LOOKING TOO LONG
Alex's pov first — then Glande's.
I dressed in the specific automatic way of someone whose body knows the sequence without requiring the mind to supervise it. I made coffee in the kitchen — one cup, my usual — and I drank it standing at the counter looking at the city through the window in the specific gray quality of a Wednesday before seven.
I thought about her face when she had said *no.*
The single word. The relief it had produced in me. The way the relief had itself been significant had told me something about the extent of what I had been bracing for.
I put the cup in the sink.
I arrived at Dallas Enterprises at seven twenty-nine.
I noticed the time. I noticed that I was twenty-four minutes earlier than my usual arrival and that the reason for the earliness w
