He looked from the phone to my face, his eyes narrowing.

“Who is writing to you at this hour?” he asked.

“My assistant, probably,” I said, keeping my voice level. “She is managing the guest list for tonight.”

“She is wasting her time,” he said.

He walked back toward the center of the room, his expensive leather shoes scraping against the grit on the floorboards.

The smell of rain and damp soot drifted up from the alley below the window.

A train on the Wabash line rumbled past, shaking the glass panes in their wooden frames.

I placed my palm flat against the side of the cedar sculpture I had spent the last six months carving.

Underneath the rough curve of the wood, nestled in a hollow I had drilled out myself, was a small black digital recorder.

Its microphone was no larger than a grain of rice, wired to a transmitter that fed directly into my cloud storage.

I needed him to talk, and I needed him to do it now.

“You really think you can just close me down,” I said, looking up at him.