I called the meeting.
“All five of us,” Evan said when I described what I needed. “In the same room.”
“Yes.”
“Victor, Caleb, Zane, you, and me.”
“Yes.”
He paused the way he always did when running logistics—calculating variables, hunting for the fracture point. I could almost hear the gears turning behind his eyes.
“Zane and Victor have been in the same space twice,” he said. “Both times held. The third time…”
“The pattern holds when there’s work to do,” I told him. “Give them work.”
Evan exhaled once, shortly. “All right. When?”
“Tomorrow. Before dinner. The East conference room is on the second level—not the main one.”
“Not the strategy room.”
“The strategy room has a head of the table,” I said. “This one doesn’t.”
He was quite long enough that the silence grew teeth. Then: “
