He returned twenty minutes later.
Aurora heard the door before she saw him—the quiet click of the latch, the shift of
weight as he settled into the driver's seat. She was still looking straight ahead, her hands loose in her lap, her posture the particular stillness of someone who had been sitting alone with their thoughts and had made peace with the company.
"Sorry for the delay." He started the engine. "Business call."
"Sure," she said.
They drove.
***
She recognized the neighborhood before she recognized the building.
The streets around the Phantom Club casino had a specific quality at night—the particular kind of quiet that existed at the edge of a city's entertainment district, where the noise was present but concentrated, where the spaces between venues were dark in a way that felt deliberate.
