Carver Mensah was sitting on the front step of a residential building on Tessard Avenue with his hands in his lap and his face turned away from the streetlight.
He was broader than Hunter had pictured from the voice — wide across the shoulders, lean everywhere else, with the build of someone physically substantial before something had changed the distribution of it. He looked up when Hunter approached and Hunter saw the discoloration for the first time. Left side of his face, jaw to temple, the pale tight skin that Hunter recognized because he had the same mark at both his palms.
They looked at each other for a moment without speaking. Two people recognizing something in each other that neither of them had seen in another person before.
Then Carver stood up.
Inside, he said.
The apart
