Patricia Chen had the specific skill of making a meeting feel routine right up until the moment it wasn't.
Marcus Webb arrived at the neutral office space Patricia had booked thinking it was a standard legal consultation. He was a career DA man, fifty-three, grey at the temples, the practiced ease of someone who had spent thirty years in rooms where other people were nervous. He sat down across from Patricia with the relaxed expression of a man who managed these conversations for a living.
He did not recognize Elara immediately.
Then he did.
The relaxation went somewhere. Not completely, he was too experienced for that, but enough. Enough that she saw it and filed it and knew, before Patricia said a single word, that he understood why he was in this room.
"Mr. Webb," Patricia said. "T
