Nobody speaks for a moment.
Hadrian Voss is dead.
I take it in calmly. I've had experiences with unexpected deaths at work. I looked around. Not too much drama. Just the specific, quiet weight of a life that ended before the story around it finished. He was seventy years old and he had a heart condition he hid from everyone and he spent whatever time he had left building something he believed in completely and it killed him before he saw it through.
I don't grieve him.
But I don't celebrate either.
He was somebody's brother. Theodore, downstairs in this same building at this moment, probably doesn't know yet.
"Theodore," I say to Dominic.
He's already moving. I look at his face but I can't really tell what he's thinking.
"I'll find him," he says. He leaves the reading room without
