Adrian arrived in twenty-two minutes.
Daniel told me this afterward, in the way he told me things: factually, without embellishment, but with the particular care he took when the facts themselves were the embellishment. Twenty-two minutes from a call that had reached him in the middle of the Meridian subsidiary review. He had walked out of that meeting without explanation, gotten into a car, and arrived at Blackwood Industries at nine fourteen with his jacket on and his expression arranged the way it was when he had decided something and did not need anyone else’s input on it.
He went straight up to his office.
Daniel brought Noah to him there. Noah walked in with his bag on his shoulder and looked around the office, the way he looked around every room, and then sat down in the chair ac
