Julian gambled that I would be an amateur in a crisis, because he had only ever seen the accommodating wife, and the accommodating wife would have been an amateur.

He never imagined that the crisis would summon the professional, the one who had spent a decade learning that the disasters you survive are the ones you prepared for before they arrived.

He improvised a cruelty.

I executed a protocol.

It was not a fair fight, and the ninety minutes proved it.

Chapter 12 — They Forgot Who I Was

I sat in the airport lounge in Phuket, showered and changed, a cup of coffee in front of me, and I smoothed out the two crumpled notes on the table beside it, and I read them one last time. Figure it out yourself. Let’s see who comes for you now.

They read differently, now that I had figured it out, now that I knew who was coming.