Not because I was a brilliant strategist.
Not because I had a fancy degree from Stanford.
She had chosen me because when thirty-five cars drove past an open grave on a mountain shoulder at seventy miles an hour… I was the only man who stepped into the dirt to break his hands against her ribs.
I stepped out of the Honda.
The eleven o’clock sun was beating down onto the asphalt of the Vanguard parking lot with dry, high-altitude fury.
I did not slouch.
I did not look at the ground.
I walked through the revolving glass doors of the lobby, my scuffed leather dress shoes making a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack* against the green Italian marble floorboards.
The receptionist—a twenty-two-year-old girl named Jenny who had started three weeks ago—looked up from her console.
