Derek’s signet ring came down on the laminate three times, then went still.

I laid the brass key on the table next to my binder, and the tiny click it made turned every head in the room.

“Eleven years,” I said.

“All I’m asking for is twenty minutes of them.”

Diane sat at the far end with her hands folded on top of nothing.

She had hired me into claims when I was twenty-eight, and she had said good morning to me at eight fifty-five and nothing since.

“Twenty minutes,” she said.