I stepped down the aluminum air-stair.
My hand-welted leather field boots made a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack* against the wet marble.
Barnaby walked beside my knee, his dark coat glistening with sleet, his amber eyes locked onto the massive bronze central portals.
Beside me walked Major General Michael Grant and Vice Admiral David Mercer, their authority cutting through the freezing mist in synchronized, unblinking discipline.
Behind us walked United States Attorney Marcus Cooper.
Young Eleanor did not offer an emotional family greeting.
She turned her slate-gray eyes onto me, looked down at Arthur Mercer’s tweed jacket, down at the unpolished bronze transit pin, down at the Master Chancery seal on my uniform, down at the four-hundred-page vellum brief in my arms, and then down to the four-inch titanium key resting in my gloved right hand:
“Is the chain of custody intact, Aunt Eleanor?” the Judge asked.
Her voice had no volume; it was fifty decibels of pure, un-forgiving Maine iron:
