JULIAN

I lost her at seven-oh-nine.

Not lost. I knew exactly where she was. I had known where she was at every point in the previous forty minutes, which was itself a piece of information I had been declining to examine with the same deliberate patience I had been applying to several related pieces of information for the past two months.

I released her. That was the accurate word.

Margaux Alderton had appeared at Lena's left shoulder with the specific purposefulness of a woman who had something that required Lena's attention and was not going to wait for a natural break in the conversation to get it. Lena had turned...