Chapter 7: Woman to Woman

Annora kept smiling through the glass while I found my overalls in the dark.

Maddox woke up slowly, looked at the door, and said a very short word.

"I'll get rid of her," he said.

"No." I pulled the strap over my shoulder. "I want to hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Whatever she came to say. She didn't drive over here at eight a.m. for pastries."

He unlocked the door himself and stood in it, bare-chested, filling the frame.

"Morning," Annora said brightly, and held a cup out to him.

He didn't take it.

"I'd love a word with Ellory," she said. "Woman to woman. I want to apologize properly, somewhere nice, and I thought lunch."

"You can say it here," I said.

"I'd rather not in front of the sawdust." She laughed, silvery.

"One o'clock, at Pelham's on Water Street. Please."

"You've been so brave, and I think I owe you the truth."

She set the second cup on the doorstep and walked back to a white car at the curb.

Maddox watched her go.

"You don't have to go," he said.

"I know."

"It's a trap."

"I know that too." I put my hair in a clip. "I'd like to see how she builds one."

Pelham's was a glass-fronted brasserie with brass rails and a room full of people eating eggs.

Annora had the window table.

She stood and kissed the air by my cheek, and I sat across from her and put my elbows on the tablecloth.

She had her phone on her lap, under the edge of the linen, with the screen lit.

I could see it at the corner of my eye.

A thin red bar, a timer, climbing.

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