เข้าสู่ระบบXena.The waitress put down two coffees nobody had ordered and left."You always do that," I said."Do what?""Order for me before I've sat down.""You always want coffee." Dante turned his cup around without drinking it. "Should I stop?""No." I pulled mine closer. "I'm stalling. Let me stall for one more minute."He let me.There were four cars in a car park and a fluorescent tube with a fault in it over the counter, and there was a family in the corner booth with a kid asleep across two seats. Two exits. Forty strangers. I'd have picked it too."Okay," I said. "I'll go first.""Go.""I've known you for eight months." I put both hands flat on the table. "In eight months my father died, my sister came back from two years in a locked room, I found out my grandfather founded the thing that killed him, and I watched a man die on the floor of the kitchen I learned to cook in. You were in every one of those rooms.""I was.""So when I say I love you, I don't know how much of that is you a
Xena."You've got twenty minutes and they'll cut it at twenty," the officer said, and pointed me at table four.Herald was already sitting.Three weeks in the county had gone to five. He'd stopped shaving the way he used to and the county blues fit him worse than the suit had. "You came.""Don't." I put the folder down between us. "Don't do the thing where you sound surprised. It's been five weeks and I've come every week and you know exactly how many times.""Four.""Four." I opened the folder. "I'm going to read you something and then I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to let me get through the first part before you start working on the second.""You've rehearsed this.""In a car park for eleven minutes. Shut up."His mouth moved, barely.I put the photocopy on the table and turned it toward him. "My grandfather. Elias Cross. This was in the sealed material — it's a letter he never sent to anybody. Osei let me copy it."Herald read it. He was quick, and I watched him ge
Xena."You're allowed to be nervous," Dante said, both hands on the wheel. "It's a courthouse, not a performance review.""I'm not nervous.""You've checked that folder four times since Belmont."I put my hand flat on it to stop myself doing it a fifth. "It's the last thing I have of his handwriting that I haven't read."Dante pulled into the garage and killed the engine and didn't get out."Then don't rush it in there," he said. "Whatever she puts in front of you, take the time. Nobody in that room is going to hurry a woman who handed them the file.""You could come up.""I could." He reached over and tucked the folder tighter under my arm, and left his hand there a second. "I'm not going to. This one's yours and you'll want to have done it alone. I'll be on the fourth-floor bench with a bad coffee."I kissed him quickly, and went.Osei's chambers smelled like paper and radiator heat. She stood when I came in, which I hadn't expected, and shook my hand across the desk."Sit. This wil
Xena.The row filled up by eight-forty.Diana came first, in a coat Hannah must have bought her, sitting down without a word and folding her hands in her lap. Then Adrian, who took the aisle seat and kept his eyes on the door. Then Foster Byrne, which nobody had expected, least of all me."He asked to come," Adrian said, without turning around. "He called Hannah at six this morning."Foster sat at the end of the row, three feet from anyone, hands on his knees.Axel arrived last, stood at the back for a moment counting exits out of habit, then came down and dropped into the seat beside Dante.Herald came out at nine with a court officer on each side.He'd been in the county for three weeks. It showed in the way the suit hung on him — his own suit, sent over by someone, and now a size too generous through the shoulders. He looked at the gallery once on his way to the table.He stopped walking.The officer beside him touched his elbow and he started again, and he sat down, and he didn't
Xena.She'd chosen a diner, which told me something before I'd even sat down.Hannah checked the window for the fourth time in ten minutes. "She could have picked anywhere. A hotel lobby or a park. But she picked a place with two exits and forty strangers in it.""She's been running eleven months." I turned my coffee cup around on the saucer. "Let her have the exits."The bell over the door went. Hannah stopped talking.I wouldn't have known her from across a street. The hair was short now, grey coming through it with nothing dyed over the top, and she'd lost weight in a way that wasn't diet. She stood inside the door and scanned the room for four full seconds before she let herself look at our table.Then she looked. Her hand went out to the counter and gripped it.Hannah got up. I didn't. My legs had made a decision without consulting me.Diana crossed the room and stopped a foot short of the booth. Her hands weren't steady either."You cut your hair." The stupidest available senten
Xena.Cassandra Byrne started to laugh.It wasn't much of a laugh but it went on longer than was comfortable, and none of us said anything until she finished."Oh, that's very good," she said. "Victor, she got there in eleven seconds. It took your grandfather three days.""Whose grandfather," I said."Hers." Victor's hand hadn't moved off the envelope. "Elias. She means Elias.""I mean Elias." Cassandra pulled her coat straighter across her shoulders. "Sit back down, dear, you've gone white and I'd rather not explain a fainting girl to anyone.""Tell me what's in the envelope.""Paper. Correct weight, correct age, correct three sheets." She said it without a flicker. "Nothing written on any of them. I had it made in four hours and it cost less than dinner.Dante's voice came out very flat. "Where are the real ones?""With Judge Osei, exactly where the girl sent them. I didn't intercept the courier, I intercepted the manifest — there's a difference and only one of them is a felony." A
Xena.The night air hit me the moment we stepped outside and I realized it was the first clean breath I'd taken in hours.Dante's car was already waiting. The long black car didn't need a logo to tell one it cost fortunes. A driver stood at the rear door without being summoned and I got in without
Xena.I have had some strange experiences in my lifetime.Being born illegitimate into a family that kept me like a footnote. Being sent to a wedding that wasn't mine with twenty minutes of notice. And spending three years married to a man who looked through me at dinner every night.But none of th
Xena. Was Hannah drunk?I stood there waiting for the punchline. April Fools was months away but maybe someone had lost track of the calendar. Maybe this was some elaborate Yale family bit that I hadn't been briefed on. Maybe —Adrian crossed the room to stand beside her."It's true." He turned to
Xena.I gasped for breath, my legs still aching from the last round. Yet Dante stood over me like this was nothing but probably another of his one night stands.The bed was wet beneath me, wet from my juices. I stared at the ceiling for a while, the memories of his cock inside of me played over an







