The following morning Don went through the documents Miss Claire had prepared with the same careful attention he gave any piece of paper that could later be used against him.
Winter arranged the meeting with Dr. Gadget at a public restaurant three districts over, it was a place where the noise of ordinary conversation and the clink of cutlery provided better cover than any private room.
They sat near a window that looked out onto a busy sidewalk and spoke in the tones of a specialist tutor finalizing an educational contract.
The paperwork itself was filed the same afternoon with the city's private education board. Miss Claire's connections ensured it slid into the quiet middle of a thick stack of routine approvals rather than the piles that drew secondary review.
