I had paid my bill and left a party I was no longer willing to fund, and behind me, in a leather-bound folder making its slow way across a private dining room, the truth of what that family had arranged was about to be handed, at last, to the people who had arranged it.

They had ordered the evening.

It seemed only fair, at long last, that they should also be the ones to receive it, itemized and totaled and waiting in its leather folder at the head of the table where the ordering had been done.

Chapter 10 — Like a Trapped Hornet

The ride home took twenty minutes, and for all twenty of them my phone sat face down on my lap and buzzed against the leather like a trapped hornet, over and over, a vibration I could feel in my knees.

I did not turn it over.