Once it was just the four of us: Marlon, Molly, Maribel, and me, I laid it all out.
I started from the beginning, from the moment Penny had come at us, teeth and fight and everything that followed. Maribel had already filled them in on the broad strokes of that part, I figured, but she couldn't have told them what came after, because she hadn't been there for it. So I walked them through it, the meeting with Callighan, how it had gone, what had been said, and what had been agreed to. The hostage exchange, the terms, all of it.
When I finished, the park settled around us. Birds somewhere overhead. Wind through the leaves. Nobody said anything for a moment, and then Marlon spoke.
"You met Callighan." It wasn't quite a question.
"I did," I said. "He's not what I expected, going off your descriptions of him."
Marlon gave a short, humorless sound. "Clumsy marine junior."
"Yeah. That's not the man I sat across from."
"Ten years is a long time," he said.
