She spun back toward me, not really looking at me, more through me, as if I was a witness stand she had not yet decided to approach.
“You brought me the phone.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Then widened again.
“No. No, wait. You didn’t bring me the phone like a dog. You brought me the phone because I was asking if I should text you.”
I said nothing.
The alley suddenly felt very small.
She laughed once.
Sharp.
Horrified.
“And then you howled when you answered.”
I winced.
“That was a tactical decision.”
Her head snapped toward me.
“A tactical decision?”
“Bad one.”
“Bad?” she repeated, almost calmly. “You think?”
Oliver, the traitor, whimpered somewhere very far away.
I did not blame him.
Martha kept pacing.
Her heels clicked against the stone like a countdown to my executio
