It told me more about him than any of the threats did.

A man in the grip of panic writes something ugly and human — begs, rages, pleads.

Dalton had filed a coerced abortion under a tidy euphemism, the way you would label a line item in a budget, because to him that is what it was: a problem with a cost, to be handled and categorized and moved past.

There was no heat in it.

That absence of heat was the most frightening thing in the entire folder, because heat can be regretted and cold cannot.

Dalton had not lost control on a bad day.