“I don’t know how to tell you this.

If I’m wrong, you can dismiss me tonight and I’ll never say another word.

But if you don’t listen to me right now — sir, tomorrow may already be too late.”

I looked at the frightened young woman in my study, and something in her fear told me, before she said another thing, that my comfortable understanding of my own life was about to end.

Chapter 10 — What She Found

Anouk set a small object on my desk — a cloth wrapped around several vials, the kind a pharmacy dispenses, though these bore no honest label.