He arrived in eighteen minutes.
I know because I watched the clock on my phone without meaning to, the way you watch things when your hands need something to do and your brain is still processing at a frequency that makes other activities impossible. Eighteen minutes from the call to the knock on my passenger window, and when I looked up he was there on the pavement in a jacket he had clearly grabbed without thinking and no tie and his hair slightly wrong, which was as close as Lucien Drax ever came to looking like he had moved too quickly to care about appearances.
He opened my door. He didn't say anything. He held out his hand.
I took it. I got out of the car. I stood on the pavement beside him and the city continued its Saturday morning around us and his hand was solid and certain ar
