Chapter 7 The Reckoning

• We told him in Desmond's office, at the end of the day, the door closed and the city outside the window going dark gold with the last of the light.
• Preston's face moved through disbelief first, then something uglier and harder to watch, then something almost unbearably young underneath all of it — like the boy who used to call his father collect from summer camp when he was homesick, showing up suddenly beneath thirty years of careful polish.
• "You're joking," he said. "Tell me you're joking, because this isn't— this can't be real."