ONE YEAR AS MRS KINGSLEY

pected he

him. Isabella Carter did not press. She sat with her small square hands folded over the yellow legal pad, her damp hair coming loose from its elas

ly. "'Not certain you can keep it.' It's a sentence. Eithe

ot that

mple. It's a

lexander said. "

"There's a ladies' room down the hall, and I'd like to wash my face. Tak

es

no, I'd rather y

the heavy door swung shut, and the conference room on the

sh let out

She is not what th

N

she was capable

r the avenue, and the headlights moved through it in slow, glittering lines. He did not turn aro

e her because she

id no

y for twenty years and yours for three. I don't ask what is in the drawer in the library. I hav

ll

swer her truthfully. It means that if you learn of a threat, you must tell her, on the day you learn it. And it means that in a court of law, the Examiner or Mr. Blackwood's counsel

stand th

what it would requi

room behind him: the long ash table, the gray contract, the empty chair wher

rstood

come, whether she wished it or not, a person of interest to a man who did not like loose ends. He understood that there were things moving through the accounts of Kingsley Group at two in the morning that he

derstood

nd, on paper that had not yet lost the smell of his study. He had read it so many ti

had come in behind her wet sneakers and her diner T-shirt and her way of slashing the sevens across the middle when she wrote the

th a slash through it. He had seen it

er," Gid

what it

s a promise you may

w that

en

e walks out of that door, and I have sixty-eight days, no, sixty-seven, to find another woman who

n bli

write that clause in blood." His mouth twisted, briefly and without humor. "I will give h

you are

at the old man

be someone who can

ucet ran and stopped.

hair twisted back in a damp knot, he was sitting exactly as she had left him, hands folded, unh

e did not s

term," Alexander sai

rprise in her face, quick

deo

fact within his knowledge that presents a material risk to her physical safety, immediately upon learning of such fact. Disclosure shall be complete and accurate. The Wif

e down, her lips moving. When he fi

y," she said. "

is something a co

'and the safety

s pen s

f this contract," she said, "I want to kno

eld her gaz

one m

cour

ou say it's nothing when it's something, if you look me in the eye and make it smaller than it is

was ver

an hurt me," said Isabella Carte

id with perfect equanimity, in the tone of a woman reading

k. With t

" Alexan

t it leave his mouth and settle on the table between them, light as a feather and as heavy as a coffin lid, and he knew,

she turned the legal pad face-down on the table and flat

ot just the schedule. With my own lawyer, once I've got on

is w

you need

the offer stands

was beneath the jacket, how she carried herself like someone who had been holding a heavy thing for so long she had forgotten it had wei

ill take

ing my work all night.

o'clock in

nto her pocket, and Alexander did not say a word about the pen, a four-hundred-dollar Montblanc that had belonged to his grandf

. Alexander found his own face resisting

o the door

hirt, a borrowed pen, damp sneakers. Looking at her, he thought, with

gsley,"

xand

lifted the legal pad slightly, like a flag. "You've written yourself a very e

me you

," Isabella said, "to bec