“Can they make me go away with them?” Ethan asked, his quiet words shaking at the edges.

“No,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and firm as a command order.

“They’ll have to get through me first.”

Ethan looked down at the handwritten pages full of bank account numbers.

His shaking hand shut the navy journal on the library table.

At nine the next morning, the receptionist at the law office on Elm Avenue didn’t offer me a chair.

She pushed a thick cream envelope across the walnut counter and picked up her desk phone without another glance at me.