Page 42 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Quinn relaxed by a degree. Just enough for me to notice.

“Because if she’s giving her time to a service-dog program, that tells me she wants to be seen as a person with a moral center. People are more persuadable when they’ve already dressed for virtue.”

The room was quiet for one beat, then Moira made a small approving sound and flipped open her notebook.

“You’re disturbingly perceptive,” James said.

Quinn, to her credit, didn’t smile too widely at that. “Thank you, sir.”

Helena looked to me. “Mr. Virelli?”

Not wanting to show that I was in any way impressed, I said, “It seems sensible.”

Peter shifted in his chair. “If we do that, one of the legal team should accompany you to facilitate the conversation and preserve the formal approach.”

Everything in his tone suggested he already had a preferred candidate for that role and had been that candidate in his own head since minute three.

Before anyone else could speak, I said, “Quinn should come.”

The silence that followed was different this time.

Quinn turned toward me so quickly that the remaining coffee in her hand sloshed.

Peter said, “The intern?”

I sent him an unamused look. “Ms. Bradley.”

Quinn’s eyes widened.

I went on, because the reasoning was straightforward even if the optics were not. “She found the event. She understood the social leverage. She knows why this particular approach may succeed where the formal channels have not. And she’s already proven unexpectedly effective in this matter.”

Moira looked amused. Helena looked unsurprised. Peter looked like a man trying not to object too quickly to something that might show him in a poor light. James, on the other hand, seemed to be reconsidering every hiring rubric he’d ever loved.

Quinn froze halfway bent over the table, James Payton’s coffee still suspended in her hand as if her body had simply declined to continue cooperating.

“I’m sorry?” she said.

Then, with the awful elegance of a disaster committing itself fully, the cup tipped.

Coffee poured straight into James Payton’s lap.

The splash was somehow both larger and quieter than seemed possible, liquid spreading over expensive charcoal wool before dripping off the edge of his chair onto the carpet. A poignantly violent smell of fresh coffee rose into the air.

Quinn made a sound I’d previously only heard from people watching priceless objects die in slow motion. “Oh my god.”

James stood so abruptly his chair shot backward and struck the credenza behind him.

Moira was moving before the chair finished rolling, already reaching for the stack of napkins near the untouched silver coffee service. Peter half stood, and stayed frozen in that position.

Helena Wallace didn’t move at all. She only closed her eyes briefly, like a woman acknowledging that the universe did occasionally write its own jokes.

Quinn set the empty cup down with jerky precision, as though doing one thing carefully might somehow reverse the rest of it.

“I am so, so sorry,” she said, already grabbing napkins from Moira with the useless urgency of someone trying to fix gravity after the fact. “I didn’t—I mean, obviously I did, but not on purpose, which I realize is not helpful⁠—”

“Ms. Bradley,” James said, with the brittle restraint of a man trying not to shout in front of a client. “Please do not blot my lap.”

She stopped dead. Color rushed into her face.