people's work around them. Gavin closed one drawer with his hip. Adam moved the pouch to his lap and reached for his walking aid.
A figure crossed the street side of the image.
Nina recognized the jacket before she saw the face.
“Adam,” she said.
Owen opened the front door. The person at the counter looked up, familiar enough with him to begin a greeting.
“Adam. We need to talk.”
Adam froze with his hand on the chair.
“No,” Gavin said.
Owen looked at him. “Not you.”
“He's talking to someone.”
Owen's eyes moved to the phone. Nina could see the exact instant he understood there was a person on its other side.
“Don't go anywhere with him,” she said.
Adam stayed seated. Owen crossed the short space between the entrance and the desk. He pointed at Gavin's folder.
“You've got people asking who supplied the confirmation. Now he's talking about Martin too?”
“I saw you,” Gavin said.
“Shut up.”
Adam said, “He's given his account. So have I.”
Owen put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down. Nina couldn't hear the first words. Adam shook his head.
“I'm not going to change it,” Adam said.
Owen's grip tightened. He looked at the phone. “Then you're going to explain to her what you can change.”
Gavin stepped around the desk. “Leave it.”
Owen shoved him against the open drawer. Something fell from the desk. The picture jumped, tilted and showed the lower part of the window.
Nina reached for the other phone she didn't have. Her work device was gone. She had one live call in her hand and an emergency happening inside it.
She took a screenshot of the view, ended the connection and called 911.
“A man is being forced from a workshop,” she said. She gave the address and the entrance, the names, the live call she'd just been on. “He's injured. He can't walk quickly. The man taking him is Owen Pike. He's assaulted people before. It's happening now.”
She put the call on speaker. She told the dispatcher what she knew about the car Owen had driven at Dani's, then said she did not know whether he was using it today.
Her own car was still in the bakery lot. She hadn't moved an inch. Through the windshield a woman stood laughing at something on her phone, one hand holding a child's coat closed against the wind.
Gavin called while Nina was still speaking. She declined the call and sent a short message: police called, send vehicle now.
His reply arrived in pieces. Dark van. Out front. A plate, then a correction to one character. Nina read both to the dispatcher, making clear which was the corrected version.
Another message: He's gone. There's people here. They've seen.
Nina asked him to stay for the officers and sent the corrected plate back for him to confirm. He did.
Her own voice sounded like somebody she had hired to perform it. She held the phone against the steering wheel to keep her hand steady and gave the dispatcher the new direction Gavin sent.
On the passenger seat lay the copy of the work order he'd given her. Adam's call had ended minutes ago. His written acknowledgment was already in another person's hands.
Nina couldn't make either fact turn into a place where he was now.