The city hummed outside, a dissonant choir of sirens and screeching tires, but inside Gage’s study, the silence felt heavy.
He sat behind a desk of polished obsidian, the amber glow of a single lamp casting long, sharp shadows across the room. He didn't look at the spreadsheets on his monitor. His gaze drifted, as it did every evening at six, to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked directly into the townhouse next door.
Tessa lived there. She was a burst of chaotic color in a neighborhood of gray stone and sterile glass. Her living room was a jungle of potted ferns and mismatched velvet furniture.
She entered the frame now, humming a tune Gage couldn't hear. She wore a thin, white cotton t-shirt that clung to her skin and a pair of tiny, lace-trimmed panties that left nothing to the
