Chapter 14: The Living Witness

"Who saw him demand her signature?" I asked Rita.

"The woman who kept the pack office keys."

She had moved to the far side of the city after losing her job.

Rita had once brought her groceries in a winter storm.

Valerio found the building, but Rita went up the stairs alone first.

She came down ten minutes later and beckoned us in.

The woman opened her door with a chain still across it.

She had silvered hair and a wolf's alert eyes.

"I won't sign anything," she said.

"You don't have to," I told her.

She looked behind us at Valerio.

"A Bellandi man at my door. That's supposed to make me feel safe?"

"No," he said. "You can ask me to wait in the car."

She did.

He went down without argument.

Inside, the woman kept one hand on the chain.

"Orson brought your mother to the office," she said. "He wanted the depot. She showed him the deed to Rita. He said it wasn't hers to give."

"Did she sign an oath?"

"She refused. I heard the drawer slam."

The woman stepped back and showed me a yellowing notice tacked beside the door.

It ordered her to surrender her office keys or lose her apartment.

Orson's seal sat at the bottom.

"The next day he told me I'd witnessed a debt," she said. "I said I hadn't. Then this arrived."

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