The risk assessment didn’t look like a legal brief at all. It didn't have the clean, heavy weight of the bonded legal paper Damien’s Manhattan defense firm usually filed, nor did it carry the blue ribbons of a formal compliance report from the district archives. Instead, it was a tiny, battered ledger book no larger than a man’s palm, its corners rounded and fraying from years of being shoved into the deep grease-stained pockets of a canvas mechanic's jacket. The black oilcloth cover was cracked along the spine, showing the coarse white thread underneath, and it smelled faintly of machine oil, salt damp, and old pocket lint.Rafe sat heavily on the very edge of the rough sawhorses, his thick work boots tucked into the lower cross-braces of the yellow steel frames to keep his feet out of the widening puddle near the floor drain. His shoulders were hunched forward, his blunt, calloused fingers slowly tracing a thin line of faded red ink down the center of a hand-ruled grid. He had spen
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