Reynolds was beside me. He had been beside me for several minutes, not speaking, maintaining the specific silence of a person who understood he needed to be present and careful and who was managing his own assessment of the situation. When the officials stepped out of the sedans and showed credentials to each other and then to Brentwood, Reynolds reached toward my wrists without being instructed to.
There was a brief hesitation.
Then the handcuffs opened.
The imprint of the metal remained. I have a long, faint mark on my left wrist from where the cuff had been slightly too tight — not a wound, not permanent, but a presence for the rest of that day, a record on my own body of what had occurred.
I turned.
Brentwood was facing me.
He was not the figure he had been twenty minutes earlier, when he had stepped out of his cruiser with the rigid posture of certainty. He was a man who had arrived at the understanding that the ground he had been standing on was not the ground he had thought it was, and who was still processing what that meant.
