“Were you.” Ray sat down in the chair by the window without being invited. He placed the flash drive on the coffee table between them. “Sit down, Samuel.” Something shifted in Samuel’s expression. “I was actually just heading out, I have —” “Sit down.” The quiet authority in it was the same tone Ray used when a supplier tried to walk back a contract.
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Samuel sat. Ray looked at him for a moment. The easy charm was still there, technically — the pleasant face, the careful posture — but it had curdled slightly at the edges, the way things do when the performance runs up against something it can’t redirect. “Patricia Heller,” Ray said. “Tucson. Four years ago.”