The taxi ride to the Grand Vista felt like a descent into another dimension. Outside the tinted windows, the neon pulse of Seattle blurred into streaks of rain-smeared crimson and gold. Inside the cab, my hands were clamped so tightly around the straps of my overnight bag that my knuckles had turned chalk-white.
The confrontation with Leo had acted like an anesthetic, numbing the shock of his betrayal under a white-hot layer of adrenaline. But now, as the car glided up to the gleaming glass-and-steel monolith of the downtown hotel, the adrenaline began to curdle into something hollow and aching.
I had walked away. I had burned the bridge, cut the cord, and left the wreckage of lies behind me in that hallway. For the first time, I wasn't hiding. I was stepping out into the open, carryi
