And Madam Vale sat in the old leather chair at the window and looked away, with the quiet tact of a woman who understood that some moments were not meant to be witnessed, and gave her son and his wife the only privacy available to them in a building full of people waiting for answers and a city full of cameras and a clock that had not stopped counting.
Outside, Verenza continued.
And in the outer district, in an address that appeared on no public record, a man who did not know he had been found was going about the last ordinary hour of a life that was about to become significantly less ordinary.
Marcus was already in the car.
The two hours passed the way a difficult time always passes, not quickly, not slowly, but with the particular grinding persistence of a clock that knows you are watching it.
At precisely the mark, Julian stood.
