Ann had dressed rather carefully that morning. Not in the usual way she dressed for social occasions, where it was all about impression. This was different. She had stood in front of her wardrobe for longer than usual and eventually chose the navy suit she wore to outings that required her to be taken seriously, the one Lucia had once said made her look like she meant business. She had done her hair properly and worn her good shoes and checked herself in the mirror twice before she left the house, which was two more times than she usually needed. She took the bus, which she hadn't done in years, because she didn't want to arrive in a taxi that might circle the building while she lost her nerve. The Gold Aries building was on Creston Avenue in the heart of the Silverlace Business Area, and it was not the tallest building on the block, but it had a quality that the taller buildings around it didn't — a kind of settled authority, the architecture of something that had decided what it

Strickland was locking up the gym when John came out of the changing room.It was late, around quarter to ten, the last session having run long because two of the regulars had gotten competitive about something and Strickland had let it play out rather than cut it short. The overhead lights were off except for the strip above the exit and the security light above the equipment cage."You're the last one," Strickland said, not accusatorially. It was just an observation."Sorry," John replied, shouldering his bag."Don't be sorry, just be out the door." Strickland pulled his keys from his pocket. "You training tomorrow?""Maybe," John said.Strickland looked at him. After three weeks of John coming in at irregular hours and training with a consistency and intensity that had quietly reorganised the gym's informal hierarchy of who-was-actually-serious, he had developed the particular read of a man who had decided that John Bones was not someone he needed to understand, just someone he was