The restaurant Connor chose for Saturday was called Cugino Forno, which Amy had mentioned once while they were walking through Fisher Park that she'd always wanted to try. He'd filed it the way he filed things she said without announcing he was filing them, and when Saturday came he told her where they were going and watched the brief recognition cross her face — the specific look of someone realizing they'd been listened to without knowing they were being listened to.She didn't comment on it. She just smiled and got in the Panamera, which was also very Amy.The evening found its rhythm quickly, the way their evenings did. The food was good, the restaurant was the kind that knew what it was and didn't apologize for it, and Amy was in the particular mode she sometimes had on Saturdays where the week had released its hold on her and she was simply present without the low-level operational awareness she carried inside the Golden Lantern. She talked about her father's latest Thursday vis

Provisions on South Elm was exactly the kind of place you chose for a conversation you needed to have somewhere neutral. Small, unhurried, the specific ambient hum of a Thursday morning coffee shop that created enough background noise to make a quiet conversation private without requiring either party to whisper. Connor arrived five minutes early and found Cassie already there.She was in a window seat with a coffee she'd barely touched, and she watched him cross the room toward her with the expression of someone who had been making decisions before he arrived and had finished making them.He sat down. Ordered coffee. Waited."You know who my uncle is," she said. Not a question."Yes," he said."And you know what that means.""I know what it suggests," he said carefully. "I don't know details."Cassie looked at her coffee for a moment. When she looked back up her expression had the quality of someone who had been carrying a particular weight for a long time and had developed strong op

The Golden Lantern on a Wednesday afternoon had its usual between-hours quiet, the lunch rush done and the dinner prep not yet underway. Connor pushed through the door at his usual time expecting the specific familiar warmth of the place and found something different instead.A man was standing at the counter.Small, wiry, the kind of build that suggested someone who had spent a long time being underestimated and had learned to use it. Five-eight at most, in clothes that were neither shabby nor impressive, with the specific stillness of someone who was comfortable making other people uncomfortable. He was leaning on the counter with one elbow in the casual way of someone who owned the space he was standing in regardless of whose name was on the lease.Amy was behind the counter. Her posture was wrong.Connor had spent enough time watching Amy Tan move through her restaurant to know the difference between her professional stillness and the stillness of someone choosing their words care

Mia made stir-fry on Thursday, which meant her kitchen smelled like garlic and sesame oil when Connor came through the door, and she was talking before he had his jacket off."So the acoustic contractor called me today with a question about the load rating on the mezzanine, which, fine, except he asked it in a way that suggested he'd already made a decision and wanted me to bless it after the fact, so I made him walk me through the actual numbers, and it turns out his decision was wrong by about forty percent." She pointed a spatula at him. "Forty percent, Connor. On a load rating.""What did you do?""I told him to redo it and copy me on the revised spec." She turned back to the pan. "Politely. Mostly politely."He watched her work for a moment, the easy efficiency of her in her own kitchen, and felt the specific reluctance of a man about to change the temperature of a good evening. He waited until they were at the table, plates full, before he did it."I need to tell you something,"

The phone rang three times, and then a voice that had gotten deeper but not slower said, "Riggs.""You still owe Dave Wheeler forty dollars from the Clemson game."Silence for exactly one beat. Then a low laugh, rolling up from somewhere deep, the same laugh that used to echo off locker room tile."Connor Flynn," Riggs said. "Eighty-eight himself. Man, I was wondering when the universe would get around to this.""To what?""Wheeler texted me two weeks ago asking if I was still at Veritas. Wheeler doesn't ask questions like that recreationally. So either he had a client with a problem, or one of us had a problem, and his clients have their own people." A creak of a chair leaning back. "Took you fourteen days longer than I expected. What's the situation?"That was Riggs. No small talk on the front end. The catching up would happen, but only after the reason for the call was on the table, because the reason for the call was the mission, and Riggs sequenced everything mission-first. The M