The PowWow

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After the Fall

Rachel arrived faster than I expected.

Blue and red strobed through the lobby glass before the engine had fully cut out. She was through the door before the first responding unit had made it out of their car — moving with the specific urgency of someone who has been driving faster than she would put in a report.

She saw me first.

Something moved across her face before she could manage it. Relief — genuine, unguarded, completely unprofessional. It lasted maybe two seconds before the badge reasserted itself and she was back. I'm choosing to be generous about the duration.

I appreciated those two seconds enormously.

"You're in one piece," she said.

"Technically all the pieces were always there," I said. "Some of them were just arranged with more urgency than usual."

Her eyes moved to Jacob, who stood a few feet back — breathing steady, hands loose, the version of himself that had been restored. She gave him a long look. He gave her a nod.

"Nathanial?" she asked.

"Gym. End of the corridor. He's not going anywhere."

"Alicia Reddings?"

"Outside with your guys. She's okay." I paused. "More than okay, actually."

Rachel exhaled through her nose. Not quite a sigh. Not quite relief. The particular sound of someone letting something go that they'd been holding without realizing it.

Her eyes narrowed. "You want to tell me how you got in?"

"The door was open," I said.

"The door."

"Unlocked and open," Jacob said from behind me, with the complete, unironic sincerity of a man incapable of lying about it.

Rachel looked at him. Then at me. Then back at him.

"I'm going to need a full statement," she said.

"Obviously," I said. "I'll try to make it interesting."

"Try to make it accurate."

"Rachel." I touched my chest. "I'm wounded."

She almost smiled. Almost. Then she was moving past us down the corridor toward the gym, and Jacob came up quietly beside me, and said absolutely nothing — which was somehow exactly the right thing.

We gave statements with the careful precision of two people who understood how much the truth could carry before it needed a different kind of support. Rachel moved through it all with the focused efficiency I'd come to recognize as her version of holding herself together. She didn't push on the gym beyond the bare facts. Didn't ask how Nathanial ended up on the floor.

She was getting better at not asking the questions whose answers she wasn't ready for. I respected that.

Before we left she caught my arm. Not hard. Just enough.

"Next time, you tell me before you go in."

I looked at her hand on my arm. Then at her. "Before? You'd have stopped us."

"Yes," she said. "I would have."

A beat.

"Exactly," I said.

She let go. Didn't step back right away. "Levi."

"Yeah?"

Very quietly — just for me, the professional distance set aside for exactly as long as it took to say it — she said, "I'm glad you're okay."

I held that for a second. Didn't deflect. Didn't reach for something clever to do with it.

"Yeah," I said. "Me too."

She stepped back. Badge back. Expression back. The whole architecture of Detective Stryker resettled around her.

I walked out into the night air beside Jacob, who had the grace not to say a single word, which was the most generous thing he could have done.

Jeremiah's porch light was on when we pulled up.

Of course it was.

"Come in," he said, stepping back, as if he'd been expecting us at this exact hour. The coffee was already on.

Rebecca appeared from the kitchen, took one look at Jacob, and pulled him into a hug he accepted without resistance — arms coming around her, unhurried, complete. I wasn't sure I'd seen him do that before. Or maybe I had and hadn't been paying the right kind of attention.

We settled in the living room. Same warm light, same quiet, the particular quality of a space that made everything outside it feel like it had happened somewhere else and to someone slightly less tired.

I walked Jeremiah through all of it — the approach, the open door, the lit corridor, the gym. Alicia. The fights. He listened the way he always listened: completely, without interruption, without reaction until the reaction had finished forming.

"And Nathanial?" he asked when I finished.

"Down," Jacob said.

Jeremiah nodded once. Not surprised. Not triumphant. Satisfied, maybe, in the quiet way of someone who had been right about something he'd have preferred to be wrong about.

"He said something," I added. "At the end. When it was over — rolled away from us, said it quietly. That being beaten was—" I almost smiled. "Surreal. That was the word."

Jeremiah looked at me. Then something happened in his expression — subtle, barely there, the way a door moves in a draft without opening. He looked down at his mug. Turned it once in his hands.

"Surreal," he repeated. Quietly. Almost to himself, tasting the word more than saying it.

A small pause.

Then he looked up. "Pride makes the fall feel impossible," he said. "Until it isn't."

He moved on. Asked about Alicia. Asked about Rachel. I answered him. But I was watching the pause — the thing that had flickered in it before he moved on. Something in that word that didn't quite match the rest.

I filed it. Probably nothing.

Probably.

Rebecca had refilled my coffee twice before the evening finally settled into the comfortable quiet that means you're near the end of things. Jacob sat with his elbows on his knees, hands loose, present — the version of him I knew best, back where he belonged.

I looked at him sideways. "So."

He glanced at me. "Naomi."

He looked away again.

"Jacob."

Nothing.

"She's smart," I said. "Precise. Notices things other people miss." A pause. "Also not terrible to look at, which I mention purely as an objective observation."

"Levi."

"I'm just saying. You could call her. Have coffee. It's a low-stakes activity that people conduct constantly without incident."

He was quiet for a moment. Then the corner of his mouth moved — barely, but there. That was Jacob. That was all of Jacob.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Found the number — speed dial, her name already saved, because of course it was. He pressed call.

I looked away before his expression changed. Some things a brother doesn't need to be present for. But I was smiling when I looked away.

I was smiling for a while after that.

Thank you, Lord.