# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Three — He Comes to You
He did not come to her apartment.
He did not come to the Thompson-Hayes office on West Fifth Street or to the coffee shop on South Congress where she had changed the direction of her life across a table six months ago. He came to her school, on a Wednesday afternoon, at 3:45 p.m. — fifteen minutes after the last bell, when the parking lot was still half-full and the after-school light was doing that specific February thing where it turned everything copper and exact.
She was walking to her car with her bag over one shoulder and her period-four essays under her arm when she saw him.
He was standing beside a black car near the lot's edge with his hands in his jacket pockets and the particular stillness of someone who has b
