He had gone last because Rebecca had ordered him last and the window had closed and Marcus Webb had not come home. Rebecca had carried that decision for 7 years. She carried it right now in this room with the weight exactly as heavy as it had always been. But he had also carried something else for 7 years. The understanding that the decision he had made had brought seven other operators home.
That the sequence he had chosen with the information he had at the time had maximized the number of people who returned. That there had been no sequence that brought everyone home. And the decision between bad outcomes and worse outcomes was still a decision that had to be made by someone. She had made it. She still carried it.
And he was still here. She picked up her radio. She walked toward the main tent. She had a hypothesis to confirm. And approximately 90 minutes before the external response arrived and the window closed.
She was not going to let the window close with the wrong outcome. Not again. Not this time. 5:31 in the afternoon. She walked through the door into the main tent.
193 people. She began moving through them. Not fast, not visibly purposeful. The way he moved through any room with the systematic ground covering attention of a man who is cataloging everything he sees without appearing to catalog anything. Derek saw him come in.
She watched Rebecca move through the crowd. She recognized the movement. She had seen it before on a mountain in deteriorating weather reading terrain that was trying to kill them. The same quality, the same systematic completeness. Derek stepped out of the conversation he was in.
She moved quietly to the edge of the room. She watched Rebecca work and she understood watching it that this was what a real search looked like. Not aggressive, not obvious. Just a man moving through a space, making contact with what the space contained, assembling a picture with the patience of someone who knows exactly what he's looking for and is going to find it. Derek crossed his arms.
He waited. She was ready when Rebecca needed her. 5:31 in the afternoon. Rebecca moved through the main tent. The way water moves through a room, finding every corner without appearing to rush, touching every surface without appearing to search.
193 people tired and wet and running on the particular adrenaline residue of people who have been through something real and are still processing whether it's over. She had been in the tent for minutes when she found the first thread. It was not dramatic. It was a man standing slightly too still near the east wall. One of the four indivi Frank had flagged listed on the contractor manifest as an event logistics coordinator named Daniel Reyes.
She was holding a cup of coffee she hadn't touched. Her eyes were moving through the crowd in a specific pattern that Rebecca recognized, not as casual crowd watching, but as active scanning someone looking for a specific face in a specific location. Rebecca did not look at her directly. She moved to the beverage station 12 ft away and poured herself a cup of coffee. She didn't intend to drink and used the next 90 seconds to establish what Daniel Reyes was scanning for.
The pattern resolved in 60 seconds. Reyes was watching a woman seated at the far end of the tent. 50s, short gray hair, wearing a first responder jacket from a Phoenix, Arizona organization. She was talking to two other participants, laughing at something completely at ease. Her body language said exhausted but fine.
Her registration listed her as Catherine Park emergency management coordinator attending as part of a corporate team. Rebecca looked at Catherine Park for 30 seconds. She was good. Her ease was genuine looking. Her conversation was natural.
She made eye contact with the people she was talking to in exactly the proportions that normal people use, not the proportions that trained people use when they're performing normality. But she was also positioned with her back to the main structural support of the tent, giving her a sighteline to both tent exits simultaneously, and her right hand resting on the table beside her coffee cup was positioned in the specific way that left-handed people rest their dominant hand when they want it available quickly. Catherine Park was not an emergency management coordinator from Phoenix. Rebecca took a sip of coffee. She didn't taste.
She walked back out of the tent. 5:44 in the afternoon. Derek was waiting for him at the edge of the operations room. "You found something," Derek said. "Two people," Rebecca said.
She kept moving toward the operations room door. "One is watching the other. The one being watched doesn't know it yet. " "Derek followed him inside. Rachel was at her station. Gerald was in the corner chair.
Frank was by the door. The encrypted radio sat on the table exactly where Rebecca had left it. Rebecca went to the participant list. She found Catherine Park's registration. She read the organizational affiliation, the contact information, the emergency contact listed.
The emergency contact was a phone number with a Washington DC area code. He looked at Gerald. Phoenix emergency management coordinator, he said. 50s gray hair first responder jacket left-handed back-to-wall positioning dual exit sight line. Gerald looked at him.
He said nothing. Gerald. Rebecca said. Gerald stood up from his chair. He walked to the participant list.
He read Catherine Park's registration. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "I need to make a phone call. " To who? Someone who can tell me if what I'm thinking is accurate. Gerald said.