2024-06-15 18:55:17
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047 Objection
Elijah Wood stood, buttoned his jacket, and did not raise his voice."Mr. Grayson. A moment of your time, since you've been so generous with everyone else's." He turned slightly, addressing the doorway crowd the way he might address a jury. "For the fifty or so witnesses currently enjoying the show—please, keep enjoying it. Every word helps."Jake's grin faltered. "Helps what?""Defamation, spoken to an audience, is called slander. Slander of a public figure, with malice, witnessed by a room full of strangers with camera phones—" Elijah picked an invisible thread from his sleeve— "is called exhibit A. Most defendants make me subpoena their worst moments. You're catering yours. With a toast."A ripple of laughter moved through the main floor. Jake's jaw ticked."You think I'm scared of a lawsuit? I keep firms like yours in my petty cash—""No," Elijah said mildly. "You're not scared of a lawsuit."He stepped around the table, closed the distance, and dropped his voice to a register mea
Dinner for Four
"Stop fidgeting," Tessa ordered, wielding a lip brush like a weapon. "You'll smudge my masterpiece.""It's a first date, not the Met Gala.""It's a first date with a man who has dimples and a retainer agreement. Sit still."Ashley sat still. In the mirror, a woman she barely recognized looked back at her—black satin slip dress, hair loose over one shoulder, the scar-free cheek of a life that hadn't happened yet. Tessa had fought hard for the waspie underneath. Ashley had lost that argument on points."There." Tessa stepped back, admiring her work. "If Elijah Wood doesn't propose by dessert, he's legally blind.""He's a lawyer. He'd never commit to anything without due diligence.""Then give him something to diligence."Downstairs, Guiscard waited beside the Buick, holding the door open without a word. He didn't comment on the dress. He didn't comment on anything. He simply drove, eyes on the road, jaw set in that particular way that said the silence was load-bearing."You're quiet ton
045 Bob
Guiscard looked at them with the expression of a man who has just done something fairly routine and is mildly concerned about how it's being received."Yes, ma'am," he said.Ashley's mouth opened and then closed."How," she said."I found one of their couriers this morning."He crouched and began cutting the zip ties—Ashley's first, then Tessa's, his movements unhurried."The courier had the password, the access schedule, and a description of the room layout. I had the actual planner they were waiting for detained elsewhere, took his position, and waited."He glanced up. "The mask helped. None of them had met Bob in person.""You've been in here this whole time," Ashley said. "While we were being marched through the mall by two women with guns.""I was in position before you reached the elevator." He stood. "It was the more efficient choice. I couldn't intercept you above ground without risking the firearms they were carrying in a public space.""You could have told me.""There wasn't
044 Plastic Blood
The elevator doors hissed open onto the underground parking level."Out," the taller woman snapped, shoving Ashley forward with enough force to make her stagger.Tessa needed a push too. She was barely moving—just over eighteen years old and already twice in mortal danger in the space of a single week, and Ashley could see the particular stillness of someone whose body had decided that standing very still was the safest option available.Her eyes were fixed somewhere slightly ahead of the present moment, the way eyes go when the brain is still trying to catch up.*Why does she keep getting dragged into this?* Ashley thought, scanning the level as they were marched through it. *Every time.*The parking area on this side of the mall was near-empty—employee vehicles, half-lit, no foot traffic. The kind of space that existed to be forgotten.A surveillance camera at the far end blinked its slow red pulse, pointed at the entrance ramp and nowhere useful.Ashley had thought about shouting,
043 Need A Man
"Methods, conditions, lore," Ashley went on. "Whatever the record has." Bartholomew smoothed his mustache and looked at the check the way men of his generation looked at things they hadn't expected to receive. "A strange research question," he murmured. "And not an easy one. But Anthropology and Sociology are underfunded here—have been for years. This could change that considerably." He straightened. "I'll put a team of interns on it immediately." "I'm grateful, Professor." Ashley shook his hand, made her exit, and descended back into the city. Tessa was waiting at the mall. "He asked you out?!" "Please keep your voice down." Ashley stepped off the escalator onto the sixth floor of East Norwich Mall, where Gucci and Prada and Tom Ford lined the corridor in a row of well-lit abundance. "But yes. He asked me to dinner." "And you said yes? How fast?" "More or less immediately." Tessa processed this with the expression of someone doing difficult math. "Okay, I'm not even mad. I'v
042 The Lore
"Algonquian!" "Come again?" Ashley knitted her brows. "Al-gon-kwee-an." Professor Bartholomew said it slowly, with the patient exasperation of a man who had spent fifty years being misquoted by undergraduates. He had, in fact, already said it three times. The old scholar had been mid-lecture when his assistant barged in. A billionaire wanted to donate fifty thousand dollars to his department. He'd dismissed the students immediately. The potential donor had turned out to be Ashley Palmer—not an alumna hoping to get her name on a library wing, but a young woman with an urgent translation request and a particular phrase she needed explained at no notice and with some discretion. Bartholomew had found this considerably more interesting than a library wing. He had also found her face interesting, which he had said, directly and without apparent embarrassment. "Scientifically attractive," he'd said again, studying her with the frank attention of a man examining a very good specimen.
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