"Ms. Calloway." The voice was male, smooth, and completely unfamiliar. "My name is Conrad Hale. I'm an attorney representing the Ashford family."
Nia stood completely still on that corner for exactly two seconds two seconds in which the October wind kept moving, the city kept breathing, and everything she had spent four years carefully constructing tilted approximately three degrees off its foundation.
Then she started walking.
Not fast. Not slow. The deliberate unhurried pace of someone who had learned, through necessity rather than nature, that stillness in a crisis was more useful than movement.
"Mr. Hale," she said. "It's past eight o'clock."
"I'm aware of the hour. I apologize"
"What do you want?"
A brief pause on his end, the specific pause of someone recalibrating after reali
