I stepped down the aluminum air-stair.
My hand-welted leather field boots made a clean, concussive tack… tack… tack against the wet marble.
Beside me walked Colonel Aaron Carter, his jaw set like an iron plumb bob.
Behind us walked Vice Admiral David Mercer and United States Attorney Marcus Cooper.
Judge Eleanor Mercer did not offer a polite family greeting.
She turned her slate-gray eyes onto me, looking down at my upright posture, down at the unpolished bronze transit pin on my tweed lapel, and then down to the four-inch titanium key resting in my gloved right hand:
“Are the nerves firing true, Clara?” the Judge asked.
Her voice had no volume; it was fifty decibels of pure, un-forgiving Maine iron:
“Did the naloxone clear the sufentanil without cognitive deficit?”
“The receptors are clear, Aunt Eleanor,” I answered:
“Daniel Whitaker and Patricia Whitaker are in federal transport chains on Farnam Street.”
