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place at the right time.”
    “I know.”
    “About two years ago, he started working closely with these two men, helping them conduct business all over the state. They were buying up buildings in Sacramento, San Francisco, and here in LA. And other things, small business dealings that seemed routine. But then this man came to the office and told Grant that his clients were under investigation for a connection to that terrorist group, ISIS. Grant laughed the man out of his office and told him to come back with a warrant. But he was shaken, I could tell.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He went to his clients and told them he couldn’t work with them anymore, but they told him he was already in too deep, and if he stopped helping them, they would make sure he went to prison. Grant felt like he had no other option.”
    “And this was two years ago?”
    My mom nodded. Tears were slowly running down her cheeks again. “I begged him to cooperate with the federal agent, to do whatever he could to get out of this mess. But he said if he did that, his clients would just kill him, and he wasn’t ready to go yet. He had things he needed to do…” She shook her head. “And then Harley stole those papers off my desk and the clients told Grant that the reporter she was going to speak to was really an undercover federal agent. They told him that he had to stop her at any cost.”
    “Do you think…?”
    My mom stood and began to pace. “I don’t know,” she said.
    I sat back and crossed my leg over my knee, trying to reconcile what she was saying with what I already knew. It all seemed to add up pretty evenly, except for that part about the reporter.
    “When you got to the party last night, did you walk the red carpet?”
    My mom glanced at me, again that expression on her face that suggested I was worrying about all the wrong things.
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    “Did you see a short, fat reporter wearing a black jacket and jeans?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “Did Grant see him?”
    “Do you want me to call him and ask? What does this have to do with anything?”
    “Think about it, Mom,” I said, leaning forward a little. “Did Grant act funny last night when you were on the red carpet? Did he talk to someone, or seem unusually tense?”
    She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I mean, he doesn’t like red carpets and he was grumbling about Margaret inviting too much press. You know how he is.”
    “But he didn’t see anyone that upset him?”
    She started to deny it again, but then she stopped. She stopped everything. She stopped pacing, stopped talking. She even stopped breathing for a second.
    “There was something…”
    I stood and went to her, taking her hands and drawing her back toward the couch with me. “I need to know exactly what happened.”
    She got this far away look on her face for a long minute. Then she slowly began to form her words.
    “We were almost to the door. The doormen were waving us in. Then someone called out to him and wanted to know about a deal he’d signed for a client a few days ago. It’s for a building not far from the center. The reporter—I assume it was a reporter—I never saw a face. But he asked about this place, spelling out the address almost exactly.”
    “What was the address?”
    My mom shook her head, the wheels in her head spinning. “I don’t know. Something on Third Street. Third and…I can’t quite remember. Third and Robert…something.”
    “Third and Robertson?”
    “That’s probably it.”
    I started to shake my head, my stomach threatening to turn in on itself. This wasn’t happening.
    “That reporter, it’s very important for you to tell me what he looked like.”
    “I never saw him, Xander. It was just a voice. And it upset Grant enough that we almost didn’t go into the party. He pulled me aside and said he wasn’t feeling well, that he thought we should just go. But I insisted, and he calmed down