Chapter 11“Allison Oates. Meet Noah Sanders.”
“Afternoon, Ms. Oates.”
“Hello, Noah, and please, call me Allison.”
She was probably sixty or a couple years older, with platinum blonde hair she wore like a helmet, stiff in any wind the ocean could conjure. Slightly plump, but with a genial, almost too-eager smile. He nodded at her, noticing the introduction hadn’t prompted a handshake. He dropped the hand he’d attempted to proffer. Perhaps she was old school and didn’t believe in men and women shaking hands, or maybe what Cilla had orchestrated between them hadn’t yet been agreed to.
They were behind closed doors, the three of them, in an office out of central casting. Wood desk, photographs in silver frames the only personal touch situated aside a computer and keyboard and a phone. Her
