The coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan was deliberately ordinary—the kind of place where millions of similar conversations happened every day, where nobody paid attention to anyone else, where a man and a woman meeting for coffee would draw no scrutiny whatsoever.
Adrian sat in a corner booth, nursing a black coffee he didn't drink, watching the door for Sarah Chen. That was her name now—she'd taken her mother's maiden name after their divorce. Adrian remembered very little about her, which made her sudden reappearance in his life disorienting.
Sarah walked in exactly three minutes after Adrian arrived. She looked different than she had three years ago—older, somehow, or perhaps simply more serious. She wore a dark coat and carried a leather briefcase. She didn't smile when she saw Adrian.
