Adrian was already waiting when I walked in, exactly as I knew he would be.
He was standing by the window, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow, looking out at the
city the way he does when he is holding something carefully and trying not to let it show. He
turned when he heard the door. He looked at my face. He didn’t ask how it went. He just
pulled out a chair.
That, I thought, is a man who has learned something in seven years.
I sat down. I set my bag on the floor. And then I told him everything.
Not the edited version. Not the careful, sequenced briefing I had given Daniel in pieces over
the past weeks. All of it. The portrait in the restaurant hallway, the young woman standing
beside a teenage Adrian with his grandfather’s hand on her shoulder. The old family
acquaintance
