A tinny chiming sound. She reached into the cloth bag that hung from her belt, produced her gray plastic phone. She looked at the screen. She frowned, typed a short reply, returned the phone to the bag.

“Does Bror know you’re here?” I said as gently as I could.

Her eyes flicked away. “Bror’s really just a name for something bigger.”

“Bigger?”

“It’s a network of helpers. Other people aren’t good at implementation because they think too much and believe too much. Bror is about the praxis.”

“So people come to him . . .”

“. . . to Bror . . .”

“. . . and Bror helps them plan . . .”

She exhaled heavily, gave a slight shake of the head. “They told me you learned nothing from the action.”

“The action?” I felt the blood pulsing cold in my hands, felt my chest tighten.

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t believe them.”

“By action, you mean the murders?”

Her phone chimed again. She ignored it.

“How can you not see the message, Dad?”

In her eyes burned a dangerous fire. I took her hand, chose my words with care.

“But Licia, love, the message of the ‘action’ is murder. You can’t separate it from what those men did.”

Her expression softened. She gave a sad little smile. “Why are you criticizing something you can’t understand?”

“Make this right,” I said. “Tell the police what you just told me.”

The phone chimed. Licia took it out, read something from the screen. She looked at me.

I seized the phone from her hand.

Time you accepted your parents’ limitations.

“Licia,” I said. “We have to tell the police.”

“Why are you trying to hurt us?”

“To hurt you?” For a moment I thought I’d misheard. Then I understood.

“You don’t regret any of it,” I said. “Do you?”

Licia laughed. She actually laughed.

“I used to think of all the lives you saved, Licia. All based on a footprint that you left on that fake police boat. We thought it had to be you who took the ammunition case. We thought you shortened the massacre. ‘Our Licia,’ we would say, ‘hero of Garden Island.’ Without that thought I think we would have gone under. Except that the Hero of Garden Island was a girl called Maria. You were never on the island.”

She looked at me, and I saw that it was true.

I tried to marshal my anger, spoke as quietly as I could. “Those men in court aren’t smart enough to execute a plan of this complexity. Not without help. But Bror’s smart. And Milla’s smart.”

She took a breath. Held it. Released it. Took another breath.

“Is that a breathing technique?” I said as gently as I could.

She nodded.

“Did he teach you that?”

She exhaled, nodded again.

Bror, with his breathing and his meditation and his warm reassuring manner. How easily he would have bypassed Licia’s defenses.