His sister Diane had made him learn it years ago. Back when Matthew had first made lieutenant and the family had collectively understood, without anyone saying it directly, that having that number in your head, rather than your phone, was the kind of insurance worth carrying.
He had never needed it like this before.
Hall had moved back to his patrol car, ostensibly to run paperwork, but Noah could see him through the windshield, leaning back, unhurried, the body language of a man who had set something in motion and was content to let it roll.
The tow request was already out there, moving through the city's dispatch system like a stone already thrown. Noah had maybe minutes before a flatbed turned onto Callaway.
And once that happened, the situation would accelerate past the point where calm explanations did any good at all.
He looked down at his wrist. The smart watch was a gift from Diane last Christmas.
One of those sleek, understated ones that did more than it looked like it could.
He'd worn it every day since. Mostly for the fitness tracking.
Occasionally for notifications. He had never once used it to make a call.
But he knew it could. And more importantly, he knew that a call made from a smart watch with the screen dimmed and the device resting naturally against his wrist looked from the outside like absolutely nothing at all.
He tilted his wrist slightly, navigated to the dial pad with two small movements of his thumb, and entered Matthew's number from memory. He kept his eyes forward, his posture unchanged, his expression the same composed neutral he'd been wearing since the lights came on.
To anyone watching, to Hall glancing up from his patrol car, it looked like a man standing on a curb waiting, hands at his sides.
He pressed call. He lowered his arm.
The watch face dimmed.
Somewhere across the city, a phone began to ring.
Hall climbed back out of the patrol car. Whatever thin veneer of procedural patience he'd been maintaining had worn through completely now.
He came across the sidewalk with a different energy. Looser, louder, the restraint gone.
And Noah recognized the shift immediately.
This was the part where the performance ended and the man underneath it came out. This was what Hall actually was when the paperwork justification was already filed and he felt free to just be himself.
"You want to tell me again whose car this is?" Hall said, stopping closer than he needed to. Close enough that Noah could smell the coffee on his breath.
"I've told you twice," Noah said. His voice was even.
Quiet.
He was acutely aware of the watch on his wrist, of the open line, of the possibility, the desperate, fragile possibility, that somewhere on the other end of it, someone was picking up.
"See, here's what I think," Hall said. His voice had taken on that particular quality, the one that wasn't quite a shout but was designed to feel like one.