“I don’t like that woman,” Danny said. “She’s trouble.”
Stanford nodded, staring down the wine in his glass, like waiting for an egg to hatch. Don’t keep it bottled up, he thought, reflecting on the thirteen-year-old wine staring back at him and the two-year-old bottle on his kitchen shelf. He remembered the day he’d placed it on the shelf and promised not to indulge ever again.
But this was different, he told himself. Things were looking up. Soon he’d be off the force and the mandatory therapy. He’d be living the dream, thanks to Danny.
He reached for the glass. His arm felt robotic, like it wouldn’t work until instructed by data passed through a firewall. He soon learned to operate it smoothly, with direct orders from old memory files in his brain, clamping onto the glass by its stem
