Marcus appeared at the curtain carrying a bottle of water and a sandwich. "You haven't eaten since breakfast," he told her.
"I had a piece of fruit at noon."
"You had half a piece of fruit. I saw you give the other half to a volunteer."
"You've turned into my mother."
"Someone has to."
He set the sandwich beside the gift and sat on a crate. A few feet away, the other men were helping volunteers arrange the reserved seating and check the wheelchair access beside the stage. They were dressed in dark jackets and clean shirts for the fundraiser, with small lapel pins marking their service. None of them had suggested that the incident outside the jewelry store should become a triumphal entrance. They seemed more interested in getting the event right.
Marcus watched Vanessa unwrap the sandwich. "I should have been there sooner," he said.
She looked at him. "You were exactly where you were supposed to be. You showed up at the scheduled time."
"I mean before he put the cuffs on."
"Marcus, you can't arrange your life around appearing at every moment when someone makes a bad decision."
"I know that. It doesn't make it feel better."
She swallowed a mouthful and set the sandwich down. "You remember how you felt when we lost the first extraction route?"
He frowned. "Of course."
"You kept looking backward at the decision you wished you had made two minutes earlier. Sarah told us to use what was true now, not what we wished had been true before. That's what you did in the mall. You stayed calm. You watched. You made sure nobody got hurt trying to defend me."
Marcus stared toward the curtain for a moment. "I heard him call you a suspect. The way he said it, like that word settled every question."
"A word doesn't settle anything. That's what evidence is for."
He nodded slowly, then held up the sandwich again. "Finish this. Sarah's due in twenty minutes, and if she finds out you've been surviving on coffee, I'll be the one getting a lecture."
Vanessa took another bite. It was the first time all afternoon she had laughed without feeling as though she were forcing herself.
At five-oh-five, Captain Sarah Mitchell arrived through the east entrance with her husband, Daniel, and a small group of former colleagues. Sarah was sixty-one, with close-cropped silver hair and the upright carriage of someone who had spent a lifetime entering rooms where everyone stood when she did. She wore a simple dark blue dress rather than a uniform. The change made her look younger in some ways and more vulnerable in others, as though retirement had removed a piece of armor she was still learning to live without.
Vanessa met her near the stage. Sarah took one look at her face and frowned. "Something happened."
"The sound system worked," Vanessa said.
"That's not what I asked."
"We had a problem this afternoon. It's being handled."