“What did you say?”
Carter smiled—a razor-thin, terrifying flash of porcelain veneers that held zero warmth and zero mercy:
“The woman you pulled out of the gravel, Sebastian,” Carter murmured, leaning down until his breath brushed the weather-stripping of my window:
“Did she give you something?”
“She was having a myocardial infarction, Mr. Holbrook,” I said, my voice dropping into that quiet, fifty-decibel register that cuts through corporate boardrooms like an industrial saw:
“I was performing chest compressions until the state patrol arrived.”
“Did she give you a folder?” Carter pressed, his knuckles tightening against the top of the door frame until the leather of his gloves groaned:
“A red-wax-sealed vellum portfolio from the glove box of that Maybach?”
“No,” I replied.
“Are you certain, Sebastian?” Nick chimed in, leaning over Carter’s shoulder with an ugly, sycophantic grin:
“Because Sebastian has a terrible habit of taking things that don’t belong to him. Like our agency’s time. Like our clients’ patience.”
