The clinic in the northern hills was a place money built so it would never have to look at what it was paying to forget. White halls, soft light, a garden behind glass, a quiet that cost extra.
Caleb stood in the visitors' lot and looked up at it. Marek Voss had spent two years dying somewhere very expensive and very kind, and the kindness you pay for so a man can disappear was its own quiet cruelty.
"She's off shift in ten minutes," Iris said, checking the time. "The Hacker told her a family advocate wants a word, and that nobody upstairs needs to know. She agreed fast. People agree fast when they've been carrying something."
Ada Hollis came out the side door in plain clothes, her badge already off her chest and in her pocket. She was maybe fifty, tired in the bones, the tired of someone who works nights and sleeps days and never quite catches up to either.
