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“What about your first day? Did you and Patrick talk about Project Naïveté?”

Patrick had mentioned the project in his visit, and technically she’d gone to tell Patrick that her father had blown the cover on his ruse. She wasn’t so sure it was a ruse anymore.

Noah seemed to sense her hesitation.

“Kate, as of right now, my job is to conduct a cybersecurity audit. If necessary, I will recommend to my supervisor that we should convert the audit to an investigation, which means that I would have the power to subpoena witnesses. Based on what I know so far, I’d have to subpoena you. You would have to answer, and I know you wouldn’t lie under oath. So you might as well tell me now.”

Kate stopped. She knew Noah was just doing his job, but she still didn’t like it. “You and my father are even more alike than I thought.”

“How do you mean?”

“He asked me to try to get you to tell me what your audit is really about—what’s really driving it. Now, you’re asking me to spy on my father’s own company. Does anyone give a damn how I feel about all of this?”

“I’m sorry,” said Noah. “I understand this is awkward in a lot of ways.”

“Let me askyoua question,” said Kate. “What doyouthink Project Naïveté is about?”

Noah unzipped the jogger’s hip pack that was fastened around his waist. Inside was a thick roll of manuscript pages. Kate recalled the comparison Patrick had drawn between her play and Project Naïveté.

“Is that my play?” she asked.

“It’s an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, written by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2019. It’s almost two hundred pages long.”

“You didn’t have to kill so many trees. You could have emailed me a link.”

“Going forward, I don’t want any electronic messages between us. No email, no texts, no voicemail. Phone calls should be brief and nothing of substance.”

He handed her the printed opinion, and Kate skipped to the last page. He wasn’t kidding: one hundred ninety-two pages.

“Be sure to readevery single word,” he said.

“Then what?” she asked.

“Meet me again tomorrow, eight a.m. Right here.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You’ll come. If you read every word.”

His continued emphasis on every single word was curious.

“Oh, one other thing,” he said. “Take shorter strides when you run downhill. Your back will thank you.” He turned and continued his run through the woods.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

Kate found a picnic table just around the bend, took a seat in the shade, and laid the printed court opinion on the tabletop before her. The case caption was on page one:department of commerce v. newyork.

Noah had piqued her interest, and it was her intention to sit down and read as much of an overstuffed Supreme Court opinion as she could stomach in one sitting. Almost two hundred pages of legalese was no jog in the park, so to speak. She’d read hundreds of cases in law school, but the only one of this length was theDred Scottdecision, required reading for first-year law students, in which the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a former slave owner, and his associate justices had taken over two hundred pages to decide that people of African descent, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States under the Constitution. She hoped for better from Chief Justice Roberts.

From the first sentence, she was gripped, the chief justice’s words unleashing a cascade of possible parallels to the play she was writing: “The Secretary of Commerce decided to reinstate a question about citizenship on the 2020 census questionnaire.”

Kate raced through the first paragraph, and she was still on page one when a call came up on her smartwatch. It was Sean’s number, but it was Irving Bass on the line.

“Did you steal Sean’s phone?” she asked, kidding.

“He’s driving. I want you to meet us at the theater.”

“When?”

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