My father used to say that a hot head and a cold ledger cannot occupy the same person at the same moment, and that the whole art of it is knowing which one the situation calls for.

This situation called for the cold ledger.

So every day I let Flynn believe he had won a wife who did not look too closely, and every night, when he thought I was asleep, I read Phoebe’s findings by the light of my phone and added another traced dollar to the case that was going to end him.

The silence was not weakness, and it was not even patience, exactly.

It was a weapon I had decided to load slowly and fire once.