He was looking at me the way you look at a problem — a variable that had entered the equation unexpectedly and needed to be solved.

I could see him running it: what I had seen, what I could prove, what I wanted, what he could offer or threaten to make me want something else.

It was the same look I had seen across a hundred conference tables from a hundred men who had reduced a human being to a liability on a spreadsheet.

And it steadied me completely, because it confirmed that I was not dealing with a man who had made a mistake and might yet feel remorse.

I was dealing with a machine that had hit an obstacle, and I knew exactly how to take a machine apart.

I lifted the phone a little higher.