Chapter 5: The Investor

On Monday night Colin Pratt shook my hand for too long.

He was forty-six, with slicked brown hair and a tan in October, and a navy suit with white sneakers.

He smiled with all of his teeth.

"The famous Ms. Wetherell," he said. "Hank says you saved his sales tax."

"Martha Abernathy saved it. I only found it."

"Modest. I like that."

I did not like that he said it.

We sat in the private room at the back of Dombrowski's, at a round table with candles and a bottle of sparkling water.

Hank sat on my left.

On his other side sat a woman from the network, in a grey blazer, with a tablet she did not look up from.

Hank had asked me to come, on Sunday, in a short text.

I need someone in the room who isn't selling me something.

I had said yes before I finished reading it.

"So," Colin said. "Season five."

"Ten episodes," said the woman from the network. "Prime slot. We want the old Hank."

"What's the old Hank?" I asked.

"The one who throws things," said Colin.

Hank went still beside me.

"The ratings were best in season two," the woman said, still to her tablet.

"The scenes where he loses it on the line. The audience loves the heat."

"It wasn't acting," Hank said.

"That's why it worked."

"It wasn't acting," he said again, louder. "I was fired up because a cook dropped a tray of forty portions."

"And we loved it," said Colin. "We want more of it. Fear is a flavor, Hank. People tune in to see you terrify somebody."

I felt Hank's leg go rigid against mine.

I looked at his hand on the table.

It had closed into a fist.

His chin came up and his chest filled, and I knew exactly what was about to come out of his mouth.

I did not touch his fist.

I put my hand under the tablecloth, quietly, and laid it flat on his thigh.

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