Chapter 22: Reyes's Conditional Loyalty

The call came on a Thursday.

Marcus was standing at the whiteboard drawing the structural formula for acetylsalicylic acid when his phone vibrated twice in his jacket pocket — the pattern Reyes used for non-emergency contact, two short pulses rather than a call, which meant information rather than crisis. He did not reach for it. He finished the carbonyl group, asked Okafor to identify the ester linkage, and listened to Okafor's answer with the portion of his attention that Okafor deserved, which was genuine and complete.

The remaining portion ran calculations.