Nolan didn't run.
That was what surprised her most. She had expected him to assess the room, calculate his options, and move — because that was who Nolan was, a man in permanent forward motion, always working the next angle. Instead he sat down in the chair he had been using and folded his hands on his knee and looked at her with the expression of someone who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and has finally, for better or worse, set it down.
"Twenty-two years," he said. "I was two years old when they took you. I don't remember it. But I grew up with the shape of it — the missing piece, Alexander's silence every year on the date, the way Marcus used to say your name sometimes when he thought nobody was listening." He looked at the floor briefly. "And then you came back an
