Somewhere in the darkness beyond the city, Michael waited for his report. Somewhere in the offices above, Kellerman planned his next move. Somewhere in the city, Harold Vance held an envelope that represented either redemption or further manipulation, and tried to determine which he had been offered.
And Richard Holloway drove through the night, owing debts he could never fully repay, carrying secrets he could never safely reveal, surviving in a world that demanded performance without principle and offered no guarantee that tomorrow would be any different from today.
The game continued. The players moved. The board expanded beyond what any single piece could comprehend.
But for this night, at least, Holloway had done something that was not merely survival. He had offered a door. He had acknowledged a debt. He had tried, in the limited way available to a man who had spent fifteen years becoming what he had become, to be something other than the shadow he had learned to inhabit.
