“I need you to do something for me.

And then I need you to stay very far away from this room at two a.m.”

Chapter 11 — Black River in November

“Can you get to the basement maintenance level?” I asked her.

She nodded at once.

“I have clearance for the service corridors.”

“There is a secure landline in the engineering supervisor’s office.

I need you to dial a number.” And I gave her, from memory, a private, unlisted twelve-digit sequence: the direct line to Marcus Sterling, the man who had run my private security for a decade before I placed him on a quiet retainer two years ago, a man I trusted with my life precisely because he had, more than once, already saved it.