Work Text:
“Knock knock.”
Ryland looks up from his lap instinctively, always ready to invite a student or teacher into his classroom for a chat. At this particular moment though, he wishes he would have thought of locking his door earlier as he was in the very precarious position of performing surgery.
Nolan had gotten his stuffed rabbit’s ear stuck on the zipper of his schoolbag and the resulting bloodbath—stuffing exploding everywhere—traumatized the entire classroom because one kid decided to pretend the stuffing was actually blood and the rest followed suit. No one was more traumatized than Nolan though, who got a face full of stuffing when he had yanked too hard on the schoolbag’s zipper and the ear went flying. He was convinced the rabbit had lost too much ‘blood’ to survive the trip home, so here sat Ryland, attempting to sew a rabbit’s ear back on with minimum success. Until he was interrupted.
His eyes return to the rabbit after he catches a glimpse of everything he needs to know about the person knocking on his door: (1) he doesn’t recognize her; (2) the fancy suit and shoes she’s wearing lets him know she’s not a parent; and (3) she’s not wearing a lanyard so she’s not from the District’s or the Board’s office.
“Who’s there?” He mumbles distractedly, judging the distance of a stitch he’s just made.
“Not good at jokes.” The woman has an accent that’s kind of thick. It scratches something in his brain in a very pleasant way.
“Not good at jokes, who?”
There is no answer. Ryland looks up once more and finds her standing directly in front of his desk. She picks up a bean bag and sniffs it…Who does that?!
These are his things, lady! Her long and pale hands, although admittedly graceful and delicate, are all over his trinkets—the little man made out of paperclips, the class pig pet they once had that was really an eraser, the mug that holds his secret candy, etc.
No touching. It’s the first rule taught in Kindergarten! He decides the rabbit is more important and ignores her grubby hands.
Ryland doesn’t want the tension on the thread to be too tight because then it’ll tighten the creature’s face from just one side, like botox. He’s not trying to give his students’ a complex, especially not one that includes a botched up botox job. But if he stitches it too loose, it means the ear could fall off or the simplest tug could rip it apart again. He’s gotta get it juuuust right.
The only problem is that he doesn’t know how to sew. This is Miss Kimberly’s emergency sewing kit that one of his kids ran to go and get to ‘stop the bleeding.’ He’s not sure he’s using the thread correctly but he’s already halfway through and if all else fails, he can just use his stapler.
Maybe he shouldn’t have said yes. But Nolan said his mother would make him donate the rabbit if she found it in this condition. It’s why he left it for Ryland to fix in the first place, because his students trust that as a teacher, he can fix pretty much anything that goes wrong.
Ryland wishes he could trust himself in the same way.
“Dr. Grace?”
His head snaps up at that. He hasn’t been addressed with that title in a very long time. He doesn’t like how she says it, like it means something special and important. It might have been an accomplishment in the academic world but he’s not there anymore, thank Curie and all her Nobel Prizes. He shouldn’t be called that again and especially not in his own classroom.
He realizes he’s been sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in concentration when he has to tuck it back in in order to respond properly. A bit of color dusts the top of his ears and he can feel them turning hot.
“Tha-that,” he has to clear his throat twice before he can continue. “That’s not my name anymore.”
“You are not Dr. Ryland Grace? Born Neutral but Classified as a—”
“No—I am, I am!” He interrupts her, flapping his arms around in a panic. He doesn’t want to hear about another one of his failures. “I just meant that it’s Mr. Grace now, please.”
She looks down at him for a long second before she continues talking. “Dr. Grace, your academic paper on water-based life was published in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology against the wishes of the Department Chair of the Biology Department at Stanford. I’ve been told you lost your job and all your funding in one fell swoop.”
“Woah, woah, woah.” He stands up quickly with no regard to the rabbit in his lap. His stomach drops dramatically. He knows it’s dramatic because, logically, he knows that there isn’t an anvil sitting at the bottom of his small intestine. Telling himself this doesn’t dispel the feeling.
The woman reaches into her briefcase and takes out what he immediately recognizes as the bane of his existence—created by the sheer audacity he used to have back then to believe someone like him could publish ideas like that.
Fudge.
He’s going to cry and he doesn’t even know her name.
“An analysis of water based assumptions and recalibration of expectations for evolutionary models. You wrote this paper, yes?”
He can’t answer her without bursting into tears so he bends down and reaches for the rabbit. Poor creature, Ryland let him fall to the floor! He’s already missing an ear and Ryland is treating him this way, how very rude. He brushes off the dust that stuck to his fur and keeps stroking the space between its eyes until the feeling of crying uncontrollably recedes a little. The soft material feels good against his fingers.
“A dumb title but very exciting content, I have to say.”
That makes him snort. “All titles in academic journals are dumb.”
“Dr. Grace, I don’t think you caught my na—”
“Mr. Grace.” He says despondently.
“What?”
“I’ve already told you not to address me as…that. My name is Mr. Grace.” He doesn’t look at her while he says this. Instead he’s looking for the needle and thread still attached to the rabbit. All he has to do is finish the darn thing and then he can jump on his bike and go home.
He needs to go home. Desperately.
He doesn’t hear her when she walks around his desk and stops to stand beside his chair, so when her hand enters his peripheral vision, it startles him into violently rolling his office chair away from her.
“Oh, no.” He says, breathing hard. “I didn’t mean to kick you.”
Her perfectly tailored black pants now have a dusty half-print of the bottom of his right shoe. That’s not good, that means he used her leg to propel himself away. Ryland probably can’t afford to get those dry-cleaned. His expression is frozen in panic.
For the first time since she entered the classroom, he looks at her eyes directly. He’s surprised to see a dark grey staring back at him. Her hands are raised up in supplication—the universal gesture that conveys she didn’t mean any harm.
Well, why is she bringing up his paper, then?!
There’s a moment where they stare at each other without blinking—she breaks it when she walks closer to him using small and even steps. She reaches for the rabbit in a slow and controlled manner. Ryland could have stopped her if he wanted to, but he thinks it’s polite to have her take the thing she wants since he dirtied her pants.
Once in her hands, she backs away to a distance that he’s comfortable with. She fiddles with the torn ear until she finds the needle and thread and begins sewing with quick and practiced fingers. Ryland can’t look away, she’s so sure of where the needle goes without having to look at it five times or measure the distance between stitches. He’s mesmerized.
“Let’s start over, shall we?”
“O-okay.” He doesn’t really want to do that. But she’s doing him a favor, so he feels like it’s the right thing to do. She’s probably only doing it so that she gets what she wants in the end, so he guesses it’s not really a favor. But he’ll play along for now.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I’m the Director of the Petrova Taskforce. It’s an international body set up to deal with the Petrova Line situation. I’ve been tasked with finding a solution and they’ve given me a certain amount of authority to get things done.”
“They? Who’s they?” Ryland is still staring at her hands. She’s almost done.
“Every member nation of the UN.”
“Wait—what? How did—”
“Unanimous secret vote. It’s complicated. I’d like to talk to you about this scientific paper you wrote.”
He deflates a little. Right, the whole reason she’s here. She wants a scientist—it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why Ryland?
He rubs a hand down his face and briefly closes his eyes. With a groan, he says “You want to speak with Doctor Grace.”
“I do. I’m speaking with him right now.” She’s tugging at the stitching to see if it will hold. Lifting the thread to her mouth, she cuts it with an impressive bite of her teeth.
“No, I mean, Doctor Grace. You probably saw the UNESCO video, right?” His voice sounds very tired. This happens from time to time, but not as often as it used to right after the incident. People who believe in aliens want to interview him, others want to film a podcast so he can relive one of his worst memories.
They all expect an angry and unstable scientist who would put down his life for his beliefs—they want entertainment. That’s not him anymore. It technically never was him, but that’s how that video immortalized him.
“I watched it, yes.”
“And you thought, there’s a scientist who won’t back down from his principles. Who thinks outside the box.”
He raises his eyes to her and notices the surprise in them. Shocking, he managed to affect her cool demeanor. It should make him happy but at the moment all he feels is that he needs to go home. He has to be a functional adult for the bike ride and that adult is slipping from him rather fast.
He stands up and takes the rabbit from her hands. Nolan is in Ryland’s home room, which means his is the first class to come in and sit in the mornings. He counts quietly and finally remembers which desk Nolan sits at. Placing the rabbit on top of the desk, Ryland admires her handiwork. It looks good. There’s almost no difference from the other ear! He’s not going to be discarded.
He turns to Eva Stratt with a smile and gets to see her blink in surprise again.
“Thank you. For doing that. I’m useless at it.” He walks back to her and starts to gather his work for the night. He has a lot of projects to grade.
“So,” she clears her throat, clearly wanting to get back on topic. “According to you, that scientist doesn’t exist anymore?”
What? He frowns at her questioningly. Oh, right. The Doctor Grace.
“Of course not, I haven’t stepped foot in a lab or written anything remotely academic in ten years. I’m not even all that angry anymore. Academia was not for me, I should have listened when they told me so, but I was stubborn and didn’t think it mattered.”
“Didn’t think what mattered?”
Curses.
He shrugs and speeds up his movements. He does not want to talk about this to Eva Stratt of the Petrova Taskforce. Wait. They really made a Taskforce to deal with the Petrova Line? Well, what did they find up there?! His movements pause as he thinks. He’s going to have to ask her, isn’t he. Darn his curious nature.
“There’s a Taskforce for the dots?” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Do you know what they are? The dots?”
He expects her to look smug, maybe even a little sly and make him beg for the information. But all she does is nod and hand him his cursed paper that should have never existed. He leafs through it and notices something very peculiar. She’s made notes. Lots of them.
And they’re not corrections. No, she’s written her opinions on the margins, agreeing and disagreeing with certain theories. There’s a big pink tab sticking out of the middle so he turns to it. Oh…that section. Even if he still hates himself for publishing the paper without the backing of his university, he’s pretty proud of what he wrote under the section titled “The Goldilocks Zone is for Idiots.”
Here, he sees she’s underlined a lot of sentences. But there’s an equal amount of question marks along the margins. This copy of the paper looks well-worn out, as if she’s read it multiple times. He looks up at her disbelievingly and all she does is twist her mouth to the side in a way that he chooses to interpret as saying, “what can I say? You caught me.”
“You think the dots would prove my theory right?” His voice does not sound hopeful. It does not sound delighted or smug.
His voice chokes up and comes out of his mouth like an ugly, broken and bloody thing, a wet creature spilling and splattering his blackened and wasted dreams all over his best shoes.
“Yes. It might. The dots survive on the surface of the sun. Our sun is dying and losing its luminosity. These events must be related. Do you think these dots are alive?”
His hands are shaking slightly. He has to put the paper down on his desk, he can’t have it in his hands anymore. He drops it like it might jump back at him and bite him. It’s done it before, it knows Ryland’s weak spots. Still, he can’t take his eyes off the pink pen marks that Eva Stratt made in each page of his paper. The little doodles she made as she got distracted or maybe thought out a problem…?
“Maybe, it could be possible,” he mumbles. In truth, he thinks the probability that they are alive is very high, but he’s purposely not been thinking about it because that would mean terrible implications for the planet, for his kids, for his life. And his stupid paper just had to make its way to Eva Freaking Stratt’s hands.
“I need you to come with me,” she says this with so much authority that Ryland almost begins to walk forward before his mind wakes up.
“Why?” He plants his hands on his hips to hide the way they are shaking. His eyes keep jumping back and forth between the paper on the desk and her shrewd eyes.
“The ArchLight probe splashed down last night. I want you to be the first to examine the Petrova Line sample and tell me what they are made of. Perhaps you may even have some idea as to why they go to Venus.”
He needs to sit down. No, no, no.
He cannot do this. Not again. He can’t go back into that world. Even if he helped her for just one night, people would know—somehow it would get back to them and it’s only been a few years since they’ve left him alone. No. No labs. No paper.
The warm feeling that had erupted within him when he realized that Eva Stratt thought his paper had merit, that his paper was worth reading, no—! That his paper was worth printing and binding and annotating, multiple times! There’s different colored pen marks in there! That benevolent feeling that rose up in his throat when he learned that there was one person who believed him, or at the very least, thought his paper worthy of reading…
It disappears and leaves him cold.
He can’t be a part of this, of academia, of research and labs and papers and peer review. No, no, no.
He walks past her without his jacket or his bag that has all his important papers. Just walks past her and past his classroom door and walks calmly to the front entrance where he’ll find his bicycle and he can go home. No, no—he doesn’t need to be a part of this. Eva Stratt is here to make fun of him, to remind him of his place and all the other places where he doesn’t belong.
He cannot trust a Caregiver as wily as Eva Stratt.
___
He doesn’t make it past the front door of the school.
Instead, he barely registers when a tall black man in a suit grabs his arm and gently turns him back around. He sees red hair and immediately jerks backwards, but the man calmly lets him breathe for a second before steering him back into his classroom.
“—know he was a Little. It wasn’t on our file, the school had to tell me.”
“Is he regressing now?”
“No, he’s…yes, I think so, but it’s not working.”
Of course it's not working! It's not time for Ryland to drop just yet. He has to get home. Holding the rabbit and having a difficult conversation about his past pushed him further than he’s been pushed in a long while. They’ve sat him down at his desk, he can feel the leather of his chair crinkle and bend underneath his weight.
Ryland puts his hands on top of his desk and lets the cold plastic penetrate his hands to try and center his attention. His vision sharpens and the blurriness that he was experiencing recedes little by little. He wants to go home so badly. He has his blankets in the living room and his favorite pillow is waiting for him in his bed. He'll definitely need something to chew on tonight, or he’s going to bite his fingernails off again and then that will get infected and he’ll have to go to the doctor and explain that Ryland is a big baby who can’t handle confrontation.
That isn’t helping.
He feels something soft brush his hand and he immediately recognizes it as Nolan’s rabbit. He quickly moves his hand away from it. What is she thinking, handing him a stuffed toy? Does she think that will help?
He can't regress here, not with these strangers who want something from him. They are not part of his safe people! The situation is not safe. They could hurt Ryland and he swore he would never let himself be in that position again. He bats the rabbit away and breathes in as deeply as his lungs will let him before he exhales and immediately jumps into completing the breathing exercises that he taught himself in grad school.
He has an emergency soother doesn’t he? In his classroom? Urgently, he opens the top drawer of his desk and rummages through it a little too desperately. Ryland can’t let them know that he is desperate for the item, or that there is something they could use to convince him to leave the room for. He forces himself to calm his movements down.
There! Halfway underneath a frisbee he confiscated two weeks ago. He takes it out and hides it in his palm before anyone can see what it is. Instantly, his nervous system begins to relax. The small plastic figurine of an astronaut has been with him since he was a small child. The paint has faded from where he’s ran his thumb over it in a soothing manner—hence the name. It soothes him, though he doesn’t like that the word he came up with is also used for a pacifier. He’s not that kind of baby, thank you very much.
He continues his breathing exercises and ignores the conversation occurring around him. He doesn’t care about their opinion, they are not his friends so he should not ask for their help or company.
He will be safe at home. Safe is home. Safe is home. He needs to get home and to do that he has to be big. He needs his big legs to use his bike. His vision clears even more and that’s when he notices that his hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat. That’s normal for an episode like this.
Exhaling a shaky breath, he finally brings the rest of the room’s noises back to the foreground and examines what’s going on in the rest of the room.
Eva Stratt is leaning against one of the kids’ desks and has her arms crossed in front of her super fancy suit jacket. She unbuttoned it, it seems, because now he can see that the white shirt underneath it is not tucked into her pants. It’s a detail that matters, his brain tells him. And who is he to fight his brain? (He ignores the fact that he just fought his nature and forced himself to remain big. It’s different, okay?)
When he notices her watching him, his cheeks turn red and warm. He ducks his head and palms his soother between his hands, reminding himself to breathe.
“Are you alright?” Her voice is soft. There’s almost an edge of kindness to it that repulses Ryland. She shouldn’t be nice if she doesn’t mean it, and he knows she doesn’t mean it because she wasn’t using that voice before, when she wanted something from him.
“Yes,” he says simply and looks around for the man that manhandled him back into his classroom and back to the evil red-head. Tsk, that was mean. Still, it makes him giggle a little but he manages to keep it back because that was a really mean thing to think of.
The man is not in the room. Ryland looks towards the door and wonders how successful he would be if he tried to outrun the man and Eva Stratt. She looks like she could lift some weights. It’s the girls with the hidden muscles that always punch the hardest, he knows. Buuuut she’s wearing heels that are three inches tall. And his legs are longer…maybe he should try to—
“Mr. Grace, I am here on a matter of life and death. I understand that the information might be overwhelming for you—”
“It’s not!” He interrupts petulantly. She raises an eyebrow in disbelief. “The information makes perfect sense, thank you very much. I even understand why you sought me out instead of other biologists. But I am telling you right now that I will not do it. Ask for the department chair of the biology department at Stanford or something.”
“I did,” she says primly. “Dr. Franklin recommended you.”
Bullshit. Bull. shit. Bull. Shit. BULL. SHIT. BULL. SHIT.
He shakes his head once, then finds that he can’t stop once he starts. “No, no, no. She would never do that. She would rather die than say my name in public again. No, you must be mistaken. Please leave, mistaken person who makes mistakes.”
He’s going to start hyperventilating if he doesn’t stop his thoughts from racing. He manages to stop shaking his head by rubbing his palms down his thighs a couple of times. It doesn’t comfort him, but the sensitive nature of his sweaty skin rebels against the grating fabric of his jeans, and that brings him out of his panic a little.
“I am not mistaken. Dr. Lloyd and Dr. Trent also recommended that I speak with you. In fact, I have over twenty biologists across the globe who mentioned your name.”
As soon as she utters those names, he stands up abruptly and crashes into his desk, upsetting the items on top of it. He has to lean his hands on the desk to remain upright. His knees are not going to fail him, not now knees! Wait your turn.
“Y-You spoke with t-them? D-Dr. Lloyd?” His hands are shaking. They’re not supposed to talk about Ryland. They said they wouldn’t. Ryland hasn’t told anyone, why are they sending Eva Stratt to his classroom? Probably to humiliate him.
She nods and uncrosses her arms and legs. She stays leaning against the desk but he can tell that her body tensed when he spoke. He guesses his voice breaking and the sweat gathering on his forehead doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in his physical state.
“They s-sent you here as a joke, Director St-Stratt. They don’t mean it. You should go to another s-scientist.” He nods to himself confidently as if he’s solved the issue for her. And he has. Eva Stratt can leave him alone and she can go and yell at those twenty scientists who wasted her time on purpose.
“It’s the end of the world, Mr. Grace, even they understand that there comes a time to leave petty arguments behind.”
“No, no, this wasn’t a petty argument. They made me sign it, you know?” He has too much energy now, so he starts pacing in front of his white board. They told her it was an argument?! “It was a fully binding contract. I saw them sign it. I can’t go back to the field. I can’t.”
“Mr. Grace,” Eva Stratt whispers very quietly. It makes Ryland stop pacing so he can hear what she says. It’s a tactic he uses on his students all the time.
“Don’t you understand? I’m not allowed!”
She closes her mouth at his declaration. Okay, so he didn’t have to yell so loudly. Before the silence becomes too awkward, he apologizes. He doesn’t want to get into even more trouble.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.” It’s a bad thing to do, yelling so loudly. It’s disruptive. He’s supposed to be quiet and use his inside voice at all times, how many times has he told his students the same thing? He takes a deep breath and wills his hands to stop shaking.
“What contract did you sign?” Even if her voice is pretty neutral, he knows she is being careful with her words. He’s very good at reading body language and figuring out what the adults are actually saying when the words coming out of their mouth sound weird. And Eva Stratt sounds weird right now, which means…
Oh, no.
No, no, no.
He did not mean to bring up the contract. He was not supposed to say that part out loud. It was supposed to stay as an inside thought.
“Nothing, it was…” He clears his throat. “It was when I left the field and academia. An agreement that I would not take a position in the field without their express permission.”
An oversimplification if there ever was one. But he doesn't trust her with the full story and he isn't supposed to tell anyone about it, either. Even if his tormentors broke their side of their deal, he's certainly not stupid enough to do the same. This was supposed to be behind him and that video was supposed to be buried under so much legal jargon that even Eva Stratt couldn't find it, shouldn't it be? He knows that finding that video of him at the conference was easy business, but the other one...it was agreed between all parties that it would never see the light of day.
“I am sure the contract can be dismissed under the current circumstances.” She takes a couple of steps forward to level him with an intense look. She’s not going to back down from this. In fact, he’s pretty sure she’ll get the tall man to throw him over his shoulder and walk out of the school like that.
Ryland can tell he is trying her patience. He doesn’t mean to, but it always ends up happening anyway. She will explode any minute now.
Shaking his head, he resumes his pacing. Ryland chews the inside of his cheek as he thinks through the problem. He can’t risk it. His old colleagues were not being genuine when they sent her here, he is sure of it. They would not void the contract just because she wanted them to. Also, the contract actually protects Ryland quite a bit more than his colleagues, so he would prefer it if the contract remained intact.
“No, I can’t do it. I’m sorry.” He stops pacing and looks at her with genuine regret. “The contract, it-it’s gotta stay the same. It should.”
“It’s really no obstacle, Mr. Grace. I can call their attorneys right away—”
“NO.” He takes a giant step forward and almost grabs her shoulders in desperation. “No, don’t do that. Don’t call them. Don’t t-tell them that you’ve t-talked to me.”
“Mr. Grace,” she says, deathly quiet. “They are the ones who sent me to speak with you. I don’t mean to alarm you even more, but if we do not stop the sun from losing its luminance, the human race will go extinct within the next thirty years. I know you are the best scientist to make first contact with the ArchLightyou in that lab, right now.”
She takes a breath and slowly brings her hand up to rest on his shoulder. Her hands are very cold but it feels so nice that he wants to happily lean into the comfort. No, no! Eva Stratt is a Caregiver and he cannot trust Caregivers. Ever. Even when they are being nice. Especially when they are being nice.
She’s just trying to butter him up and manipulate him into agreeing with her. He’s fallen for it before, but not this time. He can recognize the signs now.
“However it is that they coerced you into this contract, I can make it disappear.”
His eyes dart to hers and his heart starts beating faster and faster until he tells it to shut up for just a moment so he can think clearly. There’s no room for hope here. Don’t accept deals from Caregivers.
She nods encouragingly when they make eye contact. “I will fix it. This is the last hoop I have to jump through so that the Taskforce can even begin to investigate how to save our planet.”
A shiver goes down his spine. Well, when she puts it like that…
It’s easy to forget that the planet is dying when his own world is threatened so casually. But is he really going to stand by when the lives of others are at stake? This is bigger than him, he knows it. She said she could make it go away. Maybe this could be a quid pro quo interaction and when they part ways they won’t owe anything to each other.
He knows he actually doesn’t have a choice—he can see it in her eyes and posture that Eva Stratt is used to getting her way. He decides to sit in one of his student’s desks to rest, and she follows him to sit across from him.
Ryland sighs and runs both hands through his hair, pulling slightly at the ends. “Alright, yeah. I’ll go with you.”
“Alright?” Eva questions him with one eyebrow raised. When he nods back at her she looks very satisfied with herself. “Alright, then. Who knows about this contract?”
He shrugs. Ryland’s eyes are starting to get heavy and he decides that her nose is the perfect point to focus his eyes on so he stays awake. It’s a little wide for her head shape, her nose. He likes it.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, then really puts some thought into it.“Dr. Lloyd and Dr. Trent. I guess Dr. Franklin and the dean of the school at the time. Their assistants. I don’t know who else. I didn’t tell anybody.”
She nods slowly. When he doesn’t hear her speak, he looks at her properly and sees her staring at something past him with her eyes unfocused.
“Well, then.” She straightens unnaturally stiff. “We can certainly take care of that.”
“W-What?” He stutters. Smacking her palms against her thighs excitedly, she stands up and ignores him when the sound makes him jump. She tucks her shirt back into her pants and fixes the waist band as she continues to talk.
“I can have a team out here before the end of the day. They’ll pair up with the local police and look through their electronics, offices, houses, etcetera.” She waves her hand distractedly, it makes him a little afraid of what the etcetera means.
“You can do that?”
The police? For a contract? He looks up at her with equal parts confusion and hope. He’s never been able to control his expressions very well.
“Like I said Mr. Grace, I have been given a certain amount of authority.” Eva nods seriously at him.
“So, you’re like…queen of the world?”
Her lips twitch.
“Yes, I suppose you could phrase it like that.” She gives him an actual smile. Well, it’s only half a smile but maybe that’s just what she does—only smiles from one side of the mouth. A sudden thought wipes his smile off his face.
“What if they take me to court?”
“For what, exactly?” She plants her hands on her hips. He doesn’t appreciate that.
“For…for…to accuse me of something!” Standing up, he rounds the desk and matches her stance. How much should he say? “I still know about other…I mean, if they don’t have any leverage against me, what’s stopping them from finding something else?”
“That’s easy.” She goes to his desk and picks up his bag. “Me, of course.”