Page 62 of The Silent Hour

"Probably both."

"That good, huh?"

"Meeting didn't go the way I expected."

There was a pause.

"Bad?"

"Complicated."

I wasn't discussing Cortez's disclosure over the phone, especially before I knew precisely where privilege began and ended.

"I'll be home early tonight," I told her. "We'll talk then. You can tell me why you apparently had the same shitty idea."

"Deal."

Another small pause.

"Love you."

My eyes closed briefly.

"I love you too, bella."

I ended the call and stared at her picture for another second before locking my phone.

"Julia might be able to find out more, discreetly,” Eric suggested.

That was not happening. “Julia has no reason to be involved in this. Her playing field is our daughters' school lunches, meeting with her girlfriends, painting. Not this.”

Eric’s mouth tightened. “You make her sound like some fancy housewife. That isn’t Julia at all.”

I didn’t respond to that. His opinion didn’t matter. I was not involving my wife in what was shaping up to be a clusterfuck. I'd entered Coleman thinking Dominic Cortez might bring danger to my firm.

I hadn't expected to discover he'd already planted a question inside it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ETHAN

LATE-AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT cut hard angles across the conference room's glass walls when we returned, throwing long shadows over the table.

The others were already waiting.

Knox had his ankles crossed, chair pushed back a few inches from the table—the posture of a man who wanted to look like he hadn't been thinking about this for the last two hours. Rafa stood at the far end, both hands flat against the edge, like he needed something to push against. Serena was flicking a pen end over end between two fingers, the soft plastic click of it the only sound in the room.

Caleb hadn't looked up. His legal pad was already dense with handwriting, columns and arrows and bracketed notations that would be illegible to anyone but him.

I shut the door. "Phones off. Nothing discussed in here leaves this room."

Chairs shifted. Screens went dark. Eric and Katerina took their seats, and I stayed standing.

"Cortez isn't getting an answer today."

Knox's brow lifted a fraction. "That bad?"

"That complicated." I set my hands against the back of my chair, the leather cool under my palms. "He gave us information at the end of the meeting that materially changes our risk assessment."