Gwen's face went pink. "Locke and I are friends."
Locke took a sip of his drink and said nothing.
This was the correct move. Whatever he said right now would be wrong in at least one direction, and the cost of being wrong in any direction at this particular dinner table was either losing standing with George or losing standing with Helen, neither of which was something he wanted to engineer. The art of the situation was to exist in it without generating data.
He examined his glass instead. It was good — fresh-squeezed, something citrus, not too sweet. Helen ran a kitchen the way she ran everything else: quietly and well.
Gwen's two younger brothers were enjoying themselves, which was the most honest emotional response at the table and the one nobody was paying attention to.
Helen sat down and smiled at George. "How's the case going?"
The question had weight behind it. Yesterday's events had been front-page news in every outlet this morning — the chase, the bridge, the gunfight, the bodies in Carroll Gardens. New York City hadn't seen anything like it in years, and the timing was catastrophic for the Mayor, who had staked his re-election campaign on a demonstrable reduction in crime. That platform was now in approximately the same condition as Locke's second R8.
The NYPD was under pressure. The Commissioner was distributing that pressure downward. It had landed on the task force leader.
George Stacy.
Who was sitting at his own dinner table eating Helen's cooking and fielding questions from his wife.
He took Helen's hand. "Don't worry. We'll close it."
Locke, across the table: Good luck.
He thought it without malice. George was a genuinely capable investigator who had been assigned to chase someone with a System, Advanced Driving, Intermediate Gun-Flicking Technique, and a seventeen-year head start on contingency planning. The outcome wasn't going to go the direction George was hoping, but Locke respected the effort.
"Locke," Gwen said, "you believe in Dad too, right?"
All three of the adults at the table looked at him.
He picked up his glass. "Of course." He raised it toward George. "Captain Stacy — to closing the case."
George raised his whiskey.
Helen raised her wine.
Gwen raised her juice.
They clinked.
Locke noted, as he set his glass back down, that closing the case and apprehending the suspect were not the same thing, and that he had committed to one and not the other.
George appeared to notice this too, in the particular way where you notice something and decide not to press it.
Helen refilled the serving dishes and then, almost as an afterthought: "I have to say — I was worried when I saw you walk up to him on the news. Just you, before the backup arrived."
George looked at his wife.
"I know, I know," Helen said. "You're a cop and he's a criminal. That's the job." She paused. "I'm still allowed to be relieved it was the Sin Hunter specifically."
George frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean he has a pattern. He doesn't kill people who aren't implicated in something." Helen set down the serving spoon with the calm precision of someone making an argument they've already thought through. "I'm not saying what he does is right. I'm saying that when I saw you standing twenty feet from him on a live broadcast, I was glad it was him and not someone with different standards."
"A criminal is a criminal," George said. "Whatever principles he thinks he has don't make what he does legal, and they don't make him less dangerous."
"I didn't say they did."
George looked across the table at Locke. "Locke. Back me up here."
Locke looked at the three people now watching him — George with his cop-logic, Helen with her practical-relief, Gwen with a please help me expression that he correctly interpreted as help me by agreeing with my mother.
He did a rapid internal count. Three to one, and the one was the man who controlled whether Locke could come back to this house. The three included Helen, who controlled whether he got fed when he did.
The math was straightforward.
"If it were a different kind of operative," Locke said carefully, "the probability that you'd be having this conversation right now would be significantly lower, Captain Stacy."
He left it at that.
George stared at him.
Helen nodded with the satisfaction of someone who had gotten the answer she wanted from a witness. "That's exactly what I mean."
Gwen hid a smile behind her glass.
George looked at Locke with an expression that Locke categorized internally as: I know you just did something. I cannot currently prove what. The investigation instinct, redirected at a dinner companion.
George filed this.
Locke filed that George had filed it.
After dinner, Locke drove home with the third R8 in a parking structure with working cameras and three separate points of surveillance, because he was not entirely without self-preservation instincts. He rode the elevator up to the twenty-eighth floor and stood at the bay window with the last of the bourbon.
Tomorrow was Monday.
The Textile Factory would be fully staffed. Sloane and the Repairman were what remained of the leadership, and the general staff — however many of the 167 registered employees were actual operatives versus administrative cover — would be there. The Destiny Is Mine mission was still running, the scaling bonus still active.
He did the math again. If the operational headcount was anywhere near his estimate, Monday evening's numbers would cross thirty thousand on both axes.
He thought about Helen's wine glass going up. About George's expression when Locke declined to fully validate the legal position. About Gwen's smile behind her juice.
Favorability: George -1, Vigilance +99.
He smiled slightly at that.
Helen: whatever the positive equivalent of vigilance is.
He finished the bourbon, rinsed the glass, and went to sleep.
The factory wasn't going anywhere.
Neither was he.