Part 2 The Secret in the Prosthetic

CHAPTER 21: The Blank Canvas

The smell of fresh paint and blooming lilies filled the third-floor office.

It was a modest space. Exposed brick walls, broad windows overlooking the avenue, and a distinct lack of the mahogany-and-leather pretension that had defined Richard Vance’s empire.

There were no oil paintings of old men in suits.

There was only light.

Sarah stood by the window, watching the morning traffic.

A cardboard box rested on her desk, the last of her things from the temporary workspace we had rented during the trial. She hadn’t unpacked it yet.

I walked in, holding two cups of black coffee.

"The sign painter is downstairs," I said, handing her a cup. "He wants to know if you want the gold lettering or the frosted glass."

Sarah took a sip, her eyes never leaving the street below.

"Frosted glass," she said. "Gold peels. I want something that lasts."

I nodded, setting my cup down on the bare wood of her desk.

For a long time, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the city outside and the quiet, steady rhythm of her breathing. The war was over. The adrenaline that had sustained us for eighteen months had finally evaporated, leaving behind a sudden, sprawling silence.

It was the silence of a blank canvas.

Sarah turned around. She looked at the empty bookshelves, the bare walls, the pristine desk.

"It’s quiet," she noted.

"Too quiet?"

She smiled slightly, shaking her head. "No. It’s exactly right."

She walked over to the cardboard box. With precise, deliberate movements, she opened the flaps. She didn't pull out law books or framed degrees.

She pulled out a small, jagged piece of sheared metal—a remnant from the scaffolding collapse that had taken her leg. She placed it right in the center of her new desk, an ugly, brutal thing sitting in the middle of all that beautiful light.

"A reminder," she said, catching my eye.