Except I had looked back.
Not at the retraction. Not at Cassie, whose next move I was monitoring through Marcus Chen and Detective Martinez with the patient attention of a man who understood that the most dangerous opponents were the ones who didn't know when they were losing. Not at the article, which I had stopped thinking about the moment Claire's statement went out because the article was Claire's problem now and had ceased to be mine.
I'd looked back at the sentence.
Mrs. Blackwood's character requires no defense.
I'd written that. Dictated it, technically, in the sense that Claire had drafted the statement and I had read it and that sentence had already been there, close to right, and I'd changed two words and sent it back and it had gone out exactly as I intended.
I'd meant eve
