The Silverlace Infrastructure Summit ran annually at the Convention Centre on the river side of the business district, two days of panels and keynotes and networking lunches that the city's serious commercial players attended because not attending sent its own message.Timothy had put Alan's name forward for the keynote slot four months ago, which Alan had found out about two months ago and had not objected to, which Timothy had correctly interpreted as agreement.The programme listed him as: Alan Walker, Executive Advisor, Gold Aries Group.Jasmine had reviewed the bio before it went to print. "Executive advisor," she had said, reading it back to him. "Is that what we're going with?""For now," Alan had replied, and that had been the extent of the conversation.…The main hall held four hundred people and was comfortably full by the time the morning's second panel wrapped and the moderator introduced the keynote. Alan was at the side of the stage when his name was called, jacket on,

A statement came through a lawyer named Boateng, which was how you knew it was serious.Boateng was a litigation partner at one of the city's three genuinely feared law firms, the kind of firm whose name on a document changed the temperature of any room it entered. He held a press conference at ten in the morning, which was itself a statement, not a written release, not a comment through a spokesperson, but a room with cameras and a podium and a lawyer who had clearly slept well.His client, a senior contracts manager at the Transit Authority named Adaeze Nwosu, had worked in the procurement division for eleven years. She was not present at the press conference. Boateng spoke on her behalf for seven minutes, in the careful and specific language of a man who had chosen every word the night before and was not going to deviate from any of them.He confirmed that his client had been cooperating formally with the investigation for three weeks. He confirmed that her cooperation included doc

Yemi called at two in the afternoon, which was quite unexpected because the lady usually texted.She had always texted, even before texting was the default mode of communication for everyone they knew, because Yemi worked in media and had developed this media professional's aversion to phone calls that she hadn't asked for. If Yemi was calling, something had moved past the level of a text.Lucia was in the middle of trying to get Peace down for her afternoon nap. The little girl was resisting with a ridiculous energy she brought to most things she didn't want to do. She saw Yemi's name on the screen and let it ring twice while she settled Peace against her shoulder, and then picked up."Hey," she said, keeping her voice low."Can you talk?" Yemi asked."Hang on." She walked Peace slowly around the room in the way that sometimes worked, the gentle rocking motion, and after two circuits Peace's grip on her shirt loosened and her breathing changed. Lucia lowered her into the cot with the

The gym was tucked between a laundromat and a closed-down pawn shop, the kind of place most people walked past without noticing. It had one ring, a row of heavy bags along the back wall, and mirrors that had gone slightly foggy with age. The regulars called it Denny's, after the man who used to own it, though Denny himself had been dead for six years.John Bones arrived every morning at six, same as always. He gave the name Cole at the front desk and paid in cash, and the woman behind the counter had long since stopped asking for anything more than that.He wrapped his knuckles by the mirror, slow and unhurried, the tape pulling snug with each turn around his hand. A few of the regulars were already in, shadowboxing near the ring or skipping rope by the lockers. Nobody bothered him. He preferred it that way.He stepped up to the heavy bag and started with his usual warm-up, jab, cross, hook, the chain rattling above him with each hit. He kept the pace even, didn't rush through it the

“This better go well," Petra muttered to herself as she arrived at Gold Aries.It was three twenty, ten minutes early, which was a habit she'd never bothered breaking. The lobby was quiet, all clean lines and glass, nothing like the cluttered, overworked energy of the Tribune newsroom she'd left an hour before.A young man in a gray suit met her at the front desk and led her up to the executive floor without much conversation, just a few polite lines about the elevator being slow that time of day. She didn't mind the quiet. She used it to run through her questions one more time in her head.Alan's office was at the end of the hall, glass-walled, sparse, with a desk that had nothing on it except a laptop and a single closed folder. He stood when she walked in, and she took a second to actually look at him, the man from the viral photograph, the one Kira Ann had mocked in a hallway a year ago, standing now in a room that made it very clear how far off that mockery had been."Ms. Vance,"