“You’re up early,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?”
Most employers would not have asked. Most men of his wealth would not have cared. Rowan Fiero asked like the answer might become evidence.
Dalia lowered her eyes. “New place. New routine.”
Bobby leaned harder against her leg.
Rowan noticed.
For one impossible second, Dalia thought he might order the dog away. Instead, he walked to the counter and poured himself black coffee. The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything she was hiding.
“Bobby doesn’t like strangers,” Rowan said.
“I’ve heard.”
“He doesn’t comfort them either.”
Dalia’s throat tightened. “Maybe he made a mistake.”
Rowan turned back toward her. “Bobby doesn’t make those.”
She did not know what to say to that.
Rain began tapping against the windows, light and harmless then, nothing like the storm that would come later. Dalia remembered standing in Daniel Marsh’s apartment six weeks earlier, stuffing documents into a canvas bag while her hands shook so violently she could barely zip it. She remembered telling herself she only had to disappear long enough to survive.
Now the most powerful man in Connecticut was watching her as though survival itself had left marks on her skin.
“You worked for Judge Calder,” Rowan said.