“Sit down,” I said. “Please. Before you fall down.” He sat. The attendant melted away the way good ones do when they sense a moment they have no business being inside of. […]

Here’s the thing nobody warns you about getting caught: your mouth keeps going for a second after your brain stops. “That’s ridiculous,” I heard myself say. “Hale would never come to a—” […]

Dana laid the folder open on the little table and asked the hearing officer for ten minutes. She got them. She started with a single sheet of paper: the flag itself. The […]

The man in the gray cardigan walked the length of the conference table, slowly, the way a person walks when they’re in no hurry because the room already belongs to them. “I […]

The first thing I did was keep Pearl talking, because a woman on the phone is a woman who hasn’t reached the wire counter yet. “Tell me about him,” I said, and […]

The first page in that folder wasn’t a will. It was a letter, in shaky blue ballpoint. “Junie — if a man in a suit is reading you this, then I’ve gone […]

I turned the phone face-up and pressed play. My own kitchen, ten minutes earlier, came out of that little speaker into the silence of the dining room. Grant’s voice first. “Just get […]

The rest of the letter is the reason I’m not angry the way you’d expect me to be. Grandpa Walter knew what his brother had done within a year of it happening. […]

The Slack window glowed against the dark glass of the boardroom. The jagged string of characters hung in the center of the massive projection screen. 007.4Z 3.20 N4x,22. Ngred ioci: lai’kdelt nvtirhins. […]

Richard’s hand shot out. He reached for the microphone cord, his fingers brushing the black metal stand. “Cut the feed!” he hissed. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble that barely carried […]