Marco called Damian at 9:47 p.m. and said four words before anything else: “Isabella gave us something.”
He was at the penthouse in twenty minutes. I was already there with Ethan asleep and the evening’s quiet broken by the specific quality of Marco’s voice on the phone call I had overheard from the kitchen, the voice he used when the information was time-critical and the time was already running.
We sat at the table. Marco relayed Isabella’s account, complete, without editorial, which was how he handled information he wanted received without the shape of his own conclusions influencing the reception.
A fire drill. Staged. A maintenance worker on the Castellano payroll who had been positioned at the school six weeks ago and whose access to the alarm system had been confirmed by the Cast
