Chapter 201
~ Octavia ~
The address the private investigator had provided—a man Franklin had surreptitiously hired weeks before the world turned upside down—didn't look like a theater for justice. It looked like a graveyard for lost causes. It was an abandoned cafe squeezed between two soot-stained aging buildings, a place quiet enough to be ignored by the bustling Manhattan crowds but too deliberate to be forgotten.
Locke and Holt took their positions outside the entrance, their coats flared slightly to reveal the alert readiness of their stance. I stepped into the dim, dust-moted interior alone.
He was already there. Seated in the far corner with his back to the wall, Detective Tate was a man who lived in the peripherals. His eyes scanned me the moment I crossed the threshold, calculating and cold.
"Mrs. Flemington," he said, rising just an inch. "Please, sit."
