Chapter 4: Georgetown, 2 A.M. — Horatio Hears the Theory

The drive back to Georgetown took thirty-seven minutes at that hour, which meant no traffic and no excuse not to think. Daniel drove with both hands on the wheel and the radio off and let the city scroll past him in its nighttime register — the orange sodium glow of the streetlamps, the closed storefronts, the occasional cab cutting lanes with the easy authority of a city that never fully rested. He had the USB drive in his jacket pocket and the burner phone in a Ziploc bag in the glove compartment, which was not a sophisticated precaution but was the best available to him at three in the morning without access to anything more sophisticated, and he was already cataloguing, already building the list of what he would need, which was a way of not thinking about his father's handwriting on that single folded sheet, which he was saving for later, he told himself, there would be time for that later.

He called Horatio at 3:14 AM.

Horatio picked up on the second ring, which meant he had not been sleeping, which meant he had been waiting, which was a specific kind of loyalty Daniel did not have clean language for.