Gerald Sutton.
I said the name in my head three times, the way I always did when I was trying to make something real that still felt impossible. Gerald Sutton, twenty-two year veteran of the Blackwood board. Gerald Sutton, who voted with the majority so reliably you could set a watch by it. Gerald Sutton, who had just walked out of a confidential meeting through the south exit, gotten into a car registered to Richard Ashby’s network, and was somewhere in this city right now, talking.
I was still standing at the window with my phone in my hand and Lucas’s photograph on the screen when I made the call.
Adrian picked up on the second ring. “Ava.”
“One of the three people you spoke to this morning is not on your side.”
The silence that followed was the particular kind that meant someone w
