No hesitation.
“The estate claim takes months.”
Sky held up the folder.
“A custody or welfare hearing gives her access to the legal process around me.”
She thought it through aloud.
“She doesn’t need to win the hearing.”
“She needs the hearing to exist so she can use it in the estate dispute.”
Sky’s voice became very quiet.
“She’s not trying to get me back.”
“She’s using me to get Luther’s things.”
The storage unit remained silent.
Strand looked at Gregory.
“This woman is terrifying.”
“She’s not a kid,” Gregory said.
This time he did not sound like he was repeating Jimmy.
He fully believed it.
Gregory dialed.
When someone answered, he spoke immediately.
“Marcus, I need you today.”
He listened.
“Not tomorrow. Today.”
Another pause.
“Bring your paralegal. We’ve got documents that need fast processing.”
He listened.
“I know what today costs.”
Gregory looked at Sky.
“Do it anyway.”
Another pause.
“Thank you.”
He hung up.
“Two o’clock.”
Sky nodded.
“His office.”
“Good.”
She lifted the box and folder.
“Gregory?”
“Yeah?”
“The painting.”
She looked toward the canvases.
“The one with the girl on the roof.”
A pause.
“Can I take it?”
Gregory stared at her.
“Sky.”
His voice softened.
“All of this is yours.”
She nodded.
Sky walked out of the storage unit into the morning light carrying the box and Luther’s letter.
For fourteen months, every movement had been away from something.
For the first time, she felt as though she were moving toward something instead.
Behind her, Strand carefully placed the cover back over Luther’s Dyna.
He smoothed down the edges.
Then stood looking at the motorcycle beneath the canvas.
“We’re going to get her through this.”
He said it mostly to the bike.
To the idea of the man who had built it.
Then he turned off the light and closed the storage unit.
Across town, Harlan Briggs sat inside his gray Accord and reported to Renata Voss.
The emergency motion had been filed.
The girl was still in play.
What Briggs did not understand, and what Renata did not yet understand, was that seventy-two hours earlier they had been pursuing an eighteen-year-old with a backpack and paint case.
That was no longer what they were pursuing.
Now Sky had Luther’s documents.
Luther’s people.
Luther’s lawyer.
And Luther’s particular habit of understanding the difference between what somebody knew and what they merely assumed.
He had taught her how to move inside that difference.
Marcus Webb’s office smelled like old coffee and older paper.
Marcus looked like a man who had been born wearing a suit that had never quite fit.
He was 57, thin, with reading glasses that lived on his forehead until he needed them.
Jimmy once described Marcus’s legal mind as a bear trap.
Slow to set.
Very difficult to escape once it closed.
Marcus read Luther’s documents in eleven minutes.
He did not speak during those eleven minutes.
Sky sat across from him.
Gregory sat beside her.
Strand waited outside because there were not enough chairs.
He volunteered to wait without being asked.
When Marcus finished, he removed the glasses from his forehead.
He set them on the desk.
“Where did you get these?”
“Luther’s storage unit,” Gregory said.