And now the lender had called the loan, all of it, at once, and he was standing in an airport in a half-buttoned shirt with a hospital band on his wrist, worth exactly what he had actually generated on his own, which the audit would eventually establish was less than nothing.

That was what stopped him cold.

Not that he had lost.

That he had never, at any point, been holding what he thought he held.

Chapter 17 — That Was the Announcement

With the fight gone out of him, Flynn did the last thing left in his repertoire, which was to bargain.

“Mabel.

Listen to me.