The hearing recessed at 5:47 p.m. with testimony incomplete.
Judge Reyes had scheduled two days for the full proceeding. Fisk had consumed more time than anticipated with his counter-examination of the independent auditor — three hours of technical questions that the auditor answered with the patient precision of someone who had prepared for exactly this — and the court would reconvene at nine the following morning.
Mia walked out of the building with Patricia, said everything that needed to be said about the next morning, and then stood on the sidewalk in the November evening and breathed.
Nathan appeared at her elbow. "Dinner," he said. Not a question.
"Yes," she said.
They went somewhere quiet — not the Italian place, something smaller, a corner booth in a restaurant that didn't re
